The South African Translators' Institute has announced the five category winners for its SATI Award for Outstanding Translation for 2003.

The category winners are as follows:

• Fiction: Janie Oosthuysen for Harry Potter en die Beker Vol Vuur
• Prof. Bheki Ntuli for the isiZulu version of Long Walk to Freedom, Uhambo Olude Oluya Enkululekweni
• Antjie Krog for Met Woorde soos met Kerse
• The Potyi Books development team for their multilingual reading series
• CEPTSA for their Modern Political Dictionary

This is the second time the award is being made. It was launched in 2000 by the South African Translators' Institute and is made every three years. The award is presented on or around International Translation Day, which is celebrated around the world on 30 September. The Institute's aim with the award is to promote the translation and publication of works into and/or from the official languages of South Africa, in order to -
1. improve the quality of such translations;
2. promote multilingualism and in particular the use and development of the indigenous languages;
3. promote cross-cultural understanding; and
4. raise awareness of the role of translators in uniting the people of South Africa.

An excellent selection of translations was received for this year's award. A total of 25 entries were nominated in five categories - fiction, non-fiction, poetry & drama, service translation and dictionaries. The nominations were in six of the country's eleven official languages - Afrikaans (11), English (8), Sepedi (1), Setswana (1), isiXhosa (3) and isiZulu (1). The dictionary entry was in English and Afrikaans. The source texts were mostly Afrikaans or English, but the entries included a Dutch-Afrikaans, a Latin-Afrikaans and an Italian-Afrikaans translation. The latter two are classical works that add to the academic corpus in South Africa: a translation of Erasmus's In Praise of Folly and a translation of Dante's Divine Comedy.

The nominations included some very exciting works, among them three translations of Nelson Mandela's Long Walk to Freedom, three translations of The Plays of Zakes Mda and Antjie Krog's recently released Met Woorde soos met Kerse.

The full list of nominees is as follows:

Fiction

• Janie Oosthuysen for her translation of JK Rowling's Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire from English into Afrikaans (Harry Potter en die Beker Vol Vuur)
• Catherine Knox for her translation of Elsa Joubert's novel Die Reise van Isobelle from Afrikaans into English (Isobelle's Journey)
• Catherine Knox for her translation of Etienne van Heerden's Die Swye van Mario Salviati from Afrikaans to English (The Long Silence of Mario Salviati)
• Linda Rode for the translations of three children's books: Yebo, Jamela! by Nicky Daly and Christopher Gregorowski's Fly, Eagle, Fly! (Vlieg Arend, Vlieg Hoog!) from English to Afrikaans and Vom kleinen Maulwurf, der wissen wollte, wer ihm auf den Kopf gemacht hat by Werner Holzwarth and Wolf Erlburch from the original German to Afrikaans (Die storie van die molletjie wat wou weet wie op sy kop gedinges het)

Non-fiction

• Three translators for their translations of Nelson Mandela's Long Walk to Freedom:
  - Antjie Krog for the Afrikaans version, Lang Pad na Vryheid
  - Prof. Bheki Ntuli for the isiZulu version, Uhambo Olude Oluya Enkululekweni
  - Prof. Peter Mtuse for the isiXhosa version, Indlela Ende Eya Enkululekweni
• Dr Marietjie Nelson for her translation from Afrikaans into English of Sielie Laubscher's Donker Verdwaalbos: Belydenis van 'n Depressielyer (Dark Forest of the Soul: A Personal Journey through Depression)
• Prof. Jan de Villiers for his translation from Latin to Afrikaans of Desiderius Erasmus's Encomium Moriae or In Praise of Folly (Tot Lof van Dwaasheid)
• Four of You magazine's team of translators - Victor Lampert, Genevieve Callaghan, Nicola Whitfield and John Phillips - for translations of articles for You from Afrikaans to English

Poetry and drama

• Antjie Krog for her translation from Dutch to Afrikaans of Tom Lanoye's Mamma Medea
• Antjie Krog for her anthology Met Woorde soos met Kerse, which comprises translations and reworkings of poetry from all the other indigenous languages and one of the San languages into Afrikaans
• Three translators for their translations of The Plays of Zakes Mda:
  - Deborah Mampuru for the Sepedi translation, Ditiragat*o t*a Zakes Mda
  - Koliswa Moropa for the isiXhosa translation, Imidlalo kaZakes Mda
  - Dr Phaladi Sebate for the Setswana translation, Diterama tsa Zakes Mda
  · Dr Delamaine du Toit for his translation from Italian into Afrikaans of the third part of Dante's La Divina Commedia (Divine Comedy), Die Paradys

Service translation

• The Potyi Books development team for a multilingual graded reading series for the Foundation Phase in English, isiXhosa and Afrikaans
• Marlie van Rooyen for the Afrikaans translation of the University of the Free State's 2003 calendar for the Humanities Faculty

