Best Translated Book Award Winners for 2012 Announced

The BTBA is one of several nonprofit programs supported by Amazon.com that are focused on bringing more great works from around the world to English-language readers.

The winners of this year’s Best Translated Book Awards (BTBA) for fiction and poetry were announced during a ceremony held on May 4 at McNally Jackson Books in New York City.

In fiction, the winning title was Stone Upon Stone by Wiesław Myśliwski, translated from the Polish by Bill Johnston and published by Archipelago Books. The poetry winner was Kiwao Nomura’s Spectacle & Pigsty, translated from the Japanese by Kyoko Yoshida and Forrest Gander, published by Omnidawn Publishing.

The award event was part of the PEN World Voices Festival, a series of literary events in New York City featuring authors from around the world.

“It’s extremely satisfying to be able to give these authors and translators such a significant cash prize,” said BTBA co-founder Chad W. Post, “and it’s especially pleasing to do so in this environment — at such a great bookstore, during such a great festival.”

The BTBA is organized by Three Percent of the University of Rochester and is the only prize in the United States that recognizes international works of literature in translation. For the second year, the prize is supported by Amazon in the amount of $20,000. The prize money is distributed between the winning authors and translators.

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  • 2012 Best Translated Book Award Winners Announced
    The winning titles and translators of this year's Best Translated Book Award were announced Friday, May 4, at New York's McNally Jackson Books as part of the PEN World Voices Festival.