Today, Wednesday, 26 February 2014, Stephan Steinlein, State Secretary of the Federal Foreign Office, and Faruk Şahin, Deputy Undersecretary of the Turkish Ministry of Culture and Tourism, will present the Tarabya Translation Prize at a ceremony in the Turkish Embassy in Berlin.

This will be the fourth time that the prize has been awarded. After three events in Istanbul, the presentation ceremony will now take place in Germany for the first time. The aim of the Tarabya Translation Prize is to boost intellectual and cultural exchange between Germany and Turkey and thereby acknowledge the significant role that literary translators play as cultural mediators.

A main prize and a promotional prize are each awarded for outstanding translations of Turkish and German literature into the respective other language. This year the main prizes will go to Ms Sezer Duru (German‑Turkish) and Ms Ute Birgi‑Knellessen (Turkish‑German) for their life’s translation work. The promotional prizes will go to Ms Monika Demirel (Turkish‑German) and Mr Tanıl Bora (German‑Turkish). Mr Sami Türk will receive a one‑month scholarship from the S. Fischer Foundation at the Literarisches Colloquium Berlin.

The Tarabya Translation Prize was established in 2010 as a joint German‑Turkish project within the context of the Ernst Reuter Initiative for Intercultural Dialogue and Understanding at the instigation of the Federal Foreign Office, the Ministry of Culture and Tourism of the Republic of Turkey, the Goethe‑Institut, the Robert Bosch Stiftung and the S. Fischer Foundation and is the most highly endowed award for literary translators in Turkey.