Dieses Jahr geht der britische Weidenfeld Preis für Übersetzung an Denis Jackson, früher bei Siemens, für Übersetzungen von Theodor Storm, dessen Werke in Großbritannien vergriffen waren. Jackson hat eine Storm-Website (Englisch, aber mit teilweise deutschen Links).
This is fun: Denis Jackson retired from Siemens 15 years ago and noticed that the only translations of Theodor Storm into English had appeared in 1900 and 1910 and were out of print. He compares Storm with Thomas Hardy, and set about translating him himself (mind you, Storm doesn’t have the length – but he does have poetry too).
This is via translation eXchange, which quotes the Isle of Wight County Press:
bq. The translations are done in the winter months using old 19th century dictionaries but Mr Jackson also has to contend with the local dialect and ‘low’ rather than ‘high’ German language.
“Before you can understand his work and translate it you have to learn the culture, language and environment,” said Mr Jackson, who used the prize money to buy a laptop computer.
This was all from the Literary Saloon, which mentions the other contenders too. Jackson has a Storm website.
Two comments have been removed, including one by me, because they were misleading in this context.
A non-literary and/or legal translation prize should be awarded to reflect the true nature of the ‘global’ marketplace in translations.
This is something I and others will be taking up with FIT/ the International Translators’ Federation at the forthcoming Congress in Tampere, Finland, next month.
Lord George Weidenfeld, originally from Vienna and a fine, past speaker at the Goethe Institute in Kensington, should be highly receptive to the idea.