The American-Scandinavian Foundation has announced the winners of its 37th annual Translation Competition for outstanding translations of poetry, fiction, drama or literary prose written by a Scandinavian author born after 1900. The 2016 winners are Barbara Sjoholm of Port Townsend, WA and Kara Billey Thordarson of Alberta, Canada. Ms. Sjoholm received the Nadia Christensen Prize for her translation of an excerpt from Rydde ut by Norwegian author Helene Uri (b. 1964). Ms. Thordarson received the Leif and Inger Sjöberg Prize for her translation of Stormvidörun by Icelandic author Kristín Svava Tómasdóttir (b. 1985).
The 2015 winner of the Leif and Inger Sjöberg Prize was STiNA member Marcus Bror Cederström for his translation of Regn och åska [Rain and Thunder] by Swedish author Håkan Lindquist. The jury commented that “The language of the translation is fluid and natural, and the translator captures well the many emotional layers of the original.” The 2015 Nadia Christensen Prize went to Philip Roughton for his translation of an excerpt from Gerpla by Nobel Prize-winning Icelandic author Halldór Kiljan Laxness (1902-1998).