Award-winning Catalan translation of poetry anthology by J. Sarrionandia

The Catalan Language Writers Association, AELC, awarded Ainara Munt Ojanguren the Rafel Jaume award for the best poetry translation for her translation into Catalan of Joseba Sarrionandia’s poetry anthology ¿Está muerta la poesía? (Is poetry dead?). Munt was awarded the prize on April 6^th as part of the Cavall Verd award ceremony held every year by the association in the Balearic Islands.

The Catalan Language Writers Association, AELC, awarded Ainara Munt Ojanguren the Rafel Jaume award for the best poetry translation for her translation into Catalan of Joseba Sarrionandia’s poetry anthology ¿Está muerta la poesía? (Is poetry dead?). Munt was awarded the prize on April 6^th as part of the Cavall Verd award ceremony held every year by the association in the Balearic Islands.

Joseba Sarrionandia is one of the most influential and prolific Basque authors of the 20^th and 21^st centuries. ¿Está muerta la poesía? was published in 2016. It includes 114 of his poems written between 1980 and 1995, selected and reordered by Sarrionandia, and translated into Spanish for the first time. The poems are presented in a bilingual format in Basque and Spanish. It also includes a prologue by the author himself.

Ainara Munt Ojanguren’s mother is Basque and her father Catalan. She has also translated several works by Sarrionandia, including the essay Moroak gara behelaino artean? (Are we Moors in the Fog?) and the prison diary Ni ez naiz hemengoa (I am not from here). On this occasion, Munt chose this poem anthology and translated it with the support from the Etxepare Basque Institute; this too is a bilingual edition, this time in Basque and Catalan. The AELC association awarded Munt “because of the quality of her translation, and for the added value of working with rarely translated languages and authors,” and highlighted “the use of verse and language that so powerfully convey sentiments and struggle. “

Every year the Etxepare Basque Institute provides subsidies to promote the translation of literature written in the Basque Country into other languages. In 2018, the Institute supported 15 translations of Basque works.