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Special prize of the 29th Japanese-French Translated Literature Award
- Michel VIEILLARD-BARON
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Honorable mention of the 29th Japanese-French Translated Literature Award
- Arthur DEFRANCE
HATA Kôichirô
Winning Work
”The Manuscript Found in Saragossa,
3 vol.”
Jan Potocki, Iwanami Shoten, 2022-2023
Known as a remarkable novel, Jan Potocki’s “The Saragossa Manuscript” is one of the works for which a complete Japanese translation has long been awaited. The original novel has great value as a work of art, and as it is extremely significant that it has now been translated, it was the impression of all the members of the Selection Committee that we should first congratulate this book for being published in such a complete form. In terms of translation, the so-called “frame-tale” structure makes it difficult to follow the story, but we would like to highly commend Mr. Hata’s extremely natural translation into Japanese of the multilayered nature of “The Saragossa Manuscript”, its encyclopedic aspects, and its novelistic world of villainy. The story and the fascinating narration, which are reminiscent of Hugo’s “Les Misérables” and “One Thousand and One Nights”, are developed without losing the rhythmic sense of the dynamic original, and each individual story is translated in an appropriate manner. The translator's extraordinary ability was evident in the way he was able to keep readers hooked on reading this three-volume, nearly 1,000-page translation. The maps and charts in the appendices and the translator's commentaries attached to each volume are also very thorough, and brilliantly explain how the Polish-born Potocki conceived the idea of a grand story that spans Spain, Italy, Germany, and the New Continent. In line with the above, the members of the Selection Committee agreed that Mr. Hata’s translation was highly commendable in terms of its quality, its literary nature, and its impact on the contemporary Japanese reading public. Accordingly, the Konishi Foundation has decided to award the 29th Japanese-French Translated Literature Award to Koichiro Hata's translation of Jan Potocki's “The Saragossa Manuscript” (Iwanami Shoten, 2022 - 2023).
The value of this book has already been described, but if one of the missions of this literary award is to honor young and established translators who unearth works that are genuinely enjoyable to read, take the time to translate them, and devote themselves to bringing quality translations to the reading public, the Selection Committee believes that we have been able to fully fulfill this mission.
Michel VIEILLARD-BARON
Winning Work
”Kokin waka shû. Japanese collection of poems past and present”
Les Belles Lettres, 2022
The French Selection Committee has decided to award the 29th Japanese-French Translated Literature Special Award to “Kokin waka shû. Recueil de poèmes japonais d’hier et d’aujourd’hui” (2022), translated by Michel Vieillard-Baron.
This translation, which is of extremely high quality, is the first French translation of the Kokin Wakashū, a masterpiece of classical Japanese poetry and a very important anthology of the early 10th century. It consists of 514 pages, 1111 waka poems by about 100 poets (about 30 of them female court poets), and two prefaces (in Japanese and Chinese). It also contains scholarly introductions to the poems and numerous explanatory footnotes.
This translation, which combines accuracy and elegance, is outstanding in terms of both quantity and quality, and is a task that requires years of thorough translation work and exceptional talent in the field of classical poetry. The accomplishment of such a project requires tireless commitment. For these reasons, the Selection Committee is pleased to award the Special Prize to the translator Mr. Vieillard-Baron, Professor at the French National Institute for Oriental Languages and Civilizations, as a token of gratitude for his invaluable contribution in introducing the foundational works of Japanese culture in the classical period to French-speaking readers for the first time.
Arthur DEFRANCE
Winning Work
”The Imperialism of Liberty. Another look at America”
NISHITANI Osamu, Seuil, 2022
The French Selection Committee has decided to award the 29th Japanese-French Translated Literature Encouragement Award to “NISHITANI Osamu, L’Impérialisme de la liberté. Un autre regard sur l’Amérique, Seuil” (2022), translated by Arthur Defrance.
This work is an excellent, fluent, and accurate translation of a recent, original essay on political history developed by Japanese intellectuals on multidisciplinary American history (“America: An Atypical Institutional Space”, published in 2016). Both the empirical information and the ideological critique of politics are perfectly translated. It is also clear that the translator himself has mastered academic language, style, and terminology, and the Selection Committee highly commends him for producing a translation that is very readable in its entirety. Mr. Defrance is a young university faculty member and an expert in the history of classical Japanese culture.