It’s not the first time the National Book Awards has broadened its scope. In the 1960s and 1970s, an array of new categories were added, including prizes in science, philosophy and religion, history and biography, arts and letters, contemporary thought, autobiography, first novel, original paperback and children’s books, as well as a prize for translation. Then, in 1986, the organization scaled back drastically, to just two awards, for fiction and nonfiction. It later added poetry and young people’s literature.
The new translation prize marks the first time the foundation has added a category in more than two decades.
Other literary institutions have also made efforts to highlight works in translation. The PEN America Center has given out a translation prize to highlight international works since the 1960s. In 2015, the Booker Prize Foundation recast its international prize, which was previously open to novelists writing in English, as an award dedicated to fiction in translation.
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