Frequently Asked Questions

At the time of submission, you must be 18 or older and enrolled as an undergraduate at a two- or four-year college or university in the United States. You are welcome regardless of your major or whether you are a part-time or full-time student.

We normally confirm enrollment using an official email address issued by your institution. If your school does not issue one or yours does not work, please write to us so we can verify your enrollment another way rather than turn you away.

No. Everyone is welcome. Whether your major is literature or literally anything else, we would love to see your submission.

No. Eligibility depends on where you study, not on citizenship or visa status. If you are enrolled as an undergraduate at a U.S. college or university, you can enter — including international students.

If you are studying abroad for the term but still enrolled at your U.S. institution, you are eligible.

Part-time students qualify. Course load makes no difference, and neither does your major or year. Online and low-residency undergraduate programs at U.S. institutions count too.

Dual-enrolled high school students do not qualify, even if they are already 18. Entry is limited to people enrolled as undergraduates.

Non-degree and visiting students do not qualify. You need to be studying toward an undergraduate degree.

Two cases depend on timing. If you are graduating during the cycle, you are eligible as long as you are enrolled at the time you submit. If you are on leave, it depends on whether your institution still counts you as enrolled.

If your situation is not obviously covered, email us before the deadline and we will tell you plainly. Nobody is disqualified for asking.

Not this cycle. Participants must be enrolled as an undergraduate at the time of submission.

If you are a graduate student, we would still love to hear from you — see For Faculty and Translators, where we are recruiting readers.

Only if you are enrolled at a U.S. college or university. Entry is limited to U.S. institutions for now; we are considering Canadian institutions in a future cycle.

Most likely not this cycle :( This is the restriction we like least. The list is limited because we can only accept a language once we have a judge who reads it well enough to evaluate your work fairly.

That said, write to us about the language you would like to translate from. If there is enough interest, we will try to find a judge for it. Tell us which language you’d like to see added when you join the interest list.

Literary work.

• NULTA Prose Award — Essays, novel excerpts, short fiction, lyrical prose, drama, or another form of prose.
• NULTA Poetry Award — A single poem, a sequence of poems, prose poetry, or another form of poetry.

The source may come from anywhere: a book, a manuscript, an archive, a periodical. What matters is that you send the source passage your translation corresponds to, along with its bibliographic information — the author, title, publication or collection it appeared in, date, and publisher.

Up to 1,000 words in English. There is no minimum — a single short piece is a perfectly good entry, and strong entries are not at a disadvantage for being brief.

We count the body text of your translation. If you are entering several short poems or any other collection of works, the total across all of them counts.

Titles, epigraphs, and your bibliographic information do not count, and neither does the source text.

PDF or Word document preferred. Please keep formatting legible and straightforward — there’s no need to fuss over details, since all documents are standardized before they reach a judge.

Please keep your name, institution, and personal information out of the actual file itself.

Yes. A translation may be by one person or by two co-translators. Both must be eligible undergraduates, and only one of you submits the entry on behalf of both.

If a co-translated entry wins, the prize is split evenly between the two translators.

Yes. Include the source passage your translation corresponds to, along with the author, title, date, publisher, and any copyright information you know.

If you are having trouble finding the source passage online, contact us and we will try to help.

No. Your translation must not have been published before — in a journal, a class publication, a blog, or anywhere online.

The source text can be published; your translation of it cannot be.

No. Well-translated texts get translated again — that is how translation works.

What matters is that your version is genuinely your own work, not an edit or paraphrase of an existing translation. We screen submissions for plagiarism.

No. Translations produced with AI are not eligible.

We screen submissions for heavy AI use, and finalists are invited to an informal interview about how and why they made their translation decisions.

We contact you before anything is decided.

We explain specifically what raised the question, and you can respond however is useful — sharing drafts, notes, marked-up source text, or the dictionaries and glossaries you worked from. A flag from a software tool is never on its own a basis for a decision.

If your entry is withdrawn from consideration, you may ask us to reconsider once. A second organizer who was not part of the original decision reviews it.

Submissions are final once sent, so read yours through before you send it. If something is wrong, email us before the deadline and we will fix it.

You can also withdraw your entry entirely at any time by emailing us.

No. Because your submission stays confidential, permission from the rights holder is not a condition of entry.

Permission only matters for a winner, and only if the translation is going to be published. Our full Rights and Permissions policy explains this in detail.

Only NULTA administrators and your assigned judge will read the entry.

Judges may not reproduce, distribute, publish, quote, or upload what they read; their access is revoked once evaluation is finished; and they must delete any copies they downloaded. The full disclosure is in the Privacy Policy.

Winning does not guarantee publication. If you would like to be published, we will gladly work with you to seek copyright approval and find a venue for the translation.

Your submission is read anonymously — administrators remove identifying information before it reaches a judge. You can help by keeping your name, school, and student ID out of the translation file itself.

Judges are faculty, translators, graduate students, and other language professionals who read your source language, alongside NULTA’s organizers.

Each entry is read by one judge, who reads your translation against your source passage and gives it a mark. There is no rubric — the judge also writes a short paragraph explaining their reasoning. If two finalists in the same award finish level, a second reader who has not seen either one reads both and breaks the tie.

Top-scoring translators are then invited to an informal interview about why and how they made their translation decisions, which helps judges determine winners.

Finalists are contacted on May 20, 2027 to arrange interviews. Winners are notified on June 20, 2027, and the online ceremony follows on June 26, 2027.

If you are not selected as a finalist, we will let you know by June 20, 2027 as well.

• NULTA Prose Award — NULTA Prose Award Winner, $500; Distinguished Finalist, $250; Special Recognition, $50 (×3)
• NULTA Poetry Award — NULTA Poetry Award Winner, $500; Distinguished Finalist, $250; Special Recognition, $50 (×3)