Awards

Purpose

These Awards reward the translation of science fiction, fantasy and related fiction from other languages into English. They exist both to promote the fiction of non-English-speaking authors and to highlight the valuable work done by translators.

Legal Structure

The Awards are managed by a Board of Directors and established as a 501(c)(3) non-profit corporation based in California. This organization is known as the Association for the Recognition of Excellence in SF & F Translation (ARESFFT). See the About page for further details.

The purpose of the Board will be to select juries, arrange for the determination of winners and presentation of awards, promote the awards, raise money to finance the awards, and oversee those finances.

In addition the Board will establish an Advisory Group of experts in the fields of translation, and of literature in non-English-speaking countries, who can advise the Board and juries on relevant issues.

Jury

The award Jury shall consist of five persons selected by the Board of Directors for their knowledge of and standing in the field.

The Jury shall be assisted by an Award Administrator appointed by the Board.

Awards

Two awards will be presented: one for long form literature (40,000 words and above) and the other for short forms. A collection of stories by a single author/translator will be considered as a long form work. Categorization of single-author collections with multiple translators will be left to the jury to determine, depending on the number of translators. Anthologies with multiple authors and/or translators will be treated as separate short form works.

The awards will consist of a trophy and a cash prize [value to be determined]. A copy of the trophy and an equal share of the cash prize will be given to both the author and the translator. In the case of multiple authors or translators, or a tie, multiple trophies will be awarded but the size of the cash prize will not be increased.

In addition to the winners in each category the jury will provide a short list of honorable mentions in each category, which shall be no more than 10 works, and no less than 3. No prizes other than publicity will be given for these works.

Determination of the winners and short lists, subject to the award rules, will be the sole responsibility of the current year’s Jury.

The Board reserves the right to make a Special Award in years when a single individual and/or organization has been identified as having having done particularly important work in furthering the aims of ARESFFT.

Eligibility

Works will be eligible in the calendar year in which the English language versions are published.

All forms of science fiction, fantasy and related literature are eligible, including work written for children and work published online. The work may be published anywhere in the world. Illustrated works such as graphic novels, comics and children’s picture books are eligible, but the Jury will generally consider only the text as art does not necessarily require translation and could therefore give an illustrated work an unfair advantage. (Exceptions to this may occur — for example if art has been altered for culture-specific reasons as part of the translation.)

A new translation is eligible when the work is full published in English, regardless of whether the work in question has been translated into English previously by someone else.

Works may be suggested for consideration by the Board, the Jury, the Advisory Group or any member of the public.

The Award Administrator will keep a list of works considered by each year’s jury. A work which is not considered in its normal year of eligibility, for whatever reason, may be considered in the following year if it is suggested. Works may not normally be eligible in more than two years. However, if a work is not made known to any Jury until more than two years after publication it may be considered by special dispensation of the Board .

The Jury may choose to consider works from the previous year’s short lists as potential winners. This would normally be done if there is a shortage of high quality candidates, or if the previous year was known to have produced more than one outstanding candidate.

Timeline

The timeline is currently flexible dependent on the workload of the jury and the availability of suitable conventions for the award ceremony. The 2010 awards were presented at the Eurocon in Stockholm.