The Istanbul Foundation for Culture and Arts introduced an encouragement award in 2015 to support outstanding translations of literary works, including but not limited to poetry, short stories and novels from other languages to Turkish-language. İKSV's first award to date in the field of literature, Talât Sait Halman Translation Award found its recipient for the third time in 2017. Selection Committee announced this year's winner as Fuat Sevimay with his outstanding translation of James Joyce's Finnegans Wake.
Applications by publishing houses and individual translators for the Talât Sait Halman Translation Award had been evaluated by Selection Committee headed by author Doğan Hızlan and composed of author, translator, and critic Sevin Okyay, translator Ayşe Sarısayın, author and translator Yiğit Bener, and author and translator Kaya Genç. The committee paid homage to Ahmet Cemal, a former jury member, who passed away this year, followed by an announcement of the award's recipient as Fuat Sevimay for his 'creativity, courage and playfulness in delivering James Joyce's 1939 novel Finnegans Wake's sentences, which open out to the night and dreams, bringing together languages and histories, in Turkish. The award is worth of 15.000 TL.
More than 50 works that were completed within 2016, including poems, short stories and novels translated from English, German, Spanish, French, Russian, Persian, Japanese, Greek, Bulgarian, Chinese, Korean and Norwegian, applied for the award.
The first Talât Sait Halman Translation Award was presented to Siren İdemen for her translation of Georges Perec's La Boutique Obscure: 124 Rêves and the second was presented to Ahmet Arpad for his translation of Anna Seghers' Transit.
About Fuat Sevimay
Born in 1972, Fuat Sevimay studied Business Administration in English in Marmara University. His compilation of stories, Ara Nağme, received the Orhan Kemal Short Story Award in2014. His book for children, Haydar Paşa'nın Evi, was awarded the grand prize in the Urban Stories Competition organised by the Ankara Chamber of Architects, while his novel Kapalıçarşı was one of the award-winners at the Ahmet Hamdi Tanpınar Novel Competition. The author was also presented with the Crystal Seagull Award by Kadıköy Anatolian High School in 2015. Sevimay has translated works by James Joyce, Henry James and Oscar Wilde from English, and by Luigi Pirandello and Italo Svevo from Italian. He worked on the translation of Finnegan's Wake in Dublin, with support from Literature Ireland and Trinity College, and an additional scholarship. The novel was published in Turkish-language as Finnegan Uyarlaması in 2016.
