Drahomán Prize

The Prize is awarded to translators who translate from Ukrainian into other languages. The Prize was founded in 2020 by the Ukrainian Institute, PEN Ukraine, and the Ukrainian Book Institute.

When?

since 2020

Where?

worldwide

Field

Literature

The first laureate
is the German translator
Claudia Dathe (2021)

The Prize aims to support and acknowledge the enlightening work of translators from Ukrainian into other languages, who bring Ukrainian literature to the world and thus draw the world’s attention to Ukraine through the works of Ukrainian authors. The Prize is awarded for excellence in translation, and contribution to the promotion of Ukrainian literature abroad.

The German translator Claudia Dathe was the first laureate of the Drahomán Prize. Claudia Dathe translates from Ukrainian into German. Also, she coordinates literary translation projects at the University of Tübingen.

Thanks to her, Serhiy Zhadan, Oleksandr Irvanets, Tanja Maljartschuk, Viktor Neborak, Maria Matios, Andriy Kurkov, Natalia Vorozhbyt and many more Ukrainian authors have a German voice.

For the Drahomán Prize, she was nominated with translations into German of Serhiy Zhadan’s poetry collection Antenna (Suhrkamp Publishing House) and Oleksiy Chupa’s novel Tales of My Bomb Shelter (Haymon Publishing House).

“It’s interesting and necessary to listen to others, listen to voices from different countries, from different cultures, with different historical backgrounds. To listen, to discuss, to look for understanding. Europe is a continent with many languages, cultures, countries; but, obviously, we cannot know all the languages, cannot immerse ourselves into all the details of historical background and memory. Clearly, the lack of access to languages and cultures deprives us of understanding and knowledge about others. So I decided to devote my energies to acquainting German society with the literature, culture, historical and contemporary development of Ukraine. In this manner I want to contribute to the multifaceted idea about Ukraine abroad.”

“It’s interesting to see how ever deeper she immerses into our Ukrainian context, how she discovers new layers of Ukrainian poetry and literature, discovers this world, and then translates it into the German language. It’s interesting to compare her works from the 2000s with current translations — a complex and exceptionally successful journey.”

Drahomán Prize in Literaturhaus Berlin (2022)

In 2022, the award ceremony was held abroad for the first time due to the full-scale Russian invasion and hosted by hosted by Literaturhaus Berlin. This was possible thanks to the cooperation between the Goethe-Institut and the Ukrainian Institute. The Federal Foreign Office provided funds from the 2022 supplementary budget as part of a comprehensive package of measures to mitigate the consequences of the Russian aggression against Ukraine.

Polish translator Bohdan Zadura received a statuette made by Ukrainian sculptor Anna Zvyagintseva, and a honorarium of 3 000 euros. He was nominated for the award with translations into Polish of Kateryna Babkina’s “My Grandfather Danced the Best” (Warsztaty Kultury publishing house), Vasyl Makhno’s “Eternal Calendar” (Państwowy Instytut Wydawniczy publishing house) and Yuri Vynnychuk’s “Lutencia” (Warstwy publishing house).

The Special Award of the Chapter “for the filigree translation of the classics of Ukrainian literary modernism and contribution to the promotion of Ukrainian literature in Europe” was awarded to Tobias Wals, a Ukrainian-to-Dutch translator who was nominated by Pegasus Publishers for his translation of the book by the Ukrainian writer Mike Johansen “Dr. Leonardo’s Journey to Sloboda Switzerland with his Future Lover, the Beautiful Alcesta”.