New award announced to honor the best works translated into English

I’ve known about this for over a month now, but was asked to be mum about it until it was announced at the World Fantasy Convention.  Friday, a series of people, including the University of California at Riverside (who are the planned hosts for this award) announced the creation of the Science Fiction and Fantasy Translation Awards, which aims to do for non-English SF/F translated into English that awards such as the Seiun Awards, Premio Ignotus, Utopiales, and other awards from Asia and Europe do to honor foreign translations of SF/F works into their native languages.

About damn time.  Between this and the expansion of the Best American Fantasy anthology series (starting in 2011) to cover translated fictions from Latin America, there will be much greater coverage and hopefully awareness of excellent works being produced outside the Anglophone regions.  Expect more coverage of these matters here at this blog (and obviously at the blogs/sites of those contributing to the founding of these translation awards) in the coming months and years, as this is something that appeals to me for obvious reasons.