Winner of Emerging Translator Prize 2022 announced

The competition run by Comma Press partnered with Bristol Translates! Summer School and this year specialised in Chinese.

Hosted in partnership with Bristol Translates! Summer School and the University of Bristol, this annual translation competition is aimed at emerging translators looking for their first publishing opportunity.

This week Comma Press announced that the winner of this year's prize was Florence Taylor, a recent graduate from The University of Bristol.

Each year, one language is selected and students from the Summer School with a specialism in that language, submit a short translation sample.

The winner and runners up get to translate a full story for a forthcoming Comma Press project, and (in some cases) see their first paid, literary translation in print.

The winner also benefits from editorial support and feedback from an in-house editor, as well as seeing their work appear alongside established literary translators.

Florence Taylor has won first prize, followed by Hongyu Jasmine Zhu and Alison Sharpless in second and third place respectively, with a Special Commendation for both Camille Byrne and Qing Lu.

The winner and two runners-up will translate new stories for Comma's forthcoming The Book of Beijing, edited by Bingbing Shi.

Amanda Hopkinson, co-director of the summer school said: "Bristol Translates is delighted, once again, to partner with Comma Press in selecting the translator for their next short story anthology. We are delighted to announce that Florence, Hongyu and Alison have been selected for the forthcoming Book of Beijing."

"It was a difficult final decision, drawing on a short list of 5 excellent Chinese translators, and we are confident that The Book of Beijing will enjoy success equal to that of its predecessor, The Book of Shanghai."

The Book of Beijing will be published by Comma Press in early 2023.