Society of Authors Translation Prizes 2025 by Sarah Escritt

The Society of Authors’ annual Translation Prizes ceremony took place at the British Library on 10 February 2026. Chaired by Fiona Sze-Lorrain, it was a moment to celebrate the hard work of translators and editors and the commitment of publishers and funders in bringing literature from other languages to English-language readers. Amongst the winning and shortlisted titles for the 2025 prizes were texts from Arabic, Bengali, Bulgarian, French, German, Italian, Japanese, Polish, Spanish and Swedish, a multiplicity of voices and variety of registers.

Translation has a reputation for being a solitary activity but it is also collaborative, communicative, creative and fun. Winners of the TA First Translation Prize for a debut translation from any language, translator Antonella Lettieri and her editor and publisher, Richard Village of Foundry Editions, shared the stage to read from Maria Grazia Calandrone’s Your Little Matter: Antonella read from her English version and Richard from Maria Grazia’s Italian because, as Antonella put it, it seemed ‘only right for literature in translation to have an accent’. The Goethe-Institut looked across the border to Austria for their feisty and irreverent set text, Jana Volkmann’s Der Beste Tag seit langem, for their New Translation Award won by Nick Browne. Agnes Broomé was clear that her translation of Swedish writer Lydia Sandgren’s Collected Works: A Novel for Pushkin Press emerged from lockdown only thanks to the support of her husband as the family navigated the world of homeschooling and online work into which they had been catapulted. It was appropriate that Ginny Tapley Takemori, winner of the Great Britain Sasakawa Foundation Prize for her translation of Mornings with My Cat Mii by Japanese author Mayumi Inaba, should thank her own cats as well as her editors and the New River Literary agency. Alexandra Roesch, the winner of the inaugural John Calder Translation Prize, thanked fellow translator, Charlotte Collins, for having put her forward for the work of translating Boy With a Black Rooster from the German novel by Stefanie vor Schulte. 

Alexandra Roesch described translation as an act of ‘precision and risk’. To publish translated literature implies commitment and responsibility. Throughout the evening, translators thanked authors for having entrusted them with their often difficult and personal subject matter and with their words and modes of expression. They also acknowledged that without publishers and funders, their translations would not have reached a readership. Marilyn Booth’s commitment to Zahran Alqasmi’s Honey Hunger: A Novel was such that she translated it from Arabic without first finding a publisher. Now helping it to ‘make its way’ in the Anglophone world are not only Hoopoe Publishers but also the support of the Saif Ghobash family and the Banipal Trust for Arab Literature. Richard Gwyn acknowledged the role of Carcanet Press in bringing the work of poet Fabio Morábito, ‘one of Mexico’s finest writers’, to the attention of more readers in the English-speaking world.

It is on account of many such presses and funding bodies that, despite a challenging backdrop for publishers and linguists, the evening could still be a celebration of vibrancy in literary translation. Translators from around the world enjoyed what Ruth Diver, winner of the Scott Moncrieff Prize for a translation from French of Beata Umubyeyi Mairesse’s The Convoy, aptly described as a moment in the limelight. Not everyone could be present in person. Agnes Broomé and Jon Cho-Polizzi, winner of the Schlegel-Tieck Prize for his translation from German of Fatma Aydemir’s Djinns, sent videos from across the Atlantic. Many thanks are due to the Society of Authors for coordinating this affirmation of the continuing importance of translation.

After a wonderful party, it is back to work. The persuasive skills of Sophie Defrance, Curator of Romance Collections at the British Library, who introduced the evening, suggested to the attentive audience that the British Library might be a good place for all of us who need a desk. Books need readers – and writers and translators. The shortlisted titles, as well as those books written by the hard-reading judges, many of whom are writers or publishers, are available at Bookshop.org. 

By Sarah Escritt

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Sarah Escritt takes every opportunity to engage with German books. She has written blogs and reviews for the European Literature Network and conducted author and publisher interviews for New Books in German. She was runner up for the 2025 Goethe-Institut Award for New Translation.

Photo: Adrian Pope/Society of Authors