Doctor's literary skill translates to Premier's Award

Dr Ian Johnston is congratulated by the Minister for the Arts, George Souris.

A Hobart doctor with a passion for language and translation has won this year’s Community Relations Commission’s Translation Prize at the NSW Premier’s Literary Awards announced in Sydney tonight.

Dr Ian Johnston has won the prize which is jointly sponsored by the Sydney Branch of Pen International, the worldwide association of writers which defends freedom of expression and fights for the rights of people harassed, imprisoned or murdered for what they write.

Congratulating tonight’s prize-winner, the Chair of the Commission, Stepan Kerkyasharian said: “Dr. Ian Johnston is a super-star of translation. He works in fields where few of us could dream   of entering - classical Chinese and Classical Greek. Yet, he renders ancient works from those languages in English which makes them accessible to all and eagerly sought out by scholars.

"Australia, with his millions of bi-lingual and tri-lingual citizens ought to be a world leader in translation but we also have practical needs for this art form.

“Because we have a continuing migration from non-English speaking source countries, there is always a need for day-to-day translation of documents and of official proceedings, to help the settlement process for new arrivals and to oil the wheels of justice and commerce.

"But on a higher plane we also have a need to know the histories and cultures of our fellow Australians. We ought to be encouraging the study and the love of other languages and of other stories from other places.

"People like Dr Johnston are helping us do that and "I am very pleased to see that the judges for this prize described Dr Johnston as a world-class translator whose work is not just scholarly but beautiful, because translation is not just a mechanical process.

The Community Relations Commission is one of the largest providers of translation, in both written and spoken form, on earth. Our prize, as part of the Premier’s Literary Award, is  designed to foster the appreciation of the translation  profession which is both a key tool of government, business and the law but also purveyor of culture, philosophy, science and history from every sector of mankind’, Mr Kerkyasharian said.