This year Academia Rossica is awarding the Rossica Young Translators Prize for under-25s, seeking to promote and encourage literary translation amongst those who study and speak Russian in the UK. The prize had been launched in 2009 and will this year be awarded for the second time.

The move was an accompaniment to the success enjoyed by the main Rossica Translation Prize, inaugurated in 2005. Our hope is, that in the nearer future we will be successful in our aim to promote a consistent platform, or forum, to enable translators and publishers to get in touch with each other more effectively. Stimulating translation from Russian into English is just one aspect of Academia Rossica’s work, however, which seeks to build cultural relations and establish an artistic synthesis between Russia and the West. More details about Academia Rossica, our projects past and present and Russian events in Britain can be found on our website (see below).

The winner will be announced at the main Rossica Translation Prize ceremony on the 21st April. The winning translator will receive £500 and have the opportunity to travel to Moscow to take part in a translators' congress in September 2010. All shortlisted contributors will be honoured at a special event at the London Book Fair. The event will be specially dedicated to the Rossica Young Translators Price.

Anyone aged 24 or under on the submission deadline, Thursday the 01st April, is eligible to enter the competition. Group translations are allowed. All entries can be submitted by e-mail. Those wishing to enter must choose, and then translate, one of the three short extracts by a living Russian author selected by us. All the featured novels were written within the last two years, have won major awards and are regarded as significant within contemporary Russian literature. None have been published in English. Each text is 2-3000 words long, and all are available on our website.

The prize will be adjudicated by the three judges. This year the jury will consist of senior translators, who have been among the winners of the Rossica Translators prize in previous years, such as Robert Chandler, Amanda Love Darragh and Oliver Ready.

I was wondering whether this is something that might be of interest to your students be they undergraduates or graduates, native speakers or not. If so, maybe you would be so good as to circulate the information about this award?

Full details about the prize, including the texts, can be found on our website:

http://academia-rossica.org/en/literature/young-translators-prize-10

Please feel free to contact me, <rodrigo@academia-rossica.htm>rodrigo@academia-rossica.org, with any questions or queries.

We look forward to receiving the submissions!