{"id":142856,"date":"2026-10-26T11:08:43","date_gmt":"2026-10-26T10:08:43","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/cultureelpersbureau.nl\/?p=142856"},"modified":"2026-10-26T11:08:43","modified_gmt":"2026-10-26T10:08:43","slug":"maarten-liebregts-wint-charlotte-kohler-stipendium-2026","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/cultureelpersbureau.nl\/en\/2026\/10\/maarten-liebregts-wint-charlotte-kohler-stipendium-2026\/","title":{"rendered":"Maarten Liebregts wins the 2026 Charlotte K\u00f6hler Scholarship"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Charlotte K\u00f6hler 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\u2019 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.<\/strong><\/p>\n

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 Ry\u016bnosuke Akutagawa. In particular, the jury praised Maarten\u2019s impressive translation Sky<\/em> by Mieko Kawakami. \u201cThe tone of teenage conversations and the deeper observations about what people do to one another, and the arbitrariness involved, are rendered in Maarten\u2019s Dutch with precisely the right equivalents, ensuring that all the nuances Kawakami incorporated into her novel retain their expressive power for the Dutch reader.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u2018A confidence boost\u2019<\/h2>\n

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<\/em> by Toshikazu Kawaguchi. Liebregts describes being awarded the Charlotte K\u00f6hler Scholarship as an honour. \u201cAs 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.\u201d<\/p>\n

Presentation of the Charlotte K\u00f6hler Scholarship to Maarten Liebregts<\/h2>\n