Susanna Roth Prize 2019: I Will Wake Up in Shibuya
Anna Cima: I Will Wake Up in Shibuya (Paseka, 2018)
The debut novel by a young Japanologist explores the search for a path into a foreign culture, the ambiguity of the real world, and the treacherous nature of a dream fulfilled.
When seventeen-year-old Jana arrives in her dream destination of Tokyo, she would most like to stay there forever. She soon discovers, however, that such a wish can have far-reaching consequences. She finds herself trapped in a magical loop within the bustling Shibuya district. While the younger version of Jana wanders through the city, experiencing strange situations and searching for a way home, the twenty-four-year-old Jana in Prague studies Japanology, applies for a scholarship to Tokyo, and, together with an older classmate, struggles with the translation of a Japanese short story. The fate of its author, the once-forgotten writer Kawashita, will have a greater impact on the unfolding events than either of the two Janas could have expected…
Participation in the competition
Czech Centres: Bulgaria, France, Italy, Japan, South Korea, Hungary, Poland, Austria, Ukraine, United Kingdom
Diplomatic missions: Belarus, China, Croatia, Lithuania, North Macedonia
Number of submitted translations: 131
About the author
Anna Cima was born in 1991 in Prague and studied Japanese studies at the Faculty of Arts of Charles University. She currently lives in Japan, where she focuses on the study of postwar Japanese literature. In addition to writing, she also engages in drawing and music. I Will Wake Up in Shibuya is her debut novel.
The sixth year of the translation competition, the Susanna Roth Prize, organized by the Czech Centres and the Czech Literary Centre, has announced its winners. Fifteen emerging translators from Europe and Asia who successfully translated excerpts from Anna Cima’s I WIll Wake Up in Shibuya travelled to the Czech Republic in the summer to take part in a translation seminar.
Translation Seminar in Prague
Award-winning translators
Belarus – Sjarhej Lisitsa (*1989)
He was born in the village of Valeŭka near Lake Sviťaz in the southern Navahrudak region. In 2006 he finished school and enrolled at Belarus State University in Minsk, where he graduated in 2011 from the Faculty of Geography and received a master’s degree the following year. In 2013 he studied geomatics at the University of West Bohemia in Plzeň, but had to return to Belarus earlier than planned. He worked as a junior research fellow at the National Scientific Research Centre for Monitoring the Ozone Layer of BSU. He currently works at the Centre for Research of Belarusian Culture, Language and Literature at the Belarusian Academy of Sciences.
Bulgaria – Irina Cenkova-Todorova (*1982)
She was born in Sofia. She graduated from a language high school with enhanced instruction in English and Spanish. She first encountered Czech language and literature at Sofia University, where she graduated in 2005 in Bohemistics. However, she had already heard about the Czech Republic in childhood, when her grandfather told her stories about his work stay in Cheb. As a student, she visited the Czech Republic twice. First, she spent a month in Prague at a summer language school, and a year later she stayed for two months in Olomouc as part of the CEEPUS, Central European exchange programme. After university, she worked in Bulgarian media and at the Bulgarian branch of a Czech PR agency. She is currently part of the Czech team at one of the contact centres in Sofia. At the moment she is on maternity leave and caring for her second son.
China – Yilin Hou (*1997)
A recent graduate of Beijing Foreign Studies University, majoring in Czech language and literature. From October 2016 to June 2017 she studied in Prague as an exchange scholarship student. In addition to Czech literature, she is interested in Czech films, especially those from the Czech New Wave period. In the future she would like to continue her master’s studies and dedicate herself to translating Czech literature into Chinese, the most widely spoken language in the world.
France – Jana Svagr (*1987)
She was born in Prague and holds both Czech and French citizenship. After completing her law studies at the Sorbonne, she decided to pursue film studies in Paris. She later entered the directing department at FAMU in Prague, where she is currently completing her master’s degree. Her graduation film Stillleben won the short film category prize at the Kamera Ostrava Oko festival and is being prepared for international distribution. She has worked as a dramaturge for the Cameraman Days in Prague, where she translated scripts and subtitles and wrote short scenes that were later produced by students at FAMU. In 2018 she participated in the CEFP (Central European Feature Project), developing a screenplay for a low-budget feature film in collaboration with a film school in Łódź and the Berlin film academy DFFB. In her free time she engages in mountaineering and illustration. She is currently on an internship in Paris, working at the production company Trois Brigands Productions as a production assistant.
Croatia – Ivana Srezović (*1993)
She is a master’s student of Czech and French studies at the Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences, University of Zagreb. She enjoys foreign languages and speaks Croatian, Czech, French, English, and a little Italian. She is currently on a two-semester Erasmus+ stay in Paris, where she is also studying Czech and improving her translation skills. After graduation she would like to become a translator. She currently works in tourism, presenting Croatia as an attractive destination; she has already participated four times in the Holiday World trade fair in Prague. Translating an excerpt from I Will Wake Up in Shibuya was a valuable experience for her, especially because she learned more about Japanese culture.
Italy – Alessandro Riti (*1993)
A graduate of the University of Padua. He studied Slavic studies and linguistics in Padua and at Charles University in Prague. He initially approached Slavic studies through Russian, which he began studying in his first year. In the second year he added Czech, which further strengthened his passion for languages. He completed one semester of Polish, studied Slovene for two years, and taught himself Slovak. After two years of study in Italy, he decided to travel and went to Estonia via Erasmus. The following academic year he spent in Prague, where he found the academic environment he lacked in Padua. After a short exchange in Moscow, he returned to Prague, where he completed his thesis in linguistics. Even after graduating, he continues to pursue his interest in learning languages and improving his knowledge of Slavic languages, the core of his academic path.
