The Charlotte Köhler Scholarship, an incentive award for literary talent, goes this year to Maarten Liebregts, a translator of Japanese literature. The jury praises both the diversity of Liebregts’ translations and his remarkable talent for rendering natural conversations in Japanese just as naturally in Dutch. The award ceremony will take place on 11 December 2026 at the Splendor music venue in Amsterdam.
The Stipendium is awarded each year to a literary representative from a different field. This year, it goes to a translator of literature from Korean, Japanese or Chinese. According to the jury, comprising Silvia Marijnissen, Ivo Smits and Remco Breuker, Liebregts has spent the past six years building up a magnificent body of work in Dutch by leading Japanese authors, notably Mieko Kawakami, Banana Yoshimoto, Emi Yagi and Ryūnosuke Akutagawa. In particular, the jury praised Maarten’s impressive translation Sky by Mieko Kawakami. “The tone of teenage conversations and the deeper observations about what people do to one another, and the arbitrariness involved, are rendered in Maarten’s Dutch with precisely the right equivalents, ensuring that all the nuances Kawakami incorporated into her novel retain their expressive power for the Dutch reader.”
‘A confidence boost’
Maarten Liebregts (1984) studied Japanese Languages and Cultures at Leiden University and Nagasaki University. During an internship at the Dutch Embassy in Tokyo, he gained experience in translation work. After completing various courses in literary translation, his first novel translation was published in 2020 Before the coffee goes cold by Toshikazu Kawaguchi. Liebregts describes being awarded the Charlotte Köhler Scholarship as an honour. “As a translator, finding the right tone is always a real challenge; winning this prize therefore gives my self-confidence a huge boost. I count myself lucky to be able to translate all these wonderful titles and hope that many more will come my way.”
Presentation of the Charlotte Köhler Scholarship to Maarten Liebregts
- Friday 11 December 2026
- 3.30 pm, doors open at 3.00 pm
- Splendor, Nieuwe Uilenburgerstaat 116, Amsterdam
About the stipend
The Charlotte Köhler Scholarship is an incentive grant of €5,000 and is awarded annually to an author or translator who has had works published in the past five years. Each year, a different genre is eligible: literary translation (2026), prose (2027), poetry (2028) or drama (2029). Grants and prizes are funded by legacies and donations. The Authors’ Union has entrusted the management of the fund and the awarding of the prizes to the Author Prizes Foundation. You’ll also find more information about the Charlotte Köhler Scholarship there.
Nederlands 
English (UK) 
Français 