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2023
Winners announced

Winner and Shortlist

2023
Cover image of People from Bloomington
Penguin Classics
Winner
2023
Cover image of On the Line
Black Inc.
Shortlisted
2023
Cover image of Duino Elegies
Newport Street Books
Shortlisted
2023
Cover image of The Membranes
Columbia University Press
Shortlisted
2023
Cover image of Deadly Quiet City: Stories From Wuhan, COVID Ground Zero
Hardie Grant Books
Shortlisted
2023
Cover image of The Assommoir
Oxford University Press
Shortlisted

About the Prize

The NSW Premier’s Translation Prize ($30,000) is offered biennially. The prize was proposed by the International PEN Sydney Centre and is funded by Multicultural NSW with a trophy, sponsored by Sydney PEN.  

The prize is intended to acknowledge the contribution made to literary culture by Australian translators, and recognizes the vital role that literary translators play in enabling writers and readers to communicate across cultures throughout the world. The prize is offered only to translators who translate into English works written in other languages. 

The prize is awarded for a translation in book form. Nominated works can be works of fiction, creative non-fiction, or volumes of poetry. 

Previous winners of the prize are eligible to apply. 

Translators may nominate themselves for the prize, or may be nominated by their publisher or by another individual. 

All translations must be into the English language. 

All translated works entered must have been first published between 1 October 2020 and 30 September 2022. 

More than one work by the same translator may be nominated, provided the works entered meet all other conditions of entry. 

The Judging Panel

Josh Stenberg

Josh Stenberg

Chair

Josh Stenberg is a translator of contemporary Chinese fiction, drama, and poetry. The author of Minority Stages: Sino-Indonesian Performance and Public Display, he is a Senior Lecturer in Chinese Studies at the University of Sydney. 

 

Mario Cabrera

Mario Licón Cabrera

Mario Licón Cabrera is a prose writer, poet, translator and cultural promoter. He has published four collections of poetry, including Yuxtas (Back & Forth) a bilingual edition. His work has been included in many anthologies in Australia and abroad and his poetry has been translated into Italian and English. In 2015 he won the the Trilce Award for Poetry (Australia). Mario has translated many eminent Australian poets into Spanish and is a regular  contributor for Dos Filos and Círculo de Poesía (México) and for the Sydney based online magazines Mascara Literary Review and El Español. 

photo of pamela allen

Pamela Allen

Pamela Allen is Adjunct Professor of Indonesian language and literature at the University of Tasmania, Australia. She has translated and published a wide range of literary genres from Indonesian to English, including short stories, novels and poetry. She is the English translator of Ayu Utami’s award-winning novel Saman. She regularly interprets and translates for the Ubud Writers and Readers Festival in Bali and has for many years served as a translator and editor for the Lontar Foundation in Jakarta. In 2018 she won First Prize in the Literary Prose Translation Competition organised by AALITRA (Australian Association for Literary Translation). 

 

Past winners

2021
Imminence
Giramondo Publishing
Joint winner
2021
Autumn Manuscripts
Smokestack Books
Joint winner
2019
Alison Entrekin
Winner