Andrew Rule Wins Emerging Translator Prize

Comma Press are pleased to announce translator Andrew Rule as the winner of the Emerging Translator Prize 2026. 

The submissions for the Emerging Translator Prize 2026 were all of a fantastically high standard and it was almost impossible to tell the top three submissions apart. A massive congratulations to runners up Christoph Zhang and Eileen Holland.

Winner Andrew Rule will be translating a story by Zhao Haihong for Comma Press’ upcoming title China + 100, an anthology of Chinese science and speculative fiction set a century after the outbreak of COVID-19, edited by Xueting Li and scheduled for publication this Summer.

“I'm honoured to have been selected as the winner of this competition, and I'm so glad that I'll get to finish translating the Zhao Haihong story for the China + 100 anthology. I've been reading all of Comma Press's China anthologies since I was in college, not to mention Xueting's Sinopticon and Sinophagia anthologies, so this is a thrill for me.” – Andrew Rule

Held in partnership with Oxford Translates Summer School, after 5 years with the university of Bristol, this annual competition is aimed at early-career translators. Each year, one language is selected – in this case Chinese - and students from the Summer School with a specialism in that language submit a short translation sample.

“We were blown away by the quality of translations submitted to this year’s prize, with Andrew, Christoph and Eileen’s work standing out especially. We’re delighted that Andrew will be able to continue his work on Zhao Haihong’s story for China + 100, and will be looking out for Christoph and Eileen’s work when it inevitably hits bookshelves.” – Ra Page

Andrew Rule is an editor & Chinese-to-English translator from the United States, currently based in Beijing. The winner of the 2023 Bai Meigui Translation Competition, he has translated literary works by Hung Ai-chu, Sabrina Huang, & Liang Hong. Since 2024, he has written the Cold Window Newsletter, a resource for publishers & translators about new Chinese fiction. Andrew is the Operations Manager of Paper Republic, a UK-based translation charity founded in 2007.

Christoph Zhang is a literary translator and attorney based in New York City. He translates contemporary fiction and poetry from Chinese into English.

Eileen Holland holds an MA in translation and has worked as an in-house and freelance translator for various government, non-government and international organizations. She translates from Chinese, Dutch and French into English and is currently participating in the Dutch Centre of Expertise for Literary Translation’s 2026 mentorship program for emerging literary translators.

China + 100 (Ed. Xueting Li) Publishing Summer 2026

China + 100 poses a simple question to ten leading Chinese science fiction writers: what might China look like in the year 2119 – a century after the outbreak of Covid-19. Exploring everything from big tech, class warfare, transhumanism, government infringements on personal freedoms, and global security, these stories ask all the difficult questions: will China and the world have learned from the lessons of the Covid-19 pandemic, and be prepared for even greater health threats in the future, or will new, man-made dangers have emerged?