Peter Constantine, Recipient of the 2007 Helen and Kurt Wolff Translator’s Prize
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2007 Helen and Kurt Wolff Translator's Prize
for his translation of Benjamin Leberts
The Bird is a Raven (Der Vogel ist ein Rabe)
from German into English.
Translator Peter Constantine was chosen to receive the Helen and Kurt Wolff Translator's Prize by a jury of five for his translation of the novel
Members of the jury were: Renate Latimer (Atlanta, GA), Susan Harris (Chicago, IL), Denis Scheck (Cologne, Germany), Krishna Winston (Middletown, CT), and Committee Chair, Rainer Schulte (Dallas, TX).
The jury was impressed with Peter Constantine's ability to render the voices of Benjamin Lebert's young characters into convincing, generationally accurate contemporary English. In translating this novel that lives through its language, Constantine demonstrates perfect pitch as he captures the ennui, the yearning, the hollowness, and the moral confusion of young adults who have lost their way.
Peter Constantine's most recent translation is The Essential Writings of Machiavelli (Modern Library, 2007). He was awarded the PEN Translation Prize for Six Early Stories by Thomas Mann, and the National Translation Award for The Undiscovered Chekhov—Thirty-Eight New Stories. His translation of the complete works of Isaac Babel received the Koret Jewish Literature Award and a National Jewish Book Award citation.
He has recently translated Within Four Walls: The Correspondence between Hannah Arendt and Heinrich Blücher, 1936-1968 for Harcourt, and Gogol’s Taras Bulba, Tolstoy’s The Cossacks, and Voltaire’s Candide for Modern Library. He was one of the editors for A Century of Greek Poetry: 1900-2000 and is currently co-editing an anthology of Greek poetry since Homer for W.W. Norton. He is also a senior editor of Conjunctions. His upcoming translation of Sophocles’ Theban Trilogy will be published by Barnes and Noble later this year.
Chicago Public Radio recorded the event. Please see: "Helen and Kurt Wolff Translator’s Prize 2007", recorded 6/11/07
ONLINE AT:
www.chicagopublicradio.org/Program_AMP_Segment.aspx?segmentID=11898
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