Montreal, October 4, 2018 — The Literary Translators’ Association of Canada (LTAC) announced the 34th John Glassco Literary Translation Prize winner on Saturday. Sauline Letendre was chosen from over 10 entries for Rouge, jaune et vert (Éditions Urubu), her French translation of Bolivian author Alejandro Saravia’s novel rojo, amarillo y verde.
The 2018 jury was comprised of Sonya Malaborza (Chair and LTAC vice-president, Atlantic), Jonathan Kaplansky, Benoit Léger and Elisabet Ràfols-Sagués, all LTAC members and professional translators. All were in agreement that selecting a winner among the three finalists was a difficult choice. In her translation of Nirliit, Juliana Léveillé-Trudel’s raw and personal account of the harsh social realities in the Inuit North, Anita Anand wields her pen with precision to “weave a measured account and a smooth narrative, capturing the author’s colloquial tone and conveying the sometimes gritty dialogue of the characters.” As Ocean Vuong’s translator into French of the majestic Night Sky with Exit Wounds, the enigmatic Marc Charron shows “true poetic mastery; many of his solutions are absolutely brilliant, and his verse follows that of his author’s with acrobatic prowess.”
For her first book-length translation, this year’s recipient of the John Glassco Prize, Sauline Letendre, took on “an exhilarating polyphonic and multifaceted text.” Her author, Alejandro Saravia, moves between various layers of time, engages in wordplay, and saturates his text with, at times, rather obscure cultural references: all challenges with which Sauline engages skilfully and impressively. Her translation takes readers where they need to go and demonstrates a great deal of creativity, reproducing her author’s feats of language in French. The result is an entrancing poetic narrative.
About the winner
Certified translator Sauline Letendre is a senior manager and reviser at a Montreal accounting firm. With twenty years of experience in the field of translation, she has specialized in financial translation all the while maintaining a link with the literary world. She has translated several texts for the Quebec periodical Ruptures, which publishes in French, English, Spanish and Portuguese, and has published translations in TransLit, the official journal of the Association of Translators and Interpreters of Alberta, and K1N, which is published by the School of Translation and Interpretation of the University of Ottawa. She has also participated in the editing of poetry anthologies by Alejandro Saravia, such as L’homme polyphonique (2014) and Cuarenta Momentos Chilenos (2013). Rouge, jaune et vert, published by Éditions Urubu in 2017, is her first translation of a novel.