2024 Translation Prize Finalists

The Foundation is thrilled to announce the finalists for our 37th Annual Translation Prize! We received a record number of submissions this year, making this one of our most competitive cycles to date. Our jury of literary professionals ultimately selected ten finalists, five in each category, made up of both classic and contemporary French works and covering a wide variety of topics and themes.

For nearly 40 years, the French-American Foundation’s Translation Prize has worked to honor exceptional translators and their publishers by providing them with greater recognition for their craft. In keeping with its mission of opening channels of communication between the United States and France, the Foundation aims to acknowledge the important work that translators do to bring stories and readers closer together across international boundaries.

Of the finalists listed below, winning translators in each category will be awarded $10,000 thanks to the generous support of the Florence Gould Foundation. Winners will be announced in May and honored at an awards ceremony in the following weeks.

Thank you to all who submitted, and félicitations to our finalists. We look forward to celebrating your hard work and extraordinary talent in the months to come.

FICTION

Frank Wynne’s translation of The Annual Banquet of the Gravediggers’ Guild
by Mathias Énard (New Directions Publishing)

Daniel Levin Becker’s translation of The Birthday Party
by Laurent Mauvignier (Transit Books)

Teresa Lavender Fagan’s translation of Down with the Poor!
by Shumona Sinha (Deep Vellum)

Jessica Moore’s translation of Eastbound
by Maylis de Kerangal (Archipelago Books)

Raymond MacKenzie’s translation of Sentimental Education: The Story of a Young Man
by Gustave Flaubert (University of Minnesota Press)

NONFICTION

Juliette Rogers’s translation of The Gender of Capital: How Families Perpetuate Wealth Inequality
by Celine Béssière and Sibylle Gollac (Harvard University Press)

Susan Spitzer’s translation of Images of the Present Time
by Alain Badiou (Columbia University Press)

Angela Hunter and Rebecca Wilkin’s co-translation of Louise Dupin’s Work on Women: A Selection
by Louise Dupin (Oxford University Press)

Sean Field’s translation of To Govern is to Serve: An Essay on Medieval Democracy
by Jacques Dalarun (Cornell University Press)

Ryan Bloom’s translation of Travels in the Americas: Notes and Impressions of a New World
by Albert Camus (University of Chicago Press)