During the opening event for this year's North Wales International Poetry Festival in Bangor last night (17.10.2013), the winner of our Translation Challenge 2013 (English category) was announced. The challenge was to translate a selection of poems by Cuban poet, Víctor Rodríguez Núñez into English. Ned Thomas adjudicated.

The winner, Stuart Mudie, is a Scot in Paris. Before coming to France, he spent several years living and working in Spain, first in Galicia and later in Catalonia. While his day job sees him spending his time writing about computers, he is also a lyricist who works with several up-and-coming French bands that sing in English.

"I only took part in the Translation Challenge for the mental exercise of translating a more creative piece of work than any of the material I've been called upon to translate professionally in the past," Stuart explained, "and I certainly never expected to win this prize. After all, translating poetry doesn't really use the same set of skills as working on computer reference guides. I was also inspired by one of my poetic heroes, the late Scots Makar Edwin Morgan, whose translations into Scots and English helped me discover some of the work of many poets I would never otherwise have read."

Earlier this year in August, we awarded Mererid Hopwood with a Bardic Staff for her translations of the same poems into Welsh.

Read Ned Thomas's adjudication here.