The ATA Chronicle - January/February 2023 - 24

ATA Student
Translation Award
Sam Hankins
Sam Hankins is the recipient of the 2022 ATA Student
Translation Award. The award is presented to any graduate or
undergraduate student, or group of students, for a literary or scitech
translation or translation-related project.
Sam won for her translation of an excerpt from Lunar Syzygies
and Quadratures, an 18th-century short story believed to be the
first Hispanic-American work of science fiction. The story only
came to the light in the 1950s after being salvaged from the
archives of the Spanish Inquisition. It tells the tale of a society
on the moon and an Earthling scientist's efforts to travel there in
a marvelous flying machine. It's a work of cultural significance
that reveals the principles of modern science as subsumed by the
Mexican Enlightenment in the 18th century, and it's also a critique
of the inquisitorial scholastic thought. One of our reviewers noted:
" When comparing the target and source texts, I was impressed by
the candidate's solutions for archaic terminology and odd spellings
employed in the source text. Moreover, this is a wildly ambitious
project in terms of the research undertaken and the competing
considerations the translator must confront. "
Sam has an MA in Spanish translation and interpreting from the
University of Texas Rio Grande Valley. In addition to her work
as a freelance translator, she has worked as a communications
specialist for the Communications and Public Affairs Department of
the City of Victoria, Texas, since 2020. She previously worked as
a layout designer and copy editor for the Victoria Advocate. She
volunteers as a Spanish>English translator for the human rights
network Respond Crisis Translation, where she translates documents
to be used in U.S. immigration courts on behalf of asylum seekers,
including letters, testimonies, identifying documents, crime reports,
medical reports, news articles, and text messages.
ATA Lewis Galantière Award
Natasha Wimmer
Natasha Wimmer is the recipient of
the 2022 ATA Lewis Galantière Award
for her translation of The Twilight Zone
by Nona Fernández. The novel was a
finalist for the National Book Award for
Translated Literature and longlisted for
the 2022 Andrew Carnegie Medal for
Excellence in Fiction.
Natasha is a translator of contemporary
fiction and literary nonfiction from
Spanish into English. Her translations include nine books by
Roberto Bolaño, as well as books by Álvaro Enrigue, Mario
Vargas Llosa, Gabriel Zaid, and Pedro Juan Gutiérrez. She
has a degree in Romance languages from Harvard University.
She is a regular visiting lecturer at Princeton University and
Columbia University. She has written reviews and criticism for
The Nation, The New York Times, and The New York Review
of Books, among other publications. She is the recipient of a
National Endowment for the Arts Translation Grant, a PEN
Translation Award, and an American Academy of Arts and
Letters Literature Award.
Author Nona Fernández was born in Santiago, Chile. She is an
actress and writer, and has published two plays, a collection of
short stories, and six novels, including Space Invaders and The
Twilight Zone.
The Lewis Galantière Award is bestowed biennially in evennumbered
years for a distinguished book-length literary
translation into English from any language except German. It
honors distinguished ATA founding member Lewis Galantière
(1894-1977). His translations from French drama, fiction,
poetry, and scholarship enriched cultural life during the middle
decades of the 20th century and are still being read over a
quarter century after his death.
24 The ATA Chronicle | January/February 2023
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The ATA Chronicle - January/February 2023

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