The National Translation Award is given every year by the American Literary Translators Association to translators who have done an excellent job of bringing high-quality books into English. These translators show the original book's artistic qualities well. Since 2015, the award has been given in two categories: prose and poetry. Created in 1998, the NTA is the only prize for translating literary works into English that includes a complete review of the original text in its original language. As of 2025, the prize is worth $4,000, which is given to the translator. The award is usually given for translations of books that have never been translated before or for the first translations of older books. Some important translations of books that were translated before have also won. Winners and their books are highlighted at the annual meeting of the American Literary Translators Association.

The ALTA also gives other awards, including the Lucien Stryk Asian Translation Prize, the Italian Prose in Translation Award, the Spain-USA Foundation Translation Award, the ALTA First Translation Prize, and the ALTA Travel Fellowships.

Winners

In 2015, two separate National Translation Awards were given for the first time—one for poetry and one for prose.

Since 2009, the Lucien Stryk Asian Translation Prize has been awarded at the same time as the National Translation Award by ALTA. This prize honors the best translation into English of long Asian poetry books or texts from Zen Buddhism published in the previous year. It is named after Lucien Stryk, an American Zen poet and translator. The winning translator receives $6,000.

Since 2015, the Italian Prose in Translation Award (IPTA) has recognized the importance of modern Italian prose, including fiction and literary non-fiction, and encourages translating Italian works into English. This $5,000 prize is given each year to a translator of an Italian prose work (fiction or literary non-fiction) published in the previous year.