The submission deadline for the Walter G. Andrews OTTA prize has been extended to Saturday, July 30, 2022.
Description:
AATT is pleased to announce the Walter G. Andrews Ottoman Turkish Translation competition for the two best translations of an Ottoman archival/historical or literary work into English. A prize of $250 will be awarded to a graduate or undergraduate student who has taken one or two semesters of Ottoman Turkish in 2021-2022 or participated in an Ottoman Turkish summer program and who has submitted the most successful portfolio. A second prize of $250 will be awarded to a graduate or undergraduate student who has taken three or more semesters/summer programs of Ottoman Turkish and will compete in an advanced proficiency level.
Conditions of Entry:
- Applicants must currently be enrolled in a degree program at an institution of a higher education in North America. Graduate students, undergraduates are all welcome to participate.
- Applicants must be non-native speakers of Turkish, i.e. high school and/or university graduates in Turkey, Azerbaijan or a Turkish-language university elsewhere are not eligible. Heritage speakers whose formal education has occurred in North America are welcome to compete.
Rules of Submission:
- The translation must be from Ottoman Turkish into English. Works from any genre and period, including printed texts and handwritten archival materials, will be considered.
- Translations and transcriptions must be the original work of the applicant only and not a copy or substantial copy of someone else’s translation. It must not have been previously published (including on social media), and not have been submitted as coursework.
Only one submission per entrant is allowed for each iteration of the award, and each project should be submitted only once and may not be resubmitted in subsequent years.
Portfolio for submission should consist of:
Original Ottoman text,
transcription into modern Turkish alphabet,
translation into English,
critical reflection,
signed entry form,
and must be sent for competition in both electronically (in .pdf format) and hard copy.
• AATTsecretariat@gmail.com • Dr. Nilüfer Hatemi
Princeton University
Department of NES
110 Jones Hall
Princeton, NJ 08544
- The competitor’s name must not appear anywhere except for the entry form.
- The length of the original Ottoman source should not exceed 500 words; longer submissions will not be considered.
- The critical reflection of no more than 300 words should explain why the particular Ottoman text was chosen, what principles were employed in the translation, briefly covering issues encountered (formal/stylistic features, cultural- or period-specific challenges, consideration of audience) and the competitor’s priorities.
- The translation, transcription and critical reflection should be typed with 12-point font (Times, Times New Roman, Calibri, Cambria) double-spaced lines, and printed on one side only of standard letter-size paper.
The submission deadline for the Walter G. Andrews OTTA prize is Saturday, July 30, 2022.
The Award Committee:
- The Walter G. Andrews Ottoman Turkish Translation Award will be administered by the AATT Executive Board. The entries will be judged by a panel of academicians and experts in the field comprising the Award Committee.
- The Award Committee will consist of five eligible members.
- The selection of eligible members is directly connected to the need for representation of all genres and periods on the committee.
- At the end of each competition, at least one committee member will be rotating off and replaced. No committee member may serve for more than six consecutive terms.
- Appointment of the Award Committee takes place at the AATT Board Meeting in January. The President of the AATT will ask members of the Board to appoint a committee chair and make suggestions for five members to the committee, with disciplinary representation as a basis for their selection.
- The chair will organize and facilitate the award committee’s work but will not take part in the evaluation process. Members of the Award Committee must review its procedures and decide an appropriate timetable for its work.
Selection Process:
It is an impossible task to establish rigid criteria for translations from Ottoman Turkish language. Translation is interpretation. It is an active reading turned into an intimate articulation, in which the reader of the source text becomes the writer of the translation. The rhetorical style, the degree of difficulty of the original/source work, the period and genre in which it was produced, or simply whether it was printed or handwritten, are all factors weighing heavily, but the committee will primarily evaluate:
a) fidelity to the original (when necessary, the translator can provide notes/footnotes),
b) command of both languages, and
c) importance of the work as a representative sample to be introduced to an English audience.
- The submissions will be judged anonymously and undergo blind review. Except for the Entry Form, the content of the submitted portfolio must not reveal the translator’s name.
- The Award Committee will evaluate the submissions and the results of each committee member will reflect a rank-ordering of the submissions.
- Once a decision has been made, the chairperson will announce the winner of the competition to the AATT Board.
- All entrants will be notified in writing by the Award Committee.
- The decision will be final, and the committee will not enter into any correspondence about the results.
Prize:
- The AATT Board reserves the right not to award the prize if the Award Committee does not find the submitted translations prizeworthy.
- The Walter G. Andrews prize will be announced at the AATT and OTSA Annual Business meetings.
- The winner(s) will receive a cash prize of $250. The award will be mailed by the AATT Treasurer to the winner.
- The copyright of the winner translation will remain with the translator but AATT will have the right to publish an excerpt from it on its website and/or publish it in AATT’s newsletter.
Award Committee:
- Professor M. Şükrü Hanioğlu (Princeton University)
- Professor Benjamin C. Fortna (University of Arizona)
- Professor Selim Sırrı Kuru [University of Washington]
- Dr. Beyza Lorenz (UCLA)
- Dr. Gregory Key (Binghamton University)
Past Winners:
Download file: WGAA-applicant-Morgan-Tufan-f4-dem.pdf
Published: Sunday, May 4, 2014
