German literature comprises those literary texts written in the German language. This includes literature written in Germany, Austria, the German parts of Switzerland and Belgium, Liechtenstein, South Tyrol in Italy and to a lesser extent works of the German diaspora. German literature of the modern period is mostly in Standard German, but there are some currents of literature influenced to a greater or lesser degree by dialects.
Ralph Frederick Manheim was an American translator of German and French literature, as well as occasional works from Dutch, Polish and Hungarian. He was one of most acclaimed translators of the 20th century, and likened translation to acting, the role being "to impersonate his author".
John Edwin Woods is a translator who specializes in translating German literature, since about 1978. His work includes much of the fictional prose of Arno Schmidt and the works of contemporary authors such as Ingo Schulze and Christoph Ransmayr. He also translated all the major novels of Thomas Mann, as well as works by many other writers. Woods lives in Berlin.
The Heinrich Mann Prize is an essay prize that has been awarded since 1953, first by the East German Academy of Arts, then by the Academy of Arts, Berlin. The prize, which comes with a €8,000 purse, is given annually on 27 March, Heinrich Mann's day of birth. The laureate is selected by an independent three-member jury which usually includes the previous year's laureate.
Michael Hofmann is a German-born poet who writes in English and a translator of texts from German.
Anthea Bell was an English translator of literary works, including children's literature, from French, German and Danish. These include The Castle by Franz Kafka Austerlitz by W. G. Sebald, the Inkworld trilogy by Cornelia Funke and the French Asterix comics along with co-translator Derek Hockridge.
Peter Constantine is a British and American literary translator who has translated literary works from German, Russian, French, Modern Greek, Ancient Greek, Italian, Albanian, Dutch, and Slovene.
Michael Henry Heim was a Professor of Slavic Languages at the University of California at Los Angeles (UCLA). He was an active and prolific translator, and was fluent in Czech, Russian, Serbo-Croatian, Hungarian, Romanian, French, Italian, German, and Dutch. He died on September 29, 2012, of complications from melanoma.
The Helen and Kurt Wolff Translator's Prize is an annual literary prize "honoring an outstanding literary translation from German into English" published in the USA the previous year.
The Schiller Memorial Prize is a literature prize of the State of Baden-Württemberg. It is endowed with 25,000 euros and has been awarded since 1955 on Friedrich Schiller's birthday, 10 November. The prize acknowledges outstanding work in the field of German literature or intellectual history, for single works or collected works. At the same time, there are also two lesser prizes with 7,500 euros awarded for young dramatists.
Großer Literaturpreis der Bayerischen Akademie der Schönen Künste was a Bavarian literary prize by the Bayerische Akademie der Schönen Künste. In 2010, it merged with the Thomas Mann Prize.
Leila Vennewitz was a Canadian-English translator of German literature. She was born Leila Croot in Hampshire, England and grew up in Portsmouth. Her brother was the surgeon Sir John Croot.
The Schlegel-Tieck Prize for German Translation is a literary translation prize given by the Society of Authors in London. It is named for August Wilhelm Schlegel and Ludwig Tieck who translated Shakespeare to German in the 19th century. Translations from the German original into English are considered for the prize. The value of the prize is £3,000.
John Maxwell Brownjohn was a British literary translator. He translated more than 160 books, and won the Schlegel-Tieck Prize for German translation three times and the Helen and Kurt Wolff Prize once. He also collaborated with the filmmaker Roman Polanski on Tess (1979), Pirates (1986), Bitter Moon (1992), The Ninth Gate (1999) and The Pianist (2002).
Philip Boehm is an American playwright, theater director and literary translator. Born in Texas, he was educated at Wesleyan University, Washington University in St. Louis, and the State Academy of Theater in Warsaw, Poland.
Ross Benjamin is an American translator of German literature and a 2015 Guggenheim Fellow. He has won the Helen and Kurt Wolff Translator's Prize for Michael Maar's Speak, Nabokov and received a commendation from the judges of the Schlegel-Tieck Prize for Thomas Pletzinger's Funeral for a Dog. He is a graduate of Vassar College and a former Fulbright scholar.
Damion Searls is an American writer and translator. He grew up in New York and studied at Harvard University and the University of California, Berkeley. He specializes in translating literary works from Western European languages such as German, Norwegian, French, and Dutch. Among the authors he has translated are Marcel Proust, Rainer Maria Rilke, Robert Walser, Ingeborg Bachmann, Thomas Bernhard, Kurt Schwitters, Peter Handke, Jon Fosse, and Nescio. He has received numerous grants and fellowships for his translations.
Susan Bernofsky is an American translator of German-language literature. She is best known for bringing the Swiss writer Robert Walser to the attention of the English-speaking world. She has also translated several books by Jenny Erpenbeck. Her prizes for translation include the 2006 Helen and Kurt Wolff Translation Prize, the 2015 Oxford-Weidenfeld Translation Prize, the 2015 Independent Foreign Fiction Prize, and the 2015 Schlegel-Tieck Prize. She was also selected for a Guggenheim Fellowship in 2014. In 2017 she won the Warwick Prize for Women in Translation for her translation of Memoirs of a Polar Bear by Yoko Tawada. In 2018 she was awarded the MLA's Lois Roth Award for her translation of Go, Went, Gone by Jenny Erpenbeck.
Shelley Laura Frisch is an award-winning American literary translator from German to English. She is best known for her translations of biographies, most notably of Kafka, Nietzsche, Einstein, Leonardo da Vinci, and Marlene Dietrich/Leni Riefenstahl.
