ABSTRACT
The field of eligible books published during 2006 had of course been far larger, and was also wider-ranging, for the Oxford-Weidenfeld Translation Prize is for Englishings of prose fiction, poetry, and drama from all living European languages. The language of the translation has a very strong French accent, really at the boundary of what is tolerable in English; but the feeling of the text being at one with the landscape helped turn this into a pleasure because the landscape is itself so very French. Judges are to consider 'the quality of the translation, the importance of the original work and the value of its being put into English'. The quality of the translation is perhaps the paramount criterion — after all, the prize money goes to the translator — but this should be judged primarily not by measuring translation against source but by gauging the strength of the English writing that has been done on behalf of the original.
