It is often forgotten how important translators are for the popularity and readability of works by foreign authors

On Monday, in a peculiar awards ceremony in London, six prizes were handed out for literary translation into English. Representing six languages, the prizes were mostly sponsored by the governments of the source-language countries or related institutions. Some of the awards were already well-established. But this year, in addition to awards for translations from French, German, Spanish, Greek and Dutch, a prize for translation from Russian was awarded for the first time. The winner was Oliver Ready, a former arts editor of The Moscow Times, for his work on Yuri Buida's "The Prussian Bride" (Prusskaya Nevesta).

The Rossica Translation Prize was established by Academia Rossica, a London-based nonprofit that promotes Russian culture worldwide. The prize, worth ?1,500 for the translator and ?500 for the publisher, was sponsored by a Moscow-based foundation named after former President Boris Yeltsin. Three judges drew up a shortlist of six books published between 2000 and 2004, ranging from contemporary works to venerable classics such as Nikolai Gogol's "Dead Souls" -- whose translator, Robert Maguire, died not long before the ceremony. Incidentally, this new translation of Gogol, published by Penguin, featured on its cover Viktor Vasnetsov's 1876 painting "Moving House," which has utterly nothing to do with Gogol's novel. But this is typical of paperback English-language editions of Russian classics: It often seems that anything remotely Slavic is OK for the cover of any book.

"The Prussian Bride" is a collection of short stories set in Buida's native Kaliningrad region, whose capital was formerly K?nigsberg, the capital of East Prussia. The collection centers on the town of Znamensk, formerly Welau, and its deranged, lost and crazy inhabitants. It is the second of Buida's books translated by Ready -- the first was "The Zero Train," published in English in 2001 and praised by The Times Literary Supplement for the translator's "sure hand."

It is often forgotten how important translators are for the popularity of works by foreign authors. Russian translations of Ernest Hemingway, J.D. Salinger and Graham Greene were perhaps the strongest stylistic influence on Russian prose of the 1960s. Constance Garnett, with her translations of Tolstoy, Dostoevsky, Pushkin and Chekhov, did more than anyone before or since to popularize Russian literature in the English-speaking world. It is good to know that these traditions are being preserved -- and it is even better to know that a Russian foundation is sponsoring this all-important effort.

From the Moscow Times Context