Talat Sait Halman Award presented at ceremony

ISTANBUL

The second Talat Sait Halman Translation Award, which is given by the Istanbul Foundation for Culture and Arts (İKSV) in honor of Talat Sait Halman to support outstanding translations of literary works, was presented on Dec. 20 at a ceremony at the Nejat Eczacıbaşı building. 

The Talat Sait Halman Translation Award of 15,000 Turkish Liras was presented to Ahmet Arpad for his outstanding translation of Anna Seghers’ “Transit.” The award is the first prize awarded by İKSV in the field of literature.

The award ceremony started with İKSV General Director Görgün Taner’s presentation and was followed by a commemoration of author and translator Bertan Onaran, who died last week. Onaran translated Cervantes, Émile Zola, Jules Verne and many other authors into Turkish.

“Through the Talat Sait Halman Translation Award, we hope to support translators who are producing outstanding translations of world literature into Turkish and to encourage new works of this kind and caliber. Talât Sait Halman was Turkey’s first culture minister and first ambassador for cultural affairs. In 2008, he became chairman of İKSV’s Board of Trustees, a position he held until his death in December 2014. Throughout his life, Halman also dedicated great effort to the art of translation,” said Eczacıbaşı. 

“Even the most certain shelters and situations can only be a short break for the people of this novel,” said Doğan Hızlan, the head of the selection committee. “Ahmet Arpad succeeded in bringing the identity losses caused by the exposure to such situations in the style of Seghers. On the other hand, the environment that surrounds ‘Transit’ is a ‘Kafkaesque’ environment in real terms because, when looked closely, it cannot be explained or grounded by any non-war logic the people in it have to live with. Arpad did not once neglect this atmosphere throughout the 320-page novel. Considering all these features, the Talât Sait Halman Translation Award selection committee honored Ahmet Arpad with the second Talât Sait Halman Translation Award.”

More than 70 works that were completed in 2015, including poems, short stories and novels translated from English, German, Spanish, French, Russian, Arabic, Italian, Portuguese, Persian, Japan, Greek, Chinese, Finnish, Dutch and Hungarian, were nominated for the award, which was announced in October 2016.

The application deadline for the next Talât Sait Halman Translation Award is September 2017. Publishing houses and translators may submit literary translations published in 2017 from any language into Turkish.