For faculty and graduate students
For Faculty and Graduate Students
We are recruiting readers for the inaugural cycle. The commitment is one to three entries, roughly 60 to 90 minutes in total.
The award
The National Undergraduate Literary Translation Award recognizes literary translation into English by undergraduates enrolled at institutions in the United States. Entry is free, open to students in any discipline, and limited to 1,000 words per submission.
The award is independent and is organized by a team of Brown University undergraduates. It is not affiliated with, sponsored by, or endorsed by any institution.
The commitment
The load is deliberately small. A wide bench of readers who each contribute an hour is more sustainable, and produces more attentive evaluation, than a small panel carrying the entire field. It also means no entry is read by someone who is exhausted by the time they reach it.
Who is eligible to serve
Faculty members and graduate students at any institution who read one of the award’s source languages at a level sufficient to evaluate a literary translation into English. There is no requirement to hold an appointment in a translation, literature, or language department.
Languages
Entries are accepted from 18 source languages. Readers are needed across all of them, and the list can only expand as far as our bench of readers allows.
- Arabic
- Burmese
- Chinese (Cantonese)
- Chinese (Mandarin)
- Filipino / Tagalog
- French
- German
- Hebrew
- Hindi
- Italian
- Japanese
- Korean
- Persian (Farsi)
- Portuguese
- Russian
- Spanish
- Swedish
- Vietnamese
How evaluation works
- Assignment. After the January 5, 2027 deadline, entries are screened for eligibility, reviewed for generative-AI use and plagiarism, and stripped of identifying information by administrators.
- Anonymous reading. You receive entries in your language with no information about the translator, their institution, or their year.
- Evaluation. You return an assessment within the January–April 2027 window.
- Results. Finalists are notified May 5, 2027; winners are announced at an online ceremony on May 15, 2027.
Confidentiality
Entries and source passages are provided solely for evaluation. Judges may not reproduce, distribute, publish, quote, upload, or otherwise repurpose the materials; access is revoked at the close of evaluation; and judges are asked to delete any locally retained copies.
These obligations are set out in full in the Rights and Permissions policy, which we ask every reader to review.
Volunteer
Volunteering takes about two minutes. We ask for your name, institution, position, and the languages you read.
Volunteer as a reader(opens a Google Form in a new tab)1–3 entries · 60–90 minutes total · January–April 2027
If you would rather ask questions first, or discuss whether your language and availability are a fit, write to us at the address on the Contact page.