Inaugural cycle, 2026–27
The National Undergraduate Literary Translation Award
Bring a text you love into English. Open to undergraduates in any major, in any of 18 source languages, in any genre — free to enter, up to 1,000 words.
Join the interest list(opens a Google Form in a new tab)Read the guidelines
Submissions open September 15, 2026.
Chinese (Mandarin)
床前明月光，疑是地上霜。
English
Moonlight before my bed — I took it for frost on the ground.
Key datesInaugural cycle, 2026–27
- Submissions open
- Submission deadline11:59 p.m. ET
- Finalists notified
- Winners announced
What this award is
Open to any undergraduate
Any major, any year, any college or university in the United States, including two-year colleges. You do not need to study literature or translation.
18 source languages into English
The list is limited on purpose, so that every entry is read by a judge who can read the original.
Free, and read anonymously
There is no entry fee. Identifying details are removed before your translation reaches a judge.
The honors
$500
NULTA Winner
The year’s highest honor, awarded to a single translation.
$250
Distinguished Finalist
Awarded to the runner-up.
$50
Special Recognition×3
Awarded to three translations of particular merit.
Why this award exists
The humanities are contracting, and the case for reading across cultures is being made less often, and less loudly, than it should be. Translation is where that case stops being abstract. It is not an argument about openness; it is the work of sitting with something written in another language and carrying it over carefully enough that someone else can read it.
Undergraduates do this work constantly — in seminars, for courses, on their own — and then it goes in a drawer. NULTA exists to give it somewhere to go, and to say plainly that it is worth doing.
Read for us
NULTA is recruiting faculty and graduate students to evaluate anonymized entries. The commitment is 1–3 entries — about 60–90 minutes total — across the January–April 2027 reading period.