Filter Translation Prize 2022, the nominations: A wide & utterly surprising choice

Various continents, at least three world languages and some seven centuries cover the unexpected nominations for the Filter Translation Prize 2022, which will be awarded on 28 September during the International Literature Festival Utrecht (ILFU).
They are all striking and exceptional achievements, according to the jury, which also scoured the world for scents and forgotten languages. And it all hangs together, too.
There is an eighteenth-century Chinese novel written in a monastery in the Fragrant Mountains. It comes with an ultimate guide to everything we can smell. An equally sensory journey is presented to us in a book translated from Ripuarian and Middle Dutch: the female protagonist is kidnapped and ends up at court in Constantinople.
About fleeing and ending up elsewhere is also a book that draws a line between Iraq and Finland. In an intriguing autobiographical novel, an extraordinary woman explores memory and the deeper layers of Italian - and all in Dutch, which just has to cope with all those smells, languages and cultures.
In all five nominated translations, the miracle of translation has taken place superbly.

The nominations
The seven translators nominated and their five translations are:

• Ingrid Biesheuvel for Roman of Heinric and Margriete Limborch(Athenaeum - Polak & Van Gennep)
• Jan van der Haar for There in the square is no one By Dolores Prato (De Arbeiderspers)
• Anne Sytske Keijser, Mark Leenhouts and Silvia Marijnissen for The dream of the red room By Cao Xueqin (Athenaeum - Polak & Van Gennep)
• Jacques Meerman for The scents of the world by Harold McGee (New Amsterdam)
• Djûke Poppinga for Allah 99 By Hassan Blasim (Publisher Jurgen Maas)

The prize money
The prize money amounts to EUR 10,000 and was made available by the GAU (Group of General Publishers). The GAU thus expresses the importance it attaches to good translations and translators. The Filter Translation Prize is awarded during the ILFU by the Filter Foundation and rewards the creativity of the translator in solving translation problems arising from the unique, special nature of the work to be translated.

The jury
The jury of the Filter Translation Prize 2022 consists of Bas Belleman (poet, journalist and laureate of the prize in 2021), Hans Bouman (critic at de Volkskrant), Carlijn Brouwer (translator and literature buyer in the bookstore), Christiane Kuby (translator and laureate of the Martinus Nijhoff translation prize, editor of Filter) and Caroline Meijer (translator, Filter Foundation board member). A detailed argumentation of the nominations will be available in the new Filter to be published by AFdH Publishers at the end of June, and thereafter at www.tijdschrift-filter.nl and on www.ilfu.com, the ILFU's site.

The ceremony
The winner will be announced live on Wednesday 28 September 2022 at TivoliVredenburg in Utrecht during ILFU. The rest of the festival, which will last from 23 September to 8 October, will also include the NK Poetry Slam, Utrecht Book Market and the 39th Night of Poetry.
ilfu.com/festival