The Kunststiftung NRW – Foundation for Art and Culture NRW – awards for the fourth time the ÜBERSETZERPREIS DER KUNSTSTIFTUNG NRW – TRANSLATOR PRIZE OF THE FOUNDATION FOR ART AND CULTURE NRW - which is with € 25 000 one of the most highly endowed prizes for literary translators in the German-speaking region. This year's award recognizes an outstanding literary translation from Italian into German. Barbara Kleiner receives the prize for her translation of Ippolito Nievo's work Bekenntnisse eines Italieners (Manesse Verlag, 2005); at the same time, the award acknowledges the translator's complete works.

Jury Statement

To convey many different voices is a challenge numerous translators face. Barbara Kleiner resolves this in an impressive fashion. Her new, for the first time complete, translation of the classic nineteenth-century novel "Bekenntnisse eines Italieners" by Ippolito Nievo differentiates brilliantly between love story and political essay, between travel narrative and a panorama of the times. What Nievo says of one of his protagonists is also true of this translation: It is "so lively, so charming and many-sided that one listens with a rare pleasure". 

The jury included

Gertraude Krueger, Denis Scheck, Hubert Spiegel, Peter Urban-Halle; Giovanna Waeckerlin-Induni.

Further information

In cooperation with the EUK Straelen the