Dictionaries

The Centre for Political and Related Terminology in Southern African Languages (CEPTSA) for their Nuwerwetse Politieke Woordeboek/Modern Political Dictionary

The judges had the following to say about the category winners:

Harry Potter en die Beker Vol Vuur
In a country still largely without a culture of reading and book-buying, an outstanding translation of a Harry Potter book is an important occurrence, even for the Afrikaans-speaking community, with their more established tradition in this regard. Janie Oosthuysen's Harry Potter en die Beker Vol Vuur gives Harry a genuinely Afrikaans voice and allows him to take his place among a series of Harry Potters speaking different languages around the world. Her translation is technically proficient and she finds ingenious solutions to the quirky challenges faced by a translator in recreating the involved world of a British boy magician for Afrikaans readers.

Harry Potter en die Beker Vol Vuur is a worthy winner in the fiction category of the SA Translators' Institute's Award for Outstanding Translation. Janie Oosthuysen's translator's wand has conjured up a unique new place for Harry Potter in Africa - an achievement that will hopefully prepare the way for similar translations in the other indigenous languages of South Africa and indeed of Africa.

Uhambo Olude Oluya Enkululekweni
The quality of this translation reflects the greatness of the source text itself and brings Nelson Mandela's words closer to the people. The translator's linguistic competence has enabled him to produce a translation that is a pleasure to read, with its smooth, flowing and idiomatic language. The translation is creative and establishes a platform from which the author's message can be clearly heard. This is the beauty of translation, for it transcends linguistic barriers and makes information accessible. In this way it is able to help fill the void that has long existed in our country in the writing of African literature in the indigenous languages and to create a pride in the use of these languages.

Met Woorde soos met Kerse
This work was truly inspired in bringing together the elements of the Rainbow Nation and could almost have been conceived expressly to fulfil the aims of the SATI Award for Outstanding Translation! Although it features only one of the official languages, it presents work in all other nine official indigenous languages and also a non-official indigenous language. In this way, it showcases the talent and abilities in all these cultures. The notes that appear at the start of each chapter and the commentary on many of the poems gives further insight into the cultures and peoples in question, exposing this to fellow South Africans who might otherwise never have had the opportunity to appreciate these works. Add to this the fact that the translations and reworkings have been done by one of South Africa's foremost poets and writers and the winning formula is complete - the target language itself is fine-tuned to offer the perfect vehicle for promoting cross-cultural understanding. Met Woorde soos met Kerse is a prime example of the way in which translators assist in uniting people.

Potyi Books - a multilingual foundation phase graded reading series
This series of school reading books is another inspired project that embodies the aims of the Award for Outstanding Translation. Taking an English basis for each book and simultaneously rendering it into isiXhosa and Afrikaans, adapting as necessary as part of the development process rather than an add-on, is true multilingualism at work and the perfect embodiment of the Award aim of promoting "the use and development of the indigenous languages". The language used in the books may be simple, but the translators were challenged by the requirement to maintain parity between languages with widely differing structures. Further emphasis of the success of this effort in achieving the aims of the Award is to be found in the fact that Maskew Miller Longman has bought the series and is developing it to cover the other South African languages as well. The initial Afrikaans/English/isiXhosa books have proved their worth in actual multilingual classrooms, encouraging and enabling children to learn other languages at this receptive stage of their lives.

Modern Political Dictionary
Without correct terminology translators cannot produce work of a high standard. Just as an artisan cannot do his work without the necessary tools, a translator needs his/her tools and a specialised dictionary like this one is a translation tool par excellence.
The advent of full democracy in SA with its concomitant broadening of the horizons resulted in a plethora of new political terms and usages. The compilers of the dictionary have recorded these terms, added contextual notes to provide greater clarity on the meaning of some terms and also given guidance on correct usage. Quite often obsolete or deprecated terms are left out of dictionaries, but the way the compilers handled this sensitive issue greatly increases the value of this dictionary. In a way, this also gives the user an overview of the political developments of the past decade.
All entries and lists are given in strict alphabetical order and are fully bilingual. This makes the dictionary extremely user-friendly. The eight annexures, ranging from acronyms and abbreviations through parliaments of the world to nicknames of political personalities, add extra value to the book. The explanatory notes among the front matter give explicit guidelines on how to use and interpret the dictionary.
The outstanding standard of the terminology together with the excellent methodology makes this dictionary ideal to serve as a basis to which equivalents and explanations in the other official languages can be added. This could eventually lead to a multilingual explanatory edition, thereby making an outstanding contribution to the promotion of multilingualism and the development of the indigenous languages of South Africa.

Issued by the South African Translators' Institute. Contact: Marion Boers. Tel/fax: (011) 803-2681. E-mail: publications@translators.org.za