Together with the Taipei Representative Office in Dublin, we are delighted to announce our 2022 Poetry Translation Competition.

This year, we are turning to a poem written in the Taiwanese language, a variety of Hokkien that was brought from the neighbouring Chinese province of Fujian to the island. It is spoken as a native language by about 70% of people living in Taiwan today. The poem is entitled 掠百年的埕過 [Through Centenary Square] and was written by poet 鄭順聰 (Tēnn Sūn-tshong). You can read the poem in Taiwanese here and listen to the poet reading it here.

To enter the competition, please translate the poem into English and send it to us, along with some details about yourself and the translation strategy you applied. Any strategy is acceptable, but the translated poem should function as an English poem in its own right. We will assess all the entries we receive and invite the winners to an event at Trinity Centre for Literary and Cultural Translation to discuss their translations. Please click here to enter. The closing date for submissions is 1 October 2022.

Details of our 2021 competition
For our 2021 competition, participants from all over the world were invited to translate the poem 夜的大赦 [Amnesty of the Night] by Tsao Yu-po (曹馭博) from Mandarin to English. The three winners were then invited to discuss their translations with us. You can watch a recording of this discussion.