MLA Award (Scaglione Prize for a Translation of a Scholarly Study of Literature )

I’m having a nostalgic moment here. Three years ago, I received an award for the best academic translation of a literary study into English. The committee’s citation made me blush, and today I’m blushing still when rereading it:

Victor Shklovsky: A Reader provides a brilliant and ambitious portrait of one of the most important literary and cultural theorists of the twentieth century. Covering a period that begins before the October Revolution and extends into the 1980s, the volume presents Shklovsky in his many guises: as a pathbreaking figure in Russian formalism, as a mentor to writers and artists in the years of socialist realism, as a wry chronicler of everyday life in the early Soviet Union, and as an innovative theorist of cinema. Alexandra Berlina’s translations are energetic, fluid, and fully alert to the intricacies of Shklovsky’s unique writing style. Her illuminating introduction and supplemental notes are themselves major scholarly contributions. ”

Just about the best thing a translator can ever hope to hear.:)

In other news, a collection of essays and poetry by Maria Stepanova has just been published, with several translations by yours truly. With rhyme and metre (or meter, if you’re American), despite all current trends.:)

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