AATSEEL (Association of American Teachers of Slavic and East European Languages), the largest professional association in the USA, has awarded Andrew Kahn (Oxford) and Irina Reyfman (Columbia) its 2021 AATSEEL Book Prize in the category of Literary Translation. The book was selected from an original long-list of over 30 works.
The second part of the award citation reads as follows: "It is only the second translation, and the first to take Radishchev’s language seriously, as part of his artistry, rather than a defect. In Journey, Radishchev varies his language from easily readable vernacular to dense passages that are barely comprehensible to native speakers. Here Radishchev uses an artificially archaic Church-Slavonic idiom, with ornate syntax and neologisms that increase the moral weight of important passages and force the reader to pay attention. The translators opted to translate the difficulties Radishchev’s Russian poses into mostly readable, accessible English, with occasional bumps. Radishchev also included excerpts from his long ode, Liberty, which they translate into appropriate meter and rhyme. The translators provide an expert introduction that ranges widely, yet is a thorough overview of the context for such a problematic major work. This seems to be among those translations where the translation clarifies the original and is useful to all readers – scholars, teachers, students, and general readers. The Journey deserves to be much more widely read in English. This is the translation to introduce new readers to this historically important, timely plea to let the blinders fall from our eyes, transform our world and live up to our ideals."