The Fu Lei Translation and Publication Award (Fu Lei Award) was first awarded in 2009 to honor the Chinese translator Fu Lei and to reward contemporary Chinese mainland for their outstanding works translated from French. Its jury is composed of Chinese and French translators, writers and university professors, and the chairman of the jury is Dong Qiang, academician of the French Academy and professor of the French Department of Peking University. Each year, the Fu Lei Prize will select one literature and one humanities and social science work, and the Chinese publishers and translators of the winning books will share the prize money. In 2013, the award established the "Newcomer Award" to inspire a new generation of translators.
This year, Zhang Wen won the social science award for his translation of "The Test of Exoticism: Culture and Translation in the German Romantic Period", and Huang Yaqin won the literary award for his translation of "Boy". Wang Xian, the translator of the book "Return to The Hometown," which received widespread attention in the publishing market last year, won the Newcomer Award.
At this year's award ceremony, Dong Qiang, chairman of the organizing committee, said that holding the award ceremony in Fu Lei's hometown made him feel a lot of emotions. The domestic and international influence of the Fu Lei Award has been continuously improved, and the outstanding translators who have won the award have become excellent backbones in the translation industry in recent years.
Attached are the winning works and translators of the 2021 Fu Lei Translation and Publication Award (source: public account "French Culture"):
The Test of The Exotic: Culture and Translation in the German Romantic Period
Author: Antoiner Belmann
Publisher: Life, Reading, and New Knowledge Triptych Bookstore
原作名: The test of the stranger. Culture and translation in Romantic Germany
Translator: Zhang Wen
Published: January 2021
Zhang Wen is an assistant professor at the Department of French at the School of Foreign Chinese, Peking University. He graduated from the Ecole Supérieure des Translations des Translations at the University of Paris III with a dissertation entitled "Translation of Children's Literature and Translator Decisions under Readership Constraints: A Case Study of the Translation of Bello's Fairy Tales". His research interests include translation ethics and the introduction of French children's literature in China, and he also engages in translation work in addition to teaching. His published publications include "The Reshaping of the "World Effect" in Narrative Texts", "Introduction to the Translation of Bellow's Poetic Fairy Tales in China in the 1980s", and translations such as "Never Forget" (Michelle Psi) and "The Last Stanfield" (Mark Levy).
Award: Antoiner Belmann's The Test of The Exotic: Culture and Translation in the German Romantic Period is an archaeological monument about translation that has universal value. It explores the culture of translation during the German Romantic period and explores the difficulties encountered by translators. The work is like inviting the reader to meditate, but also trying to give answers to fundamental questions such as man's relationship with his homeland and foreign lands. The chapter is a very accurate presentation of complex thinking and gives a wonderful translation.
"Boys"
Author: [french] Marcus Malt
Publisher: Zhejiang Literature and Art Publishing House
Original name: Le Garçon
Translator: Huang Yaqin
Huang Yaqin, Editor of French Literature at Shanghai Translation Publishing House, has participated in the Fellowship Project of the French International Publishing Agency. Translations include Boris Vian's "I'm Going to Spit on Your Grave," Michel Bernard's "Two Regrets of Monet," Marcel Vienne's "Two Regrets, and Marcel Velasquez." Bernab's Why I Didn't Write My Own Book was shortlisted for the 2017 Fu Lei Translation and Publishing Award for translating Laurent Binet's The Seventh Function of Language.
Award Speech: "Boys" tells the history of the growth of a nameless little boy in the twentieth century with a unique narrative, that is, a parallel narrative of personal short stories and the grand history of mankind, as well as his knowledge and criticism of the world. Huang Yaqin's translation faithfully embodies the style of "Boy": strong and distinct character emotions, concise words, distinct rhythms, poetic implications, prose arbitrariness, and the melody and rhythm of music.
"Return to Hometown"
Author: [french] Didier Elipon
Publisher: Shanghai Culture Publishing House, Houlang
Translator: Wang Xian
Published: July 2020
Wang Xian, female, born in 1990. He has worked in Algeria for 3 years and is currently pursuing a ph.D. in communication studies at Peking University, with research areas such as video culture studies and cross-cultural communication. Driven by his passion for French philosophy and French film culture, he embarked on the academic road and hopes to continue to contribute to Sino-French cultural exchanges in the future.
Award Speech: The original "Return to Home" is a reflective work created by french philosopher and sociologist Didier Elipon combined with his own background and growth experience. In this extremely intrinsic and subversive spiritual journey, the author ponders topics such as social class, schooling, and identity-building. With his good linguistic foundation and love for French philosophy, the translator Wang Xian has well presented the autobiographical style and rational analysis of the original work in the translation.
Written by | Liu Yaguang
Editor| Li Yongbo
Proofreader | Lee Sai-fai