The Science Fiction and Fantasy Rosetta Awards for works translated into English were unveiled today. The award will spotlight “the great but underrated efforts of translators and those who endeavor to make the translation works come true.”

The juried award will have three categories:

• Long-form. 40K English words or above.
• Short-form. Under 40K words.
• A Special Service Award will be awarded to the author, editor, translator, activist or publisher who makes great contribution to promotion of non-English SFF internationally.

Cheryl Morgan, first chair of the awards jury, says SFFRA came about this way:

Earlier this year I was approached by the lovely people at the Future Affairs Administration in China. They were interested in starting up a new set of SF&F translation awards and they wanted me to be part of the jury. Gary Wolfe was also involved, and I still very much believe in having such awards, so I said yes.

Morgan and Wolfe previously worked on the Science Fiction & Fantasy Translation Awards last given in 2013.

Some of the key eligibility requirements for the new SFFRA award are:

• Must be a translation from Non-English to English, and published either in print or electronically through publisher/magazine. The eligibility is based on the year the translation is published, not the year the work was published in its original language.
• Self-published work posted on the web or social media will not be considered.
• Self-translated work will not be considered.

The inaugural jury will be: Chairperson: Cheryl Morgan (Wales, UK); Deputy chairperson Gary K. Wolfe (US); Jurors: Alex Shvartsman (US), Ana Rüsche (Brazil), Artiom Zheltov (Russia), Yingying Wu (China), and Alex “SFRabbit” Li (China)

The SFFRA website ends its introduction with this invitation:

It won’t be easy, for this new Awards, to grow and mature and keep alive for years and years. This Awards welcomes all supports in any direct or indirect way possible. Together, we contribute to the global SFF communism and to make this world a little more understandable.

[Thanks to Cora Buhlert for the story.]