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ASF AWARDS 2007 TRANSLATION PRIZE TO MICHELE SIMEONThe Board of Trustees of The American-Scandinavian Foundation announced that Michele Simeon from Arlington, Virginia, has been awarded the 28th annual ASF Translation Prize for her translation of an excerpt from The Position of the Sun (Auringon asema) by the Finnish author Ranya Paasonen (b. 1974). The ASF jury praised the translation as “giving an English speaking audience access to a work which showcases a multicultural perspective that is an important dimension of the Nordic region today.” In summation they wrote, “the translator not only captures the explicit meanings of Paasonen’s work, but reproduces the wistful, evocative echoes of the original. She finds ways of expressing in English the combination of indeterminacy and concreteness that characterizes the Finnish text, while allowing the powerful chronicle of cultural collision at the center of the novel to come to the fore unimpeded.” As the winner, Ms. Simeon receives a $2,000 honorarium and a commemorative bronze medallion. The Leif and Inger Sjöberg Award, recognizing distinguished effort by a translator who has not previously published a literary translation, was given to Naomi Lebowitz from St. Louis, Missouri, for her translation of excerpts from Lucky Per (Lykke Per) by the Danish novelist Henrik Pontoppidan (b. 1857). The Translation Prize jury praised the translation for “completing a long overdue translation thus filing in a “glaring and unfortunate gap” in the Danish literature available to date. They went on to say, “the translator does an excellent job in capturing the period atmosphere and its style. Her translation is idiomatic and urbane and the text flows naturally and evenly, reflecting the somber and unemotional tone of the original. The translation works so well in English that it becomes easy to forget that the text began its life in Danish: such is the mark of an artful and creative translator.” Ms. Lebowitz receives a $1,000 honorarium and a commemorative bronze medallion. Excerpts from both translations will appear in upcoming issues of Scandinavian Review, the journal published by The American-Scandinavian Foundation. The ASF Translation Prize and the Leif and Inger Sjöberg Award are the only prizes regularly awarded in the U.S. for English translation of Nordic literature. They are awarded by The American-Scandinavian Foundation annually for the finest translations of prose or poetry by Danish, Finnish, Icelandic, Norwegian, or Swedish authors born after 1800. For more information on the 2008 Translation Prize competition, please see the ASF’s website: www.amscan.org. The American-Scandinavian Foundation is a publicly-supported, nonprofit institution founded in 1910 to promote international understanding through educational and cultural exchange between the United States and the five Nordic countries.
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