Margot Bettauer Dembo
Recipient of the 2003 Helen and Kurt Wolff Translator’s Prize
Translator Margot Bettauer Dembo has been selected by a five-member jury as the recipient of the 2003 Helen and Kurt Wolff Translator's Prize for her exceptional translation of Judith Hermann's Sommerhaus, Später (Summerhouse, later). The prize, which is administered by the Goethe-Institut Chicago, was presented to Ms. Dembo by the German Consul General of Chicago at an award ceremony at the Chicago Cultural Center and was open to the public.
The jury said that Ms. Dembo had achieved "an excellent transposition of the German work, which resulted in an impressive and rhythmically strong English text" and commended her for having "captured the atmosphere of the original and admirably recreated the tone and language pulse of the German short stories."
The five member jury that selected the prize-winning translation was composed as follows:
Rainer Schulte; translator, professor, University of Texas at Dallas
Breon Mitchell; translator, professor, Indiana University
Susan Bernofsky; translator, professor, Bard College
Krishna Winston; translator, professor, Wesleyan University
Gertraude Krüger; translator, Germany
