SF&F Translation Awards Closing Down

It is with great sadness that we announce that the Association for the Recognition of Excellence in SF & F Translation (ARESFFT) is being officially dissolved.

There are many reasons for this, but mostly they are to do with the time and effort required to run the awards on an amateur basis. It has become increasingly difficult to find people willing to act as jurors. Several of the existing Directors have had major changes in their lives that have left them with far less free time than they had previously. And all attempts to find new Directors have failed to produce any volunteers.

We still very much believe in the need to promote science fiction and fantasy in translation, and hope that in due course new people will come forward and a new award be created. The Directors will continue to do whatever they can as individuals to continue the work of the Association.

The bulk of the money held by the corporation has been returned to the most recent donors. A small amount has been held back to cover the administrative costs of winding up the Association.

Any questions regarding the winding up of the Association should be directed to our contact address.

3 comments

  1. This is a sad story. Would you not at least consider some public “rally” that might activate more readers/writers/jurors to eventually keep the awards alive? In the times of the Internet and crowdfunding and viral videos and social media and “shitstorms” I’d be highly surprised that exactly an award that deals with science fiction and for which Internet would have been sci-fi only a few decades ago (Arthur C. Clarke’s earlier novels did not foresee “everyone communicating with everyone” – and he had uncanny foresight) should die such a silent death?!

    1. This seems rather unlikely to us. While there were many people who thought the awards a good thing, and we were able to raise funds to fund the award grants, there were few if any qualified people available to do the substantial amount of work it takes to actually administer the awards, nor were there enough qualified jurors available. This is not a case where simple enthusiasm is sufficient; you need skills, not just eagerness. After almost a year of fruitless searching, we decided that the responsible thing to do would be to dissolve the organization.

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