The Slovak Association of Literary Translators has awarded The Zora Jesenská Prize for a body of translation work into Slovak. The Prize was presented in celebration of St. Jerome’s Day, at the General Assembly of the Association in Bratislava, on 19 October 2011.
The Zora Jesenská Prize 2011 has been awarded to Mr Albert Marenčin, surrealist poet, film maker, collagist and literary translator for the body of his translations produced over almost sixty years and for his contribution to cultural and literary relations between France and Slovakia. Chevalier de l’Ordre des Arts et des Lettres (1993) and Chevalier de l’Ordre national du mérite (2001), member of the Surrealist group France-Czechoslovakia, as well as of the College of Pataphysics, Albert Marenčin is the translator of French authors such as André Breton, Jean Cocteau, Benjamin Péret, Henri Michaux, Aimé Césaire, Alfred Jarry, Marquis de Sade, Paul Valéry, Eugène Ionesco, Albert Camus, Alain Robbe-Grillet, Bernard Noël, and others.
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Albert Marenčin, photo © Martin Marenčin 2011
The Jury placed special value on the translator’s systematic work and the reception of French literature that lies at the root of the aesthetic programme specific to the translator and to his aesthetic and literary values, as well as on the excellence of his translations at the level of poetics and of the Slovak language.