Warwick University support first ever Women in Translation prize - The Coventry Observer

Warwick University support first ever Women in Translation prize

Coventry Editorial 12th Mar, 2017   0

A WARWICK prize for Women in Translation is to be awarded for the first time ever later this year with the support of Warwick University.

The prize aims to address the gender imbalance in translated literature and to increase the number of international women’s voices accessible by a British and Irish readership.

A report by Nielson Book showed translated literary fiction makes up just 3.5 per cent of the literary fiction titles published in the UK, but accounts for seven per cent of the volume of sales.

The Warwick Prize for Women in Translation will be awarded annually to the best eligible work of fiction, poetry, literary non-fiction or work of fiction for children or young adults written by a woman and translated into English by a female or male translator.




a £1,000 prize will be split equally between the female writer and her translator.

A shortlist of finalists will be announced in October with the winner confirmed a month later.


Professor Maureen Freely, head of English and comparative literary studies, said: “We’ve come a long way with the championing of world literature over the past decade, welcoming in a multiplicity of voices which have gone on to enrich us all.

“However in the same period we’ve noticed it is markedly more difficult for women to make it into English translation.

“This prize offers us an opportunity to welcome in the voices and perspectives that we have missed thus far.”

Judges at the event will include Boyd Tonkin – senior writer and columnist at The Independent – Susan Bassnett – Emeritus Professor of comparative literature at the University of Warwick – and Amanda Hopkinson, literary translator and scholar.

Three years in the making, the prize is the product of a collaboration between the School of Modern Languages and Cultures and the Department of English and Comparative Literary Studies at the University of Warwick.

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