Charles Egan Wins Translation Prize for Clouds Thick, Whereabouts Unknown

Congratulations to Charles Egan, who recently was awarded the 2011 Lucien Stryk Asian Translation Prize from the American Literary Translators Association (ALTA) for Clouds Thick, Whereabouts Unknown: Poems by Zen Monks of China .

The jury for the Lucien Stryk Asian Translation Prize praised Clouds Thick, Whereabouts Unknown for “not only the high quality of its translations, which strive to keep a handsome formal ease even when observing in English the demands of syntactic parallelism, but also the considerable scholarship that Egan employs with admirable accessibility.”

In accepting the award, Egan said, “I am deeply grateful to ALTA for this award, as it is recognition from those who really understand how difficult translation can be, my fellow translators. Given the vast differences between the Chinese and English languages, and the literary traditions of East and West, composing translations that both work in English and are true to the original sources requires a delicate balancing act.”