The best of the best: translation awards

As part of the series “Translator in the museum: laurels and orders” we invite you to a meeting with Wojciech Charchalis, Julia Różewicz and Anna Wasilewska

Is it possible to compare and evaluate the translation of prose, poetry and drama? How to do this without knowing all the languages of the world? And how to communicate in a team whose members work every day with Portuguese, Czech, French, Italian or English, and have to choose the best text in Polish? Among other things, these questions will be answered by the guests of the November meeting in the series “Translator in the museum: laurels and orders”, who sit on the jury benches of translation awards awarded in Poland. The discussion will be a summary of this year's series of talks organized at the Mr. Tadeusz Museum.

The conversation with Wojciech Charchalis, Julia Różewicz and Anna Wasilewska will be conducted by Dobromiła Jankowska.

The meeting will be broadcast live and translated into Polish Sign Language Translated by Anna Morawska and Elżbieta Resler.

Guests

Wojciech Charchalis — researcher and translator of literature from the Portuguese and Spanish language areas. He has translated more than ninety books, including authors such as José Saramago, Fernando Pessoa, Mario Vargas Llosa, António Lobo Antunes, Javier Marías, Clarice Lispector and Antonio Muñoz Molina. Winner of the Wisława Szymborska Prize for the translation of Fernando Pessoa's poetry and the Cervantes Institute Prize in Warsaw for the translation of Juan Goytisolo's novel Makbar. Author of a new translation of Miguel Cervantes's Don Quixote. He is a professor at the Department of Portuguese Studies at the Institute of Romance Languages and Literatures of the Adam Mickiewicz University in Poznań. He was a juror of the Cervantes Institute Prize in Warsaw and the Award of the Mayor of the City of Gdańsk for Translation Works named after Tadeusz Boy-Żeleński.

Julia Różewicz — publisher and translator of Czech literature. A graduate of Bohemian Studies at the University of Wrocław, since 2010 she has been running the Afera publishing house specializing in the latest Czech literature, within the framework of which she introduced to the Polish market many authors not yet published in our country. She translates prose, crime stories and children's literature. Author of several dozen translations from contemporary Czech literature, winner of the 2014 “Literatura na Świecie” award in the category New Face, in 2018 nominated for the Gdynia Literary Award in the translation category. Promoter of Czech culture in Poland, jury member of literary and translation competitions (including the Czech State Prize for Literature, the Susan Roth Translation Competition, the Tadeusz Boy-Żeleński Prize for Translation Works, the Short Story Festival, the Competition for the Best Translation within the International Short Story Festival).

Anna Vasilevska — novelist (UW). In the years 1979-2024 she worked in the editorial office of Literatura na Świecie; since 1993 she headed the department of French and Italian literature. She has prepared or led a number of monographic issues dedicated to particular writers or literary phenomena. She has translated works by, among others, Italo Calvin, Tommas Landolfi, Albert Moravia, Umberto Eco, Daria Fo, Ugo Betti, Eduard de Filippo, Andrea Camilleri, Carl Emilio Gaddy, Natalia Ginzburg, Georges Perec, Raymond Queneau, Maurice Blanchot, Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, Jacques Derrida, Jean Genet, Jean Echenoz, Michel Leiris, Jan Potocki, Albert Camus, Louis-Ferdinand Céline. He also writes critical texts. She published the volume From Potocki to Perec. Five Conversations on French Literature. He chairs the chapter of the Tadeusz Boy-Żeleński Award of the President of Gdańsk for Translation Creativity. For the translation of Jan Potocki's Manuscript found in Zaragoza, she was awarded the Gdynia Literary Prize. He lives in Warsaw.

More about the cycle

The series “Translator in the Museum” has been operating in the Museum of Mr. Tadeusz (Branch of the Ossolinski National Institute) in Wrocław since 2022, but translation meetings have already been held here regularly. In 2024 and 2025, the program was implemented thanks to a grant from MKiDN (“Promotion of Reading”). In 2026, in the series “Laurels and Orders” we will present to the recipients the nominees and winners (not necessarily the most famous ones) of translation awards, which in recent years have become as important as the author's awards — we plan to talk about careers, the impact of the distinction on everyday work and the specifics of working in a specific language. The project is organized in partnership with the Association of Literary Translators.

Date: March—November 2026

See also

The series is organized in cooperation with the Association of Literary Translators.

Co-financed from the funds of the Minister of Culture and National Heritage from the Fund for the Promotion of Culture — a state special purpose fund.

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