Xabier Olarra Lizaso, Basque translator, is the new National Prize for the Work of a Translator 2025 and María Angeles Ochoa de Eribe has won the National Prize for the Best Translation of this edition, for her work Theodoros by Mircea Cărtărescu (Imudimenta).
Olarra Lizaso has been recognized for his “enormous contribution to the enrichment and normalization of Esukera both in terms of its linguistic corpus and in its status and presence in the different areas of social life.” Regarding Ochoa de Eribe, the jury highlighted “the thoroughness, linguistic richness and perfect mastery of sources and documentation with which the translator has managed to translate into Spanish the excellence of a total novel.”
Xaiber Olarra Lizaso (Tolosa, 1953) began his career in 1983, with a career that has specialized in crime novels. In 1989 he founded the Igela publishing house, in Navarra. He has translated multiple works into Basque, among which stand out The Postman always Rings Twice by JM Cain, An Anthropologist On Mars de Oliver Sacks, The last meeting But S. Márai y The Devil’s Dictionary by Ambrose Bierce. In addition, he has translated other authors such as Ernest Hemingway, Robert Louis Stevenson, Jack London, William Faulkner, J. Thompson and Truman Capote. He has received the Euskadi Prize for Literary Translation in 2006 and 2016, for Style exercises by Raymond Queneau (Igela, 2005) and Ulisesby James Joyce (Iruña, Igela, 2015), respectively. The award jury has classified him as “one of the most outstanding, relevant, prolific and interdisciplinary translators in the history of the Basque language. An extensive and brilliant career of more than four decades in which they stand out in both the quality and complexity of the translated works.”
Marian Ochoa de Eribe (Bilbao, 1964) is a translator from Romanian to Spanish. Among his work, the translation of important authors of classical Romanian literature stands out, such as Kyra kyralina y Uncle Anghel by Panait Istrati, Women by Mihail Sebastian, The novel of the myopic adolescent y Gaudeamus by Mircea Eliade. She has translated titles by authors such as Mircea Cărtărescu, Tatiana Ţîbuleac, Dora Pavel, and several plays by Gianina Cărbunariu into Spanish. In 2017 she was awarded a scholarship for literary creation by the Romanian Cultural Institute and in 2022 she received the award for the best translation of Romanian literature for the volume essential poetry by Cărtărescu (2022), by the Romanian Cultural Institute. It was also awarded the prize for the best translation of the year by Openbank Santander and the magazine Vanity Fair in 2023 by The right wing. The jury highlighted that this is the first time that a translation into Roman has been awarded this award and argued that in Theodoros“author and translator build a world and a language of their own, with paragraphs on the verge of overflowing, but always anchored in an always measured use of musicality and poetic prose.”
In 2024, the winners were Mercedes Corral, with the National Award for the Work of a Translator, and Agata Orzeszec and Ernesto Rubio with the National Award for Best Translation for their work with the work The books of Jacob, de Olga Tokarczuk.