NLPVF Translator's Award 2005 for Irina Michailova
The Dutch-Russian translator Irina Michailova is the winner of the NLPVF Translator’s Award 2005. This prize is awarded annually to a pioneer of Dutch literature abroad. Irina Michailova (Leningrad, 1955) plays an invaluable role in the contact between the Dutch and Russian literary worlds.
Over the years, her work as our Russian ‘ambassador of Dutch literature’ has ensured that Dutch literature and poetry is seen, read and noticed in Russia.
Michailova has translated novels by A.F.Th. Van der Heijden, Cees Nooteboom, Kees Verheul and Mariët Meester among others, but is primarily active as a translator of poetry. She has translated work by the poets Rutger Kopland, Gerrit Kouwenaar, Martinus Nijhoff and, in 2004, by J.H. Leopold. In this, she often co-operates with the St Petersburg poet Aleksey Purin and with the Dutch writer and translator Kees Verheul. Irina Michailova teaches Dutch Language, Literature and Culture at the University of St Petersburg, and inspires and stimulates many students to intensify their knowledge and translation skills.
With its annual NLPVF Translator Award, the NLPVF wishes to express its appreciation of a foreign translator who, in addition to his or her translations, has been of service to Dutch literature in other ways as well. The Award consists of a sum of € 5000.
