Norway Launches Jon Fosse Prize for Literary Translators
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Loading... - Bram Dixon
- 05 Dec 2024
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Norway has announced the establishment of a new translation prize, the Jon Fosse Prize, aimed at recognizing and celebrating the vital work of literary translators. This award is set to be one of the most generously endowed translation prizes in Europe, with the goal of supporting a profession that is often overlooked and underpaid, particularly in the face of growing competition from machine translation technologies.
Named after the acclaimed Norwegian novelist and playwright Jon Fosse, who won the 2023 Nobel Prize in Literature, the Fosse Prize will award 500,000 NOK (approximately £36,000) annually to a translator who has made a “particularly significant contribution” to translating Norwegian literature into another language. The prize is funded by the Norwegian government and will be managed by the National Library of Norway in Oslo. It is specifically open to translations from Bokmål and Nynorsk, the two official written standards of the Norwegian language.
Aslak Sira Myhre, the director of the National Library of Norway, emphasized the importance of translators, stating, “For a small language like Norwegian, the work of dedicated translators is crucial. It is a strenuous, creative, and partly invisible work that brings literature to people and cultures closer together.”
The inaugural Jon Fosse Prize will be awarded to Hinrich Schmidt-Henkel, a long-time translator of Fosse’s works into German. However, the organizers clarified that translating Fosse’s work is not a prerequisite for eligibility. Schmidt-Henkel remarked, “The award feels like a kind of Nobel prize for translators, thanks to the attention it brings to our contributions to world literature.”
In conjunction with the prize, Oslo will also host an annual Fosse Lecture. The first lecture is scheduled to take place at the Royal Palace in April, featuring Jean-Luc Marion, a French philosopher and theologian, and a former student of Jacques Derrida.
Context and Significance
The launch of the Jon Fosse Prize comes at a time when Norway is experiencing a surge in interest in its literary exports, despite having a population of only 5.5 million. The country is home to notable authors such as Karl Ove Knausgård, Vigdis Hjorth, and Linn Ullmann, alongside Fosse.
The prize's substantial financial backing positions it as one of the most lucrative translation awards in Europe, second only to the Martinus Nijhoff Translation Prize, which awards €50,000 annually. In contrast, many translation prizes in the Anglosphere, such as the PEN America Translation Prize and the Society of Authors’ TA First Translation Prize, typically offer around £3,000.
Challenges Facing Translators
The need for such recognition is underscored by recent findings from the European Council of Literary Translators’ Associations (CEATL), which revealed that experienced full-time translators often struggle to make a living from literary translation. A 2022 report by the Authors’ Guild of America indicated that 63.5% of translators reported an annual income of less than $10,000 from literary translation.
Concerns about the future of the profession have been heightened by recent announcements, such as that from the Netherlands’ largest publisher, Veen Bosch & Keuning (VBK), which plans to use AI to assist in the translation of certain commercial fiction titles. This development raises further questions about the pay and job security of human translators in an increasingly automated landscape.
The Jon Fosse Prize represents a significant step towards elevating the status of literary translators and acknowledging their essential role in bridging cultures through literature. As the profession faces challenges from technological advancements, this award aims to provide much-needed support and recognition for the creative and often underappreciated work of translators.
