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

You must also have registered by December 5, 2026, which is a month before the submission deadline. See Registration below.

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.

Registration

Registration closes December 5, 2026 at 11:59 p.m. ET, a month before the submission deadline. We will only ask for registration this inaugural cycle, as it will allow us to gauge participation in each language and category. Registering takes about a minute, and it does not commit you to submitting.

Register through the registration form(opens a Google Form in a new tab). You will be asked which language you plan to translate from and whether you are entering prose or poetry; neither answer is binding, and you can change your mind before you submit.

If you miss the December 5, 2026 deadline, write to us before the submission deadline rather than assuming the answer is no.

Source languages

Your translation must be into English from one of these 8 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 per award. You may enter both awards, with up to 1,000 English words in each category. 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. A co-translated entry counts for each of you in the award it is entered in, so neither may enter that award again — but either of you may still enter the other award, alone or with a different co-translator. 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. Line breaks, stanza divisions, indentation, and any spacing reach the judge exactly as you send it. Administrators make sure that identifying details are removed and that entries are always presented standardly, so there’s no need to fuss over fonts or margins. 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.

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 registration form(opens a Google Form in a new tab) first.

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