Translations of Vietnamese fiction and Egyptian poetry honored by translators assocation

NEW YORK (AP) — English-language editions of a Vietnamese novel set everywhere from Saigon to Paris and of the latest publication of poetry by Egypt’s Iman Mersal are this year’s winners of National Translation Awards.

The awards were announced Sunday by the American Literary Translators Association.

Thuân’s novel “Chinatown,” translated from the Vietnamese by Nguyễn An Lý, won in the category for prose. The poetry prize was given to Mersal’s “The Threshold,” translated from the Arabic by Robyn Creswell.

The winning translators will each receive $4,000.

“ALTA is incredibly proud to recognize Nguyễn An Lý and Robyn Creswell for their masterful translations from Vietnamese and Arabic respectively, in this the 25th year of the National Translation Award,” Elisabeth Jaquette, executive director of the translators association, said in a statement.

Previous winners include Peter Constantine’s translation from the Russian of stories by Anton Chekhov, Martin Aitken’s translation from the Norwegian of Karl Ove Knausgaard’s “The Morning Star” and D.M. Black’s translation from the Italian of Dante’s “Purgatorio.”