Eligibility & Rules

Who can enter

You are eligible for submission if you are:

Enrolled as an undergraduate at a two- or four-year college or university in the United States, studying toward a degree
18 or older at the time of submission
Able to submit from an official institution-issued email address

Part-time and full-time students are equally welcome, and your major, year, and credit load make no difference.

If your institution does not issue student email addresses, or yours is not working, write to us and we will verify your enrollment another way.

Who is not eligible

Students who have already graduated
Students enrolled in a graduate program
Dual-enrolled high school students, including those who are already 18
Non-degree and visiting students

If that is you and you would still like to be involved, we are recruiting readers.

Entry is currently limited to institutions in the United States. We are considering opening to Canadian institutions in a future cycle.

Situations that depend on the details

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. Online and low-residency undergraduate programs at U.S. institutions count.

If your situation is not obviously covered here, write to info@nulta.org before the deadline and we will help determine your eligibility.

Source languages

Your translation must be into English from one of these 10 languages:

The two awards

NULTA gives two awards, and every entry belongs to one of them.

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.

You choose which award your translation belongs to when you submit. Work that could sit in either category may be entered wherever you prefer to place it.

What you may translate

You can submit any type of literary work. Some examples include a poem, a sequence of poems, an essay, an excerpt from a novel, short fiction, lyrical prose, drama, or a fable.

The source text itself may come from anywhere — a book, a manuscript, an archive, a periodical. You will be asked to send the source passage that corresponds to your translation, along with its bibliographic details.

Limits

Length. Up to 1,000 words in English. There is no minimum — all lengths are judged on an equal playing field.
One submission per person. In that submission you may enter prose, poetry, or both.
Co-translation. 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.
Not previously published. The translation you submit 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.
File formats. 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.

Originality

Your translation must be your own work.

An existing published translation of the same text does not disqualify you. What is not permitted is producing your version by editing or paraphrasing someone else’s.

How we handle a question about authorship

Entries are reviewed by people. If something raises a question about authorship, we will contact the entrant for more details about their work.

If your entry is withdrawn, you may email us to reconsider, in which case a second organizer who was not a part of the original decision reviews the material and makes the final decision.

Prizes and changes to the cycle

The two awards give $1,800 in total; more information about this is available on the About page. Winners are contacted directly to arrange payment, and we will confirm the method and any paperwork with you then.

Submissions may close earlier than the published deadline if we receive far more entries than we can read carefully, and a cycle could be slightly postponed or modified. Any change to the opening date, the deadline, or the rest of the schedule is announced through the interest list first.

Read how to submit for what to prepare and how the process works.