Japan – Teruhiko Sudó (*1988)
He was born in Tokyo and grew up in Kobe. In 2012 he graduated in literature and philosophy from Waseda University in Tokyo. He currently conducts research on Central European literature, especially the works of Milan Kundera, at the Sorbonne in Paris and at the University of Tokyo. He also spent one year studying in Venice and Prague.
South Korea – Eunsue Kim (*1979)
She studied animation at FAMU in Prague. Her short animated film Dad and Me (1999) was screened at more than twenty international film festivals worldwide and received awards in Bucheon, Seoul, and at the Portuguese international animation festival CINANIMA. In 2016 she presented her work at the group exhibition Drawn Stories of Young People at Euljiro Atelier Gallery in Seoul, and a year later at another group exhibition Taro to Gatzi at Toka Art Gallery in Seoul. Since 2011 she has also taught animation at Korean secondary schools. In addition to filmmaking and artistic work, she has been involved in translation and interpreting since 2006. She has worked as an interpreter for the Korea Trade-Investment Promotion Agency (KOTRA) and coordinated online courses in Korean corporate culture for Doosan Škoda Power. She currently works at the Translation and Interpreting Centre for East European Languages in Korea.
Lithuania – Kristina Karvelytė (*1979)
She was born in Kaunas. She graduated in philosophy from Vytautas Magnus University in 2012. Czech language has been her hobby for over ten years: she attended summer language schools at the University of West Bohemia in Plzeň in 2009 and 2017, and later at the University of South Bohemia in České Budějovice. She also studied Czech at Charles University in Prague during an exchange stay. After completing her doctoral studies, she remained in Prague, where she worked as a translator from Czech into English and Russian and as a Russian language teacher. Since early 2018 she has worked at the Embassy of the Czech Republic in Vilnius. In the future she would like to translate Czech literature into Lithuanian.
Hungary – Anna Laura Kolláth (*1994)
Translator and Czech language teacher. She completed a bachelor’s degree in International Studies at Eötvös Loránd University in Budapest, during which she spent two semesters at Masaryk University in Brno. During her studies she continuously improved her Czech, attending summer schools of Czech studies in Brno, semester Czech courses in the Czech Republic and Hungary, and various translation seminars. She currently collaborates with the Czech Centre Budapest, the Central European publishing house Csirimojó, and various language agencies.
Poland – Joanna Wójtowicz (*1985)
She graduated in psychology from the Faculty of Philosophy at Jagiellonian University in Kraków and worked as a manager in an international corporation. She is currently on parental leave and trying to establish herself as a freelance translator. She is a mother of three children and a lover of foreign languages and literature. In addition to Czech, she speaks English, German, and Spanish. Her fascination with Czech culture began with the film Year of the Devil by Petr Zelenka. Inspired by this film, she began learning Czech while still at university. She hopes to move to the Czech Republic in retirement.
Austria – Theresa Clauberg (*1990)
She comes from a Czech-German family and has lived in Germany and the Czech Republic. She currently lives and works in Austria. She studied classical music (violin as her main instrument) and transcultural communication at the University of Vienna, specializing in German, Czech, and Spanish. She is currently studying conference interpreting in a master’s programme at the same university. She works as a translator and teacher with institutions such as the Moravian Library in Brno and the Czech Centre Vienna. In addition to performing concerts and translating, she enjoys travelling, studying foreign languages, and sports.
North Macedonia – Dijana Petrovska (*1994)
She graduated in economics from St. Cyril and Methodius University in Skopje in 2016. During her studies she fell in love with the Czech language and culture, and a year later participated in a summer language school at Masaryk University in Brno. She has loved languages and literature since childhood; she began writing poetry in primary school and won several local awards. In addition to Czech, she speaks English, Serbian, and Spanish. She currently works as a marketing coordinator for Czech clients and has recently started teaching Czech at a private language school. The Susanna Roth Prize competition was her first attempt at literary translation, which she considered both a major challenge and an opportunity for development. In the future she would like to translate Czech literature into Macedonian and contribute to the promotion of Czech culture.
Ukraine – Ljubov Pavlyšyn (*1985)
She was born in Uzhhorod, where she graduated from secondary school in 2002. She completed a degree in International Relations at Kyiv Slavic University (2008, qualification: international political scientist; diploma recognition at Charles University in Prague in 2017) and postgraduate studies at the Institute of History of the National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine (2014). She defended her dissertation on Foreign Policy of the Czech Republic: Features of Formation and Priority Directions of Development and received a PhD in historical sciences in 2014. Since 2013 she has worked as a lecturer at the Department of International Relations at the East European Slavic University. She is the author of numerous academic and methodological works on the history of international relations. She also works in literary translation from Czech and Russian and is professionally involved in painting. She is a member of the Youth Association of the Transcarpathian branch of the National Union of Artists of Ukraine (2018) and has participated in many art exhibitions.
United Kingdom – James Morgan (*1997)
He studies modern languages (Russian and Czech) at the University of Oxford. In 2012 he won second place in a national Russian essay competition, and in 2018 received an honourable mention in the Susanna Roth translation competition. In his free time he enjoys sports, especially squash and tennis. Music is also important to him – he plays the trumpet and percussion instruments. In previous years he regularly worked with the Dynamic Autism Group, where he taught musical instruments to children with autism.