Mercedes Corral, National Award for Translator Work, and Agata Orzeszek and Ernesto Rubio, National Award for Best Translation

Mercedes Corral has been awarded the National Award for the Work of a Translator, corresponding to the year 2024, while Agata Orzeszek and Ernesto Rubio have been with the National Award for the Best Translation, corresponding to the year 2024, for the translation of ‘The Books of Jacob’ by Olga Tokarczuk, at the proposal of the jury meeting today. Each of the prizes is worth 30,000 euros.

The jury recognizes Mercedes Corral for “an outstanding and extensive career spanning four decades and for the literary quality with which he has managed to imbue, with talent and efficiency, excellent translations from French and Italian with the right narrative tone and the necessary dose of passion“.

Likewise, Mercedes Corral, translation activist, stands out “for her exceptional work in promoting reading among the youngest, showing and bringing children closer to the world of languages ​​and the complicated task of its professionals“.

For its part, the jury has proposed the translation by Agata Orzeszec and Ernesto Rubio of the work ‘The Books of Jacob’ by Olga Tokarczuk by “the admirable way in which the enormous challenges posed by translation are resolved which is considered the magnum opus of the Nobel Prize-winning Polish writer, a milestone of enormous contribution to our culture and our language.

Furthermore, the jury has indicated that “the translators, Agata Orzeszek and Ernesto Rubio, They have known how to weave with excellence the complex and polyhedral text of Olga Torkarzcuk, with countless layers and with a difficult style, but lyrical, without losing the richness of the original, at the same time that they transfer the language of 18th century Poland without falling into anachronisms.

Mercedes Corral was born in 1954 and has a degree in Hispanic Philology, a literary translator of Italian and French since 1985. Since 2006 she has directed the activity ‘The adventure of translating’, with the aim of showing children the world of languages ​​and translation He has translated, among others, Dino Buzzati, Natalia Ginzburg, Elio Vittorini, Italo Svevo, JMG Le Clezio, Agnes Desarthe, Romain Gary, Marquise Colombi, Machiavelli, Georges Simenon and Bernard Henry-Levi.

On the other hand, Agata Orzeszek, who was born in Warsaw (Poland) in 1953 although she has Spanish nationality, has a degree in Neophilology from the University of Warsaw, with a thesis titled ‘Meaning and form of The Tree of Science by Pío Baroja’.

In addition, she has a degree in Spanish Philology from the Autonomous University of Barcelona and a doctorate in Translation and Interpretation from the Autonomous University of Barcelona, ​​where she has been a full professor at the Faculty of Translation and Interpretation from 1999 until her retirement in 2013.

Finally, Ernesto Rubio is a translation project manager, Polish/English-Spanish/Catalan literary and audiovisual translator and has a degree in English Philology from the University of Valencia and a Master’s degree in Translation, Interpretation and Intercultural Studies from the Autonomous University of Barcelona.

The last two translators regularly collaborate and are responsible for the translations of works such as ‘East of the Arbat’, by Hanna Krall; ‘The Evil of the Shaman’, by Jacek Hugo-Bader; and ‘Bucharest. Dust and Blood’, by Malgorzata Rejmer, among others.