Introducing the John Calder Translation Prize

An annual award for English translations of ‘ambitious, groundbreaking’ works opens for submissions in January

The Whitefriars Club, in association with the Society of Authors, is delighted to announce the launch of the John Calder Translation Prize, an annual award for translations into English of full-length ambitious, groundbreaking works of literary merit and general interest.

The prize, which opens for submissions in January 2025, will see the winner awarded £3,000 and a runner-up awarded £1,000 at the Society of Authors’ Translation Prizes ceremony in February 2026. A separate ceremony will be held at the Whitefriars Club’s February Anniversary Dinner.

Submissions can be from any European language into English, and source texts can be from anywhere in the world. Works must be full-length, but can be fiction, non-fiction or poetry.

The prize is awarded in honour of the late John Calder, one of the pre-eminent English-Language publishers of avant-garde literature in the second half of the twentieth century.

He championed fiction in translation, as well as the free word and authors who were suppressed or discriminated against for political or other reasons.

Under Calder’s stewardship, his publishing house brought out novels, plays and poetry by Samuel Beckett, Henry Miller, William Burroughs, Louis-Ferdinand Céline, Raymond Queneau, Alain Robbe-Grillet, Marguerite Duras, Nathalie Sarraute, Claude Simon, Robert Pinget and many others.

Works submitted to the John Calder Translation Prize are encouraged to be ambitious in nature, by virtue of style, exploration of themes or complexity of the translation, and distinguished by the highly personal and imaginative approach of the authors to their subject.

Submissions to the 2025 Translation Prizes will close in March 2025 (for books published in the UK between 1st April 2024 and 31st March 2025). Three judges will be selected by an advisory board formed by up to seven translators, reviewers, editors or publishers set up by the Whitefriars Club. The advisory committee will offer ad-hoc help and advice to the judging panel, but will not interfere in any of its deliberations or decisions, which are final.

Author and translator, Richard Stokes, who is a member of the John Calder Translation Prize advisory board, said:

‘The translator’s lot is not a happy one. The highest praise that readers can pay translators is to say that their work does not read like a translation. Translators are not always mentioned on the cover of a book and they are paid a pittance. The John Calder Translation Prize will be welcomed by this unsung band of men and women who, through their devotion to foreign prose and poetry, make it available to those of us who are less linguistically gifted.’

About the Society of Authors

The Society of Authors is the UK trade union for all types of writers, illustrators and literary translators, at all stages of their careers. We have more than 12,500 members and have been advising individuals and speaking out for the profession for 140 years. In 2023, we awarded more than £900,000 in prizes and grants (for fiction, non-fiction, poetry and translation), and administer other prizes, including The Sunday Times Charlotte Aitken Trust Young Writer of the Year Award and the ALCS Educational Writers’ Award.

Our mission is to empower professional authors and their estates with knowledge, support and community, and to lobby industry and government for an environment that helps sustain and nurture the careers of creators and their work.

About the Translation Prizes

Awarded annually, biennially or every three years, our Translation Prizes recognise outstanding translations from works in Arabic, Dutch, French, German, Hebrew, Italian, Japanese, Spanish and Swedish.

The SoA Translation Prizes evening is hosted every year with over £27,000 awarded to winning and commended translators.

Submissions to the 2025 Translation Prizes will open in January 2025.