The American Literary Translators Association (ALTA), which is housed at The University of Texas at Dallas, presented the Lucien Stryk Asian Translation Prize at its annual conference in Philadelphia on Oct. 21.
ALTA presented the inaugural Lucien Stryk Asian Translation Prize to Red Pine (Bill Porter) for In Such Hard Times: The Poetry of Wei Ying-wu (Copper Canyon Press, 2009). The $5,000 award, which was established by an anonymous donor, honors the best book-length translation into English of Asian poetry or of source texts from Zen Buddhism.
Lucien Stryk winner Bill Porter — known as Red Pine since his days in Chinese Buddhist monasteries — is an American Zen figure who is famous for over a dozen books of translation. After studying at The University of California and Columbia University, he lived for 22 years in Asia, including four years in a Buddhist monastery in Taiwan. In Such Hard Times brings 175 poems by Wei Ying-wu to English readers for the first time.
“Translation requires such a close collaboration, that Wei soon became my best friend,” Porter said. “I’m so happy I got to know him and am so glad there are others who feel the same way I do about this poet who slipped through the net of celebrity.”
The judges for this year’s Lucien Stryk Asian Translation Prize praised In Such Hard Times for “bringing out Wei’s apparent simplicity of style, which is particularly important as his poetry is in some ways simpler than the more celebrated poetry of the T’ang. Red Pine’s translation, in simple yet elegant modern English and with thoughtful footnotes, not only makes Wei available to English-speaking readers, but also, potentially, makes him more accessible to many readers in Wei’s native culture today.”
ALTA, which is housed at The University of Texas at Dallas, is a broad-based organization dedicated to promoting literary translation through services to literary translators, forums on the theory and practice of translation, and collaboration with the international literary community.
More information here.
ALTA presented the inaugural Lucien Stryk Asian Translation Prize to Red Pine (Bill Porter) for In Such Hard Times: The Poetry of Wei Ying-wu (Copper Canyon Press, 2009). The $5,000 award, which was established by an anonymous donor, honors the best book-length translation into English of Asian poetry or of source texts from Zen Buddhism.
Lucien Stryk winner Bill Porter — known as Red Pine since his days in Chinese Buddhist monasteries — is an American Zen figure who is famous for over a dozen books of translation. After studying at The University of California and Columbia University, he lived for 22 years in Asia, including four years in a Buddhist monastery in Taiwan. In Such Hard Times brings 175 poems by Wei Ying-wu to English readers for the first time.
“Translation requires such a close collaboration, that Wei soon became my best friend,” Porter said. “I’m so happy I got to know him and am so glad there are others who feel the same way I do about this poet who slipped through the net of celebrity.”
The judges for this year’s Lucien Stryk Asian Translation Prize praised In Such Hard Times for “bringing out Wei’s apparent simplicity of style, which is particularly important as his poetry is in some ways simpler than the more celebrated poetry of the T’ang. Red Pine’s translation, in simple yet elegant modern English and with thoughtful footnotes, not only makes Wei available to English-speaking readers, but also, potentially, makes him more accessible to many readers in Wei’s native culture today.”
ALTA, which is housed at The University of Texas at Dallas, is a broad-based organization dedicated to promoting literary translation through services to literary translators, forums on the theory and practice of translation, and collaboration with the international literary community.
More information here.
