Policy
Rights and Permissions
What we ask of you, what we do with your work, and what has to happen before anything is published.
1. What you submit
You may submit an original translation of up to 1,000 words from any source text.
An existing translation of the same text does not disqualify your entry, so long as your version is genuinely your own work.
Submit only the corresponding source passage — not an entire book or collection — along with complete bibliographic information and any copyright information known to you.
2. Permission is not required to enter
Permission from the rights holder is not a condition of entry.
This is possible because of how narrowly the material is used. Submissions and source passages are used solely for confidential, noncommercial award administration and evaluation. They are not published, circulated, or displayed at this stage.
3. Who can see your submission
Each submission is accessible only to NULTA administrators and its assigned judge.
Judges may not reproduce, distribute, publish, quote, upload, or use the materials for any other purpose. Access is revoked after evaluation, and judges are required to delete any downloaded or locally retained copies.
4. Deletion
Nonwinning submissions and their source passages are deleted after the award’s administrative review period.
5. Publication of winning translations
Winning an award does not guarantee publication, and the award is not contingent upon publication.
Before publishing a winning translation or a copyrighted source passage, NULTA and any publishing partner will obtain any permission determined to be necessary from the applicable copyright holder. The copyright holder may be the author, publisher, estate, agent, or another rights holder.
If publication permission cannot be obtained, NULTA may still confer and announce the award without reproducing the translation or the source text publicly.
6. The award ceremony
The same rule governs the annual online ceremony. A translation or source passage will not be read aloud, displayed, or otherwise reproduced publicly unless the necessary permission has been obtained — a public reading is a use of the underlying work, not an exception to it.
An award can always be announced and conferred without reproducing the work itself.
7. Your ownership
NULTA does not take publication rights to any translation submitted to it. Your translation remains yours, whether or not it wins, and you are free to publish or submit it elsewhere.
Questions
If something here is unclear, or your situation does not fit these rules, write to us before the deadline rather than guessing. See Contact.
Last updated July 2026.