Jackie Smith's translation ... brilliantly captur[es] the musicality of the original text, its philosophical depths, psychological insights, meticulous scientific observations—as well as its playful ingenuity and deeply poetic imagination.
Shelley Frisch, jury chair of the Helen & Kurt Wolff Translator’s Prize, reflects on the twenty-five year history of the prize, its significance to literature in translation, and its role in honoring the Wolff family’s extraordinary legacy in publishing.
Commemorating the 25th Anniversary of the Helen & Kurt Wolff Translator's Prize
Alexander Wolff, grandson of Kurt Wolff and author of Endpapers: A Family Story of Books, War, Escape, and Home, elucidates his grandfather's perennial undertaking to establish himself as a publisher on both sides of the Atlantic.
Kurt Wolff, 1887-1963
Translation Award Ceremony: June 24, 1:00pm EDT
This year's annual translation award ceremony in honor of the Helen & Kurt Wolff Translator's Prize and the Gutekunst Prize of the Friends of Goethe New York will be streamed live on Zoom from the Goethe-Institut New York and Goethe-Institut London. We can accomodate a small audience for the ceremony 'in person' at the Goethe-Institut New York: to attend, RSVP to library-newyork@goethe.de is mandatory and proof of vaccination is requested.
Register for Zoom
The following titles, all published in the USA or Canada in 2020, were submitted for consideration for this year's prize.
Submissions 2021
Publishers in the USA and Canada are invited to submit six copies of a published translation from the German language into English for consideration. The translation must have been published (not only distributed) in the USA or Canada in 2020.
Guidelines for Publishers
Kurt Wolff, joined later by his wife Helen, was one of the most outstanding and innovative publishers in Germany of the 1920s. Helen and Kurt Wolff immigrated to New York in 1941, and founded Pantheon Books, a publishing house devoted mainly to the translation of German and other European literature.
About Helen & Kurt Wolff
Dean Whiteside
Translation Grant Program Liaison
dean.whiteside@goethe.de
Goethe-Institut New York
30 Irving Place
New York, NY 10003
