Excellence Grants
Austėja Merkevičiūtė, Vilnius, Lithuania
Excellence Grants
Looren Excellence Grant 2025
German, Persian > Lithuanian
Austėja Merkevičiūtė is a literary translator from German and Persian into Lithuanian. She has also worked as an actor and an editor alongside her translation career. She has translated works by Stefan Zweig and Elias Canetti, among others, and non-fiction by Sigmund Freud, C. G. Jung, Viktor Frankl and Alfred Adler. In recent years, she has also translated poetry by Ali Abdollahi, Sohrab Sepehri and Shokoofer Azar from Persian. Austėja Merkevičiūtė was awarded a Looren Excellence Grant to work on Gerhard Meier’s Amrainer Tetralogie.
Sergej Moreino, Riga, Latvia
Excellence Grants
Looren Excellence Grant 2025
German, Polish > Latvian
German, Polish, Latvian > Russian
Sergej Moreino is a writer and translator of poetry, prose, essays and literary criticism. He translates from German, Polish and Latvian into Russian, and from German and Russian into Latvian. He also runs translation workshops and works as an editor. He has translated many German-language poets, including Johannes Bobrowski, Eberhard Häfner, Ulf Stolterfoht, Klaus Merz, Mariella Mehr, alongside Polish poets and prose writers such as Roman Honet, Wojciech Pestka, Bruno Schulz and Czesław Miłosz. He was awarded a 2025 excellence grant for his translation of Kurt Marti’s poetry collection Hannis Äpfel into Latvian and Russian for a trilingual edition.
Thi Tuoi Nguyen, Hanoi, Vietnam
Excellence Grants
Regula Renschler Excellence Grant 2025
French > Vietnamese
Thi Tuoi Nguyen works as a literary translator from French to Vietnamese. Her publications include titles by Hector Malot, Georges Simenon, Laurence Devillairs, Olivier Norek and Amélie Nothomb. At Translation House Looren, she will be working on Joël Dicker’s Un animal sauvage, for which she has been awarded a Regula Renschler Excellence Grant.
Sandra Tamele, Maputo, Mozambique
Excellence Grants
Looren Excellence Grant 2025
Italian, English > Portuguese
Portuguese > English
Sandra Tamele is a literary translator from English and Italian into (Mozambican) Portuguese. Alongside her translation work, she heads the publishing house Editora Trinta Zero Nove in Maputo. She has translated writing by Wole Soyinka, Makena Onejrika, Yara Nakahanda Monteiro and Niccolò Amaniti. Sandra Tamele was awarded a Looren Excellence Grant to translate Sabina Zanini’s A una voce from Italian into Portuguese.
Tess Lewis, New York, USA
Excellence Grants
Max Geilinger Excellence Grant
German, French > English
Tess Lewis is a New York-based writer and translator from French and German into English. She has translated writing by Walter Benjamin, Jonas Lüscher, Klaus Merz, Lutz Seiler, Anne Weber, Montaigne and Philippe Jaccottet. She is a former Guggenheim fellow, was a Berlin Prize Fellow at the American Academy in Berlin and a Scholar of Note at the American Library in Paris. Tess Lewis is an advisory editor for The Hudson Review and has curated several editions of New York’s Festival Neue Literatur for German literature published in English. At Translation House Looren, she will be working on Judith Keller’s novel Wilde Manöver.
Ján Jambor, Sučany, Slowakei
Excellence Grants
Deutsch > Slowakisch
Ján Jambor übersetzt vorwiegend zeitgenössische Schweizer Literatur aus dem Deutschen ins Slowakische. Er hat bisher eine Vielzahl von Peter Stamms Romanen ins Slowakische übersetzt, ebenso Texte von Hansjörg Schneider, Yusuf Yesilöz sowie Kinderbücher von Kathrin Schärer. Im Rahmen seiner Habilitation hat er sich intensiv mit Peter Stamms Agnes auseinandergesetzt und wurde nun mit dem Roman Weit über das Land mit einem Looren-Exzellenzstipendium ausgezeichnet.
Longge Jin, Guilin, China
Excellence Grants
Französisch > Chinesisch
Longge Jin hat als freischaffender Übersetzer sowohl französische Klassiker wie Guy de Maupassant, Alphonse Daudet und Gustave Flaubert wie auch Boris Vian, Irène Némirovsky und zahlreiche Romane von Patrick Modiano ins Chinesische übersetzt. Für seine Übersetzung von Charles Ferdinand Ramuz’ Roman La Beauté sur la terre wurde er mit einem Looren-Exzellenzstipendium ausgezeichnet.
Katarína Széherová, Bratislava, Slowakei
Excellence Grants
Deutsch > Slowakisch
Katarína Széherová übersetzt aus dem Deutschen ins Slowakische und hat unter anderem Romane von Günter Grass, Robert Menasse, Monika Maron, Alain Claude Sulzer sowie zahlreiche deutschsprachige Sachbücher ins Slowakische gebracht. Mit Carl Spittelers Roman Imago übersetzt sie einen Anfang des 20. Jahrhunderts erschienenen Roman, für den sie mit einem Looren-Exzellenzstipendium ausgezeichnet wurde.
