The Queen Sofía Spanish Institute in New York City has awarded Edith Grossman—translator of works by Miguel de Cervantes, Gabriel García Márques, and Mario Vargas Llosa, among other Latin American and Spanish authors—its first ever translation prize. Grossman will receive the inaugural ten-thousand-dollar prize in honor of A Manuscript of Ashes (Houghton-Mifflin Harcourt, 2008), her translation of Antonio Muñoz Molina's 1986 novel Beatus Ille.
The 2010 award set out to recognize an English-language fiction translation published between 2006 and 2008 by a U.S. publisher and written in Castilian by a Spanish author. The next prize is expected to be awarded in 2012, and then again in 2015.
Prior to presentation of the prize on February 2, the Queen Sofía Spanish Institute will host a conversation between Grossman and Muñoz Molina at 6 PM. Information is available on the organization's Web site.
In the video below, Grossman discusses the importance of the translator at an event sponsored by Words Without Borders. Several other videos from this presentation are also posted on YouTube.