Claudia Cabrera is a literary translator and interpreter. She began translating literary works, including plays, novels, and short stories, in the 1990s. Her most recent project is the new translation of Anna Seghers’ exile literature, who lived in exile in Mexico during the 1940s. Claudia Cabrera’s translations of Seghers’ Transit and La séptima cruz (The Seventh Cross) have already been published. Since 2010, Claudia Cabrera has been a guest at several international literature centres for working residencies. She has also initiated several ViceVersa literary translation workshops for German and Spanish in Germany and Mexico. She studied Hispanic literature and Romance and German philology in Mexico City and Göttingen. Claudia Cabrera is a founding member and president of Ametli (Asociación Mexi-cana de Traductores Literarios, A.C.), the Mexican association of literary translators. Her translation work was honoured in 2020 with the Premio Bellas Artes de Traducción Literaria Margarita Michelena for her translation of Arnold Zweig’s Das Beil von Wandsbek.
Justification of the award
Claudia Cabrera is considered one of Mexico’s best theatre and literary translators from German. She has translated over 60 novels, plays, and non-fiction books into Mexican Spanish since 1994, including works by Rainer Werner Fassbinder, Julia Franck, Cornelia Funke, Franz Kafka, Heiner Müller, Robert Musil, Silke Scheuermann, and, most recently, Anna Seghers. With her impressive translation work, Claudia Cabrera has made a significant contribution to the popularity of German-language literature and authors in Mexico and Central America. Her commitment to the exchange of translators from Mexico and Germany is also tireless, as demonstrated by the ViceVersa translation workshops she initiated. She is constantly working to increase the visibility, professionalisation, and networking of translators in Central America and fosters German-Mexican cultural dialogue through her work.
