Congratulations to Carlos Marrodán Casas and Mateusz Kwaterko – winners of this year’s Tadeusz Boy-Żeleński Translation Award!

Carlos Marrodán Casas, eminent translator and promoter of Spanish-language literatures, and academic lecturer who has trained an entire generation of translators, has been awarded the Tadeusz Boy-Żeleński Translation Award for lifetime achievement by the Mayor of Gdańsk. Mateusz Kwaterko, in turn, received the award for translating a book published between 2022 and 2024, for his translation of the prose and reportage collection Caprices et zigzags by the French Romantic author Théophile Gautier. On the evening of 25 April, during a ceremony held on the Main Stage of the Wybrzeże Theatre, the statuettes were presented to the laureates by Aleksandra Dulkiewicz, Mayor of Gdańsk.

Without translation, literature loses its life-giving flow of energy, its scope impoverished into self-reference, its possibilities confined within closed borders. Literary translations not only provide us, the readers, with access to fascinating worlds from other cultural spheres, but also stimulate internal circulation within Polish-language literature. The Tadeusz Boy-Żeleński Translation Award recognises the culture-shaping role of literary translators and honours the virtuosity of their craft. Awarded biennially since 2015, it also has a financial aspect: PLN 50,000 is awarded to lifetime achievement winners, and PLN 30,000 to authors of recognised book translations. The winners of this year’s edition were selected by a jury composed of Wojciech Charchalis, Anna Korzeniowska-Bihun, Piotr Paziński, Zofia Szachnowska-Olesiejuk and Anna Wasilewska (chair).

Carlos Marrodán Casas, photo: Bartosz Bańka

‘He debuted in 1973 with the Polish rendition of Mario Vargas Llosa’s The Cubs, translated for pleasure during his Polish studies at the University of Warsaw. That first translation awakened a passion in him (…).His excellent literary ear allowed him to set the tone, find the right register and preserve the distinct language of each writer he translated. When we don’t read Márquez, Llosa or Marías in the original, we ought to remember whose words we are reading. And that the quality of our experience depends on the inventiveness, imagination and talent of the interpreter. And that a translation is the result of complex negotiations with the original text, so that it may carry all the references, ambiguities, allusions and nuances’, said Anna Wasilewska in her laudatory speech in honour of Carlos Marrodán Casas.

Born in 1948 in France, Carlos Marrodán Casas is a Spaniard who has spent nearly his entire life in Poland. He graduated in Polish philology from the University of Warsaw. For a time, he was affiliated with the editorial team of Nowe Książki and later taught at the Department of Iberian Studies at the same university. Since the mid-1980s, he worked in the Cultural Department of the Spanish Embassy in Warsaw, and from the mid-1990s was associated with Muza Publishing House, where he worked first as a translator and consultant, then as an editor. Translation is both his profession and his passion. He has translated into Polish works by authors such as Gabriel García Márquez (The Autumn of the Patriarch, Chronicle of a Death Foretold, Love in the Time of Cholera, Of Love and Other Demons, Memories of My Melancholy Whores), Mario Vargas Llosa (Captain Pantoja and the Special Service, The Green House, The Storyteller), Javier Marías (A Heart So White, Tomorrow in the Battle Think on Me, The Infatuations – co-translated with Wojciech Charchalis) and Roberto Bolaño (Distant Star). Carlos Marrodán Casas is also the co-translator (with Beata Fabjańska-Potapczuk) of The Shadow of the Wind by Carlos Ruiz Zafón, and has translated all of Zafón’s other novels in collaboration with Katarzyna Okrasko. His body of work also includes translations of theatre plays, poetry, and song lyrics.

The awards were presented to the laureates by Aleksandra Dulkiewicz, Mayor of Gdańsk.
‘Allow me to invoke the authority of Wisława Szymborska. For many years, her work in Sweden was promoted by Anders Bodegård, a distinguished translator of Polish literature. The poet herself claimed that without his translations, she would not have received the Nobel Prize in Literature. I feel that the role of translators is increasingly recognised and appreciated. By funding and awarding the Tadeusz Boy-Żeleński Award, we want to tell translators that you are important’, said Mayor Aleksandra Dulkiewicz to the gathered guests, nominees and laureates.

Mateusz Kwaterko, photo: Bartosz Bańka

The award for translating a book published between 2022 and 2024 went to Mateusz Kwaterko, who translated Théophile Gautier’s Caprices et zigzags from French into Polish (PIW, 2023).
‘Our translator embarks on travels in the imagination – like the writer with whom they have formed, as you can judge for yourselves, a rather successful author-translator duo of curiosity collectors and erudites, humourists and commentators. Travels in contemporary imagination, his own, yet filtered through someone else’s language and experience, and in imagination from two centuries ago. And it holds no secrets from him. Our laureate brings it to life just as an imaginative and humorous tourist brings an ancient ruin to life in a museum, or for one night awakens the mummy of an Egyptian princess. To give an old original life in a new language is a great feat. Our laureate has achieved this and more – delivering unrestrained reading delight’, read the laudatory speech for Mateusz Kwaterko.

Mateusz Kwaterko graduated in philosophy from the University of Warsaw. He is the editor of Literatura na Świecie and translates mainly from French, occasionally also from Spanish, English and Italian. His translations include works by Guy Debord, Raoul Vaneigem, Albert Cossery, Giorgio Agamben, Arthur Rimbaud, Théophile Gautier, André Baillon, Réjean Ducharme and Dany Lafferière. For many years, he also worked as a subtitler. Twice holder of the Centre National du Livre scholarship, he runs an Argentine tango school in Warsaw.

Congratulations to all the laureates and nominees!

Photo: Bartosz Bańka

The finalists of this edition of the competition were:
• Marcin Gaczkowski (Ukrainian) for his translation of Valerian Pidmohylny’s The City (KEW, 2024)
• Agnieszka Kowaluk (German) for her translation of Elfriede Jelinek’s Angabe der Person (W.A.B., 2024)
• Mateusz Kwaterko (French) for his translation of Théophile Gautier’s Caprices et zigzags (PIW, 2023)
• Filip Łobodziński (Spanish) for his translation of Arturo Pérez-Reverte’s The Shadow of the Eagle (ArtRage, 2024)
• Katarzyna Okrasko and Agata Ostrowska (Spanish) for their translation of Cristiny Morales’s Easy Reading (ArtRage, 2024)
• Katarzyna Skórska (Italian) for her translation Michele Mari’s You, Bleeding Childhood (Czarne, 2024)
• Tomasz Swoboda (French) for his translation of Marcel Proust’s The Prisoner (Officyna, 2024)

Read more about previous award winners here (click).

Pictures from the ceremony are available here (click) and here (click).

The Award is funded by the City of Gdańsk and organised by the City Culture Institute.
It is presented during the ‘Found in Translation’ Gdańsk Literary Meetings, which this year are dedicated to the women of modernism. The festival, organised by the City Culture Institute, runs from 24 to 26 April.