German - Goethe-Institut Award - The Society of Authors

German – Goethe-Institut Award

The Society of Authors’ and the Goethe-Institut Londons’ biennial Goethe-Institut Award for New Translation.

The Goethe-Institut Award for New Translation was founded in 2010 and is presented by the Society of Authors and the Goethe-Institut London every two years. This translation prize is aimed at new and emerging translators whose literary translation work has not yet been published in print. Entry is open to UK nationals and those who have been resident in the UK or Ireland for the past three years.

The winner is awarded €1,000 and is invited to attend the Leipzig Book Fair (usually held in March each year), including a place at the International Translators’ meeting organised by the Literary Colloquium Berlin.

The Goethe-Institut Award is now closed for submissions.

The 2025 Goethe-Institut Award shortlist

For a translation of an extract from Der Beste Tag Seit Langem by Jana Volkmann provided for translation with kind permission of publisher Residenz Verlag.

Nick Browne

Sarah Escritt

John Macmillan

Amanda Oliver

Sarah Rimmington

“This atmospheric text by the Austrian writer Jana Volkmann, complete with unreliable narrator and errant horse, attracted a very high standard of submissions. Inevitably, fifty-four translators produced fifty-four very different texts. Our sometimes-converging, sometimes-unified perspectives proved invaluable as we trawled through to create our shortlist. We also realised this: even if you have a checklist of what you want to see in a winning rendition, it’s often the intangibles that make one in particular stand out.”

— The 2025 Goethe-Institut Award judges

With thanks, the judges for the 2025 Goethe-Institut Award are:

Monique Charlesworth:

Monique Charlesworth is a publisher, novelist and editor, who has also worked as a journalist and scriptwriter. Half German, she studied languages and has lived in France and Germany. She has published four novels and a memoir. She founded Moth Books with the aim of connecting across borders, publishing strong women’s voices in translation.

Jamie Lee Searle:

Jamie Lee Searle is a literary translator and mentor. She translates German-language and Portuguese-language works into English for publishing houses in the UK and beyond. Her most recent publication is a translation of Kim de l’Horizon’s ‘Blood Book’, which won the German and Swiss national book prizes in 2022. Jamie is a co-founder of the UK Emerging Translators’ Network and a Royal Literary Fund Fellow, and previously lectured at Queen Mary University of London. She has held translation and writing residencies in Geneva, New York, and Vienna.

2023

Rob Myatt for a translation of Hund, Wolf, Schakal by Behzad Karim Khani (Hanser Berlin).

2020

Kay McBurney for a translation of an extract from Die Fahrt by Sibylle Berg (Penguin Verlag).

2018

Mandy Wight for a translation of an extract from Unterleuten by Juli Zeh (Random House).

2016

Imogen Taylor for a translation of an extract from Momente der Klarheit by Jackie Thomae (Hanser Berlin).

2014

Caroline Waight for a translation of an extract from Fliehkräfte by Stephan Thome (Suhrkamp).

2012

Katy Derbyshire for a translation of an extract from the novel Das Geschenk by Wolf Wondratschek (Hanser).

The runner-up for the 2012 award was Helen MacCormac.

2010

Samuel Pakucs Willcocks for a translation of an extract from the novel Du bist zu schnell by Zoran Drvenkar (Klett-Cotta).

The runner-up for the 2010 award was Jamie Lee Searle.

Goethe-Institut

The Goethe-Institut, Germany’s cultural institute, operates worldwide, promoting knowledge of the German language abroad and fostering international cultural collaborations. Our cultural and educational programmes offer an opportunity to engage with themes and questions relevant to contemporary German culture and society. Faced with the challenges of globalisation, we aim to strengthen intercultural dialogue and a global civil society.

Members' Area

Not a member?

Join the SoA