The 2026 Fosse Prize - Read the Winner's Acceptance Speech

Acceptance speech on receiving the Fosse Prize 2026
Paula Stevens – 23 April 2026, The Royal Palace, Oslo

Your Royal Highnesses, patrons of the Fosse Lecture and the Fosse Prize for Translators, minister of culture and equality Lubna Jaffery, Jon Fosse, family, friends, colleagues and all those present.
It is a trembling translator that stands before you today, overjoyed and filled with pride, humble yet somewhat overwhelmed: so many wonderful words of praise! I feel the need to pinch myself to be sure this can really be intended for me, as if I am floating on air. It is an incredible honour to be awarded the Fosse Prize for Translators; it is the crowning glory upon my work, my life as a translator, and is a dream that has become a reality. I offer my deepest thanks to the Fosse Prize jury.

It is very unusual for a translator to find themselves the centre of attention in this way: Paul Auster once said ‘Translators are the shadow heroes of literature’. I can’t say that I feel like a hero exactly, but what he says about the shadows, that rings true. Roy Jacobsen’s The Unseen is a novel about the Barrøy family who live on a tiny, remote island in the north of Norway, they toil and moil but they never give up – in complete solitude, unseen, living in the shadows. If ever someone had written a book about us, translators, it could have been given the very same title.

Unseen because most people never give a thought to how much of that which we read or hear each day has been translated. Newspaper articles, textbooks, instruction manuals, annoying internet ads – and, of course, most importantly, literature: much of this is originally written in another language. Without translators, libraries and bookshelves would be woefully empty. They would also be sorely lacking in substance, because without translations, our authors would be a great deal less inspired by foreign authors – without translations, we would be just as isolated as Jacobsen’s Barrøy family. Translators are not simply ferrymen between languages, but also, to paraphrase Susan Sontag, a bridge between cultures and ideas that allows us to become acquainted with the thoughts of others, to immerse ourselves in them, to understand them, all of which might be more important now than ever before.

Unseen, too, because we work in isolation, on an island, if you will: at home, alone, no colleagues or small talk by the coffee machine. But being unseen in this way, at least for me, is perhaps not such a bad thing. Because the act of translation is not simply one of sitting at a computer and typing out words, but rather, of throwing oneself and all that one has into the author’s universe, to quote Sontag once again, all sense of integrity, responsibility, fidelity, boldness and humility – and I would also add creativity. It requires a mental and physical movement that does not always tolerate the cold light of day. The translator must be a linguistic contortionist well-versed in the style and rhythm, but also in the characters if one is to give them a voice, quite literally – something that occasionally requires you to turn your hand to a little acting. I read dialogue and other such fragments aloud to ensure that they sound just right, that the tone and rhythm work, I might even break into song if the text requires it of me; I walk around gesticulating wildly, indulging in the kind of behaviour that the ‘real world’ or any office environment would greet with disbelief and reward with banishment to the broom cupboard at best.

A translator reflects, rejects, discards, deletes, skips, struggles, alters, anguishes and alters once again – all on the hunt for the right word, the right tone, the right rhythm, at times obsessed, day and night, with everything you hear or see or read reduced to one question and one question only: can I use this in my translation? Translation is not a part-time job; it is not even a full-time job: translation is a way of life.

But what a wonderful way of life it is, and what a wonderful life full stop! Or rather, several lives, because whenever a new book comes along, you step into that new book’s world and embark upon a parallel existence.

I would therefore most importantly like to thank ‘my’ authors; thank you for the noteworthy, beautiful books you have written, thank you for your patience when I have come to you with questions. Thank you for the confidence you have shown in me, thank you for your friendship – I’ve known some of you for over forty years! – and thank you for allowing me to be your translator. It has been – and is – an incredible honour and a joy.

Thank you to those who believed in me when I came to Norway as a rather inexperienced, naïve translator. Sadly, I cannot list everyone by name, but I do wish to give a special mention to the incomparable Kristin Brudevoll, and to Eva Lie-Nielsen, both of whom were a great support to me when I first embarked upon my career.

Thank you also to my supporters in the Netherlands throughout the years: the Royal Norwegian Embassy in the Hague, Inger Fokkens in particular, and Suze van der Poll from the University of Amsterdam. And thank you to all of the Dutch publishers who have been both willing and sufficiently bold to publish so many Norwegian titles, whether classics or debut authors.

And to NORLA – without you I’d have given up long ago. The support of NORLA is indispensable to me and to all translators of Norwegian literature abroad. The work you do is unmatched internationally, and whenever I find myself in Oslo, you have become my family, my home! Thank you so much!

Thank you to the Norwegian government, the National Library of Norway, and not least to Jon Fosse himself – for having established this translation prize to bring visibility to our work, which also serves to make translation a more attractive option for younger translators choosing perhaps not quite the oldest profession in the world, but at the very least one of the most important.

Thank you to my family: Paul, Eva, Laura and Adnan. If you had not accepted the fact that I often disappear completely in my own book bubble and enter into what can almost be described as intellectual infidelity with a Norwegian author entirely unknown to you; if you hadn’t all endured my interrogations before breakfast along the lines of ‘if I were to do this, what would you say in Dutch?’, then I wouldn’t be standing where I am today. Endless, endless, enormous thanks to you all for being there for me throughout the years, and to this day.

One final thanks must go to those of you here who have sat through this slightly breathless speech. To quote my dear colleague Hinrich Schmidt-Henkel, last year’s prize-winner: today I am the world’s happiest translator! Thank you!

Watch the full ceremony here
(available until May 7. A version subtitled in English will be available approx. mid-May).