The Susanna Roth Award is an annual competition for beginner translators up to 40 years of age organised by the Literary Section of the Arts and Theatre Institute and Czech Centres. Contestants must be citizens or permanent residents in one of the participating countries below the age of 40 and cannot have published a book translation in the language of the given country. Their task is to translate a piece of contemporary Czech prose which this year was an excerpt from Anna Bolavá’s Do tmy (Into Darkness).

The prize for the best translators was a trip to the Czech Republic which included the annual Bohemistics Seminar in Moravia and a translation workshop in Prague.

Winners at the workshop in Prague. Photo by Anna Pleslova.

The winner from the UK, Paddy Phillips, is a freelance editor, translator and teacher in Oxford. After studying Japanese studies he taught english in Tokyo and Brno and worked for nine years as a dictionary editor for Oxford University Press. Paddy has recently completed an MA translation course specialising in Czech to English translation at Bristol University. His translation can be downloaded here.

More details in Czech about the award and the winners can be found here.