# PEN Translation Prize

The PEN Translation Prize (formerly known as the PEN/Book-of-the-Month Club Translation Prize through 2008) is an annual award given by PEN America (formerly PEN American Center) to outstanding translations into the English language. It has been presented annually by PEN America and the Book of the Month Club since 1963. It was the first award in the United States expressly for literary translators. A 1999 New York Times article called it "the Academy Award of Translation" and that the award is thus usually not given to younger translators.
The distinction comes with a cash prize of USD $3,000. Any book-length English translation published in the United States during the year in question is eligible, irrespective of the residence or nationality of either the translator or the original author.
The award is separate from the similar PEN Award for Poetry in Translation.
The PEN Translation Prize was called one of "the most prominent translation awards." The award is one of many PEN awards sponsored by International PEN affiliates in over 145 PEN centres around the world. The PEN American Center awards have been characterized as being among the "major" American literary prizes.

## Winners

PEN Translation Prize winners :
| Year | Translator | Author | Title | Language |
| 1963 | Archibald Colquhoun | Federico de Roberto | The Viceroys | Italian |
| 1964 | Ralph Manheim | Günter Grass | The Tin Drum | German |
| 1965 | Joseph Barnes | Konstantin Paustovsky | The Story of a Life | Russian |
| 1966 | Geoffrey Skelton and Adrian Mitchell | Peter Weiss | Marat/Sade | German |
| 1967 | Harriet de Onis | João Guimarães Rosa | Sagarana | Portuguese |
| 1968 | Vladimir Markov and Merrill Sparks (eds.) | | Modern Russian Poetry | Russian |
| 1969 | W. S. Merwin | | Selected Translations 1948-1968 | Various |
| 1970 | Sidney Alexander | Francesco Guicciardini | The History of Italy | Italian |
| 1971 | Max Hayward | Nadezhda Mandelstam | Hope Against Hope | Russian |
| 1972 | Richard Winston and Clara Winston | | Letters of Thomas Mann | German |
| 1973 | J. P. McCullough | | The Poems of Sextus Propertius | Latin |
| 1974 | Hardie St. Martin and Leonard Mades | José Donoso | The Obscene Bird of Night | Spanish |
| 1975 | Helen R. Lane | Juan Goytisolo | Count Julian | Spanish |
| 1976 | Richard Howard | E. M. Cioran | A Short History of Decay | French |
| 1977 | Gregory Rabassa | Gabriel García Márquez | The Autumn of the Patriarch | Spanish |
| 1979 | Adrienne Foulke | Leonardo Sciascia | One Way or Another | Italian |
| 1979 | Charles Wright | Eugenio Montale | The Storm and Other Poems | Italian |
| 1980 | Charles Simic | Vasko Popa | Homage to the Lame Wolf | Serbian |
| 1981 | John E. Woods | Arno Schmidt | Evening Edged in Gold | German |
| 1982 | Hiroaki Sato and Burton Watson | | From the Country of Eight Islands: An Anthology of Japanese Poetry | Japanese |
| 1983 | Richard Wilbur | Molière | Four Comedies: The Misanthrope, Tartuffe, The Learned Ladies, The School for Wives | French |
| 1984 | William Weaver | Umberto Eco | The Name of the Rose | Italian |
| 1985 (prose) | Helen R. Lane | Mario Vargas Llosa | The War of the End of the World | Spanish |
| 1985 (verse) | Seamus Heaney | | Sweeney Astray | Irish |
| 1986 (prose) | Barbara Bray | Marguerite Duras | The Lover | French |
| 1986 (verse) | Dennis Tedlock | | Popul Vuh: The Mayan Book of the Dawn of Life | Quiché |
| 1987 | John E. Woods | Patrick Süskind | Perfume: The Story of a Murderer | German |
| 1988 | Madeline Levine and Francine Prose | Ida Fink | A Scrap of Time | Polish |
| 1989 | Matthew Ward | Albert Camus | The Stranger | French |
| 1990 | William Weaver | Umberto Eco | Foucault's Pendulum | Italian |
| 1991 | Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky | Fyodor Dostoevsky | The Brothers Karamazov | Russian |
| 1992 | David Rosenberg | | A Poet's Bible | Hebrew |
| 1993 | Thomas Hoisington | Ignacy Krasicki | The Adventures of Mr. Nicholas Wisdom | Polish |
| 1994 | Bill Zavatsky and Zack Rogow | André Breton | Earthlight | French |
| 1995 | Burton Watson | | Selected Poems of Su Tung-p'o | Chinese |
| 1996 | Stanisław Barańczak and Clare Cavanagh | Wisława Szymborska | View With a Grain of Sand | Polish |
| 1997 | Arnold Pomerans | | The Letters of Vincent van Gogh | Dutch |
| 1998 | Peter Constantine | Thomas Mann | Six Early Stories | German |
| 1999 | Michael Hofmann | Joseph Roth | The Tale of the 1002nd Night | German |
| 2000 | Richard Sieburth | Gérard de Nerval | Selected Writings | French |
| 2001 | Tiina Nunnally | Sigrid Undset | The Cross | Norwegian |
| 2002 | Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky | Leo Tolstoy | Anna Karenina | Russian |
| 2003 | R. W. Flint | Cesare Pavese | The Moon and the Bonfires | Italian |
| 2004 | Margaret Sayers Peden | Antonio Muñoz Molina | Sepharad | Spanish |
| 2005 | Tim Wilkinson | Imre Kertész | Fatelessness | Hungarian |
| 2006 | Philip Gabriel | Haruki Murakami | Kafka on the Shore | Japanese |
| 2007 | Sandra Smith | Irène Némirovsky | Suite Française | French |
| 2008 | Margaret Jull Costa | Eça de Queirós | The Maias | Portuguese |
| 2009 | Natasha Wimmer | Roberto Bolaño | 2666 | Spanish |
| 2010 | Michael Henry Heim | Hugo Claus | Wonder | Dutch |
| 2011 | Ibrahim Muhawi | Mahmoud Darwish | Journal of an Ordinary Grief | Arabic |
| 2012 | Bill Johnston | Wiesław Myśliwski | Stone Upon Stone | Polish |
| 2013 | Donald O. White | Albert Vigoleis Thelen | The Island of Second Sight | German |
| 2014 | Joanne Turnbull and Nikolai Formozov | Sigizmund Krzhizhanovsky | Autobiography of a Corpse | Russian |
| 2015 | Denise Newman | Naja Marie Aidt | Baboon | Danish |
| 2016 | Katrina Dodson | Clarice Lispector | The Complete Stories | Portuguese |
| 2017 | Tess Lewis | Maja Haderlap | Angel of Oblivion | German |
| 2018 | Len Rix | Magda Szabó | Katalin Street | Hungarian |
| 2019 | Martin Aitken | Hanne Ørstavik | Love | Norwegian |
| 2020 | Allison Markin Powell | Hiromi Kawakami | The Ten Loves of Nishino | Japanese |
| 2021 | Emma Ramadan | Abdellah Taïa | A Country for Dying | French |
| 2022 | Julia Sanches | Mariana Oliver | Migratory Birds | Spanish |
| 2023 | Tiffany Tsao | Budi Darma | People from Bloomington | Indonesian |