All in 2012 awarded Translation Grants (and other grants) can be found in the Annual Report 2012 of the Dutch Foundation for Literature.
Download the publication (pdf; Dutch) here.
Summary Annual Report 2012
By means of grants and subsidies to writers, translators, publishers and festivals, the Dutch Foundation for Literature stimulates the quality and diversity of literature and contributes to the dissemination and promotion of literature in the Dutch and Frisian languages at home and abroad. The Foundation works to create a literary climate that is as rich and diverse as possible, with a focus on literary heritage and new developments in literature and the book trade.
In the period 2009-2012 the Foundation supported 1,558 projects in all the literary genres: novels, stories, literary non-fiction, children’s and young adult literature and poetry. As a result a total of 915 translations of foreign titles appeared in Dutch and 643 new works by Dutch writers were published. The quality of the literary works for which grants were requested was as high as ever, whether they were translations into Dutch or original Dutch-language works. The wealth of new work in Dutch by authors supported by the Foundation, including many young talents, is reflected in the nominations and awards their books have garnered.
In the past four years, more than 2,200 translations of Dutch-language literary works have been published abroad as a result of mediation and active promotion by the Foundation. The number of translations appearing outside the Dutch borders each year continues to rise. Dutch literature has further raised its profile abroad, as is evident from the number of international prizes awarded to Dutch writers[1]. Major presentations of Dutch literature in other countries, such as the successful Guest of Honour programme ‘Open Landscape – Open Book’ in Beijing, have made an important contribution in this regard.
Despite the consequences of economic recession and changes in reading habits, the Netherlands still has an exceptional literature. It remains a country of readers, and new foreign markets are developing. The steady decline in the number of published translations into Dutch and in economically precarious genres such as poetry and essay-writing, and the narrowing of the range of literature on offer that accompanies that decline, is certainly a cause for concern. Changes in the ways young people in particular use their free time necessitate new approaches to making literature and its creators visible. The Foundation has developed programmes for the coming years that are intended to increase recognition of the importance of writers and translators and the visibility of the wealth of works it supports. With respect to other countries its ambitions are focused not only on the newly emerging economies but on further extending the largest markets for Dutch literature. Along with the Flemish Literature Fund, the Foundation has made it its aim that in 2016 the Netherlands and Flanders will again be joint Guest of Honour at the Frankfurt Book Fair.
Selection of contents:
- Residency for Writers in Amsterdam, page 31
- Vertalershuis Amsterdam / Amsterdam Translators’ House, page 32-33
- Translation grants for foreign publishers, page 41-45
- (Inter)national translation prizes, page 50-51
- Literary events, page 54-55
- Visitors’ Programme, page 55
- Translations Database, page 56
[1] In 2012 Guus Kuijer was awarded the Astrid Lindgren Memorial Award, the ‘Nobel Prize for Children’s Literature’ for his body of work, Luuk van Middelaar received the Prix du Livre Europeén 2012 for the French translation of De passage naar Europa (The Passage to Europe. How a Continent Became a Union) and Alfred van Cleef’s The Hidden Order (De verborgen ordening) won the German ITB Book Award for Extraordinary Travel Books. Dutch fiction authors such as Anne-Gine Goemans received the German M Pionier 2012 as well as the Dutch Dioraphte Youth Literature Prize for Gliding Flight (Glijvlucht), Gerbrand Bakker the Spanish/Catalan Premi Llibreter 2012 for The Twin (Boven is het stil), for which he had already been awarded the IMPAC Dublin Literary Award in 2010, Rodaan Al Galidi won the European Union Prize for Literature for his novel De autist en de postduif (The Autist and the Homing Pigeon) and Herman Koch received the Premio Novela Europea Casino de Santiago for The Dinner (Het diner), which is still on the rise in the Best Sellers list of the The New York Times.