State Prize for Daume and Prochasko

On Sunday evening, “Translatio”, the Austrian State Prize for Literary Translation was presented in Klagenfurt for the twelfth time. This year, the prize went to Doreen Daume and Jurko Prochasko.

Speech on “the translator as author”

The speech at the Musil Institute, Alpe-Adria University, was delivered by Croatian translator, author and journalist Andy Jelcic, who recently won an award in Zagreb. He talked about the “translator as author”.

For Jelcic, translations are a balancing act between different linguistic systems of communication. It is therefore sometimes possible that the translator is better able to communicate an author’s ideas than the author himself.

All translators are therefore authors, but only a few are artists, Jelcic emphasised: “Authors accuse translators of losing and distorting what is artistic about their art, while translators say that they are aware of it, and that nonetheless plenty remains, which limits and lessens the damage.”

Doreen Daume: from music to translation

For her complete translation works from Polish literature into German, Doreen Daume, who is originally from Dortmund, was awarded the Austrian State Prize for Literary Translation.

Daume lives in Vienna; she has a degree in musicology and is also a pianist. She caused a stir last year with her translation of the autobiographical stories of Polish author Bruno Schulz “Die Zimtläden” [The cinnamon shops].

“I like to be able to render this overwhelming wealth of expression and atmospheric possibilities in German using my own linguistic means”, says the winner.

Jurko Prochasko: building bridges to the EU

Jurko Prochasko, literary scholar and journalist, was honoured for his translations into Ukrainian of Musil, Roth, Rilke and Kafka. Prochasko lives in Lemberg.

In the Ukraine, he is considered an important cultural messenger and bridge builder to the European Union: “I would like to explain this using Josef Roth as an example: For me, when I began to translate his work, it was chiefly a matter of justice – after so many years of being politically ostracised. In the Soviet Union, he was undesirable. But he simply had to return.”

Jurko Prochasko is currently working on the translation of Musil’s novel “Der Mann ohne Eigenschaften” [The man without qualities].

translated by expectTranslations