Tansulu Rakhimbayeva, Astana, Kasachstan
Excellence Grants
Carl Holenstein-Exzellenzstipendium
Deutsch > Kasachisch
Tansulu Rakhimbayeva ist freischaffende Literaturübersetzerin aus dem Deutschen ins Kasachische und aus dem Kasachischen ins Deutsche. Sie übersetzt vorwiegend Kinder- und Jugendliteratur und hat unter anderem Bücher von Anja Tuckermann und Michael Ende übersetzt. Für ihre Übersetzung von Gottfried Kellers Novellen «Kleider machen Leute» wurde sie mit einem Carl Holenstein-Exzellenzstipendium ausgezeichnet.
Todorka Mineva, Sofia, Bulgarien
Excellence Grants
Regula Renschler-Exzellenzstipendium
Französisch, Russisch, Englisch > Bulgarisch
Todorka Mineva arbeitet vorwiegend als Literaturübersetzerin aus dem Französischen ins Bulgarische und besitzt einen eigenen Verlag in Sofia. Sie hat unter anderem André Gide, Jean-Paul Sartre, Jacques Derrida, Marguerite Duras und Albert Camus sowie zahlreiche andere französische und Schweizer Autoren ins Bulgarische übertragen. Mit Etienne Bariliers Essaysammlung «Exil et musique» wurde sie mit einem Regula Renschler-Exzellenzstipendium ausgezeichnet.
Regina López Muñoz, Logroño, Spain
Excellence Grants
Excellence grant
French, Italian, Portuguese, English > Spanish
Regina López Muñoz is a literary translator from French, Italian, Portuguese and English into Spanish. Her translations include books by Jean Genet, Maria van Rysselberghe, Marie Darrieussecq, Éric Vuillard, Frédéric Pajak and Thierry Thomas, and she also leads translation workshops. At Translation House Looren, she is working on Alice Rivaz’s La Paix des ruches, for which she has received a Looren Excellence Grant.
Photo: Janine Messerli
Bojan Savić Ostojić, Stara Pazova, Serbia
Excellence Grants
Regula Renschler Excellence Grant 2023
French > Serbian
Bojan Savić Ostojić was born in Belgrade in 1983. He translates from French to Serbian and writes novels and short stories. He has given a Serbian voice to writers including Annie Ernaux, Jacques Derrida, Henri Michaux, Emmanuel Bove and Nicolas Bouvier, along with other Swiss writers such as Agota Kristof and Jean Starobinski. He has been awarded a Regula Renschler Excellence Grant to work on Nicolas Bouvier’s Chronique japonaise.
Photo: Steven Wyss
Emad Elsayed Mansour Omar, Cairo, Egypt
Excellence Grants
Carl Holenstein Excellence Grant 2023
English, German > Arabic
Emad Elsayed Mansour Omar was born in Cairo in 1983. He works mainly as a literary translator from English to Arabic, and has translated G.K. Chesterton, Mary Shelley and George MacDonald. He has been awarded a Carl Holenstein Excellence Grant to work on the Swiss-English novel The Bells by Richard Harvell.
Photo: Janine Messerli, Translation House Looren
Pablo Ingberg, Buenos Aires, Argentina
Excellence Grants
Looren Excellence Grant 2023
Italian, English, Greek, Latin > Spanish
Pablo Ingberg has translated well over a hundred books of all genres into Spanish, including such classic authors as Sappho, Sophocles, Aristophanes, Virgil, Catullus, Shakespeare (half of his Complete Works), Austen, Poe, Melville, Whitman, Conrad, Wharton, Woolf, Joyce, Eliot, Shaw, Orwell, Pirandello, and contemporary writers such as John Edgar Wideman, Francesco Tonucci and the Ticinese Alberto Nessi and Fabio Pusterla. He has also published nine books of his own, of poetry, fiction, children’s poems and essays on translation. He received a Looren Excellence Grant to produce a Spanish version of La Terra e il suo satellite by Matteo Terzaghi, whose Ufficio proiezioni luminose he also translated.
Photo: Janine Messerli
Francesca Cosi und Alessandra Repossi, Pistoia, Italien
Excellence Grants
Max Geilinger Excellence Grant 2023
English, French, Spanish > Italian
Francesca Cosi and Alessandra Repossi have been co-translating a quattro mani for seventeen years, rendering prose, poetry and non-fiction from English, French and Spanish into Italian. They are the Italian translators of a number of renowned Anglophone writers, including Virginia Woolf, John Steinbeck, Jack London, Mark Twain, George Orwell and Charles Baxter. Alessandra Repossi and Francesca Cosi also regularly run seminars for emerging and beginning translators. They have been granted the Max Geilinger Excellence Grant 2023 to work on the English writer H.G. Wells’s nine short stories as yet unpublished in Italian, including ‘The Queer Story of Brownlow’s Newspaper’, ‘The Thing in no. 7’, and ‘A Vision of the Past’. They are working on their translation project together at Translation House Looren in June.
Christine Hengevoss, Bitter, Germany
Excellence Grants
Looren Excellence Grant 2023
Russian > German
Christine Hengevoss was born in Frankfurt/Oder, East Germany, in 1956. She is a literary translator from Russian to German. Hengevoss has translated poetry by Gavriil Derzhavin and Nikolay Nekrasov and prose by Elena Makarova, Olga Slavnikova and Tatjana Geringas. She has been awarded a Looren Excellence Grant for her work on the poems of the Swiss-Russian writer Sergey Zavyalov