Javier Altayó receives the Marcela de Juan Award for his translation of a science fiction book in Chinese

The dean explained that the jury of the award highlighted that Altayó's translation "not only resolves the linguistic difficulties" of Liu's work but also responds to the "challenge of adapting to diversity" represented by the collection of stories in the book. Dean Škrabec also highlighted the work carried out by the Nova publishing house in publishing the author's works. Sílvia Fustegueres, a member of the TXICC, highlighted the rise of Chinese fantasy literature and the "special moment" that translation from Chinese to Spanish is currently experiencing: "there are more and more direct translations", she declared, and literature in Chinese "is no longer perceived as something distant" but rather as "plural and modern". Fustegueres recalled that the Marcela de Juan is "an award for the translator, not the book", and explained that "translation from Chinese is not easy because it requires linguistic competence that is difficult to achieve".

Javier Altayó, who connected online to the event from Taiwan, thanked the faculty for the award, recalling that it was the centre where he had studied and dedicating a few special words to Sara Rovira, his Chinese teacher during his university studies. He also paid tribute to the author of the book, of whom he has already translated six works. According to him, the difficulty of translating Sostener el cielo lies in the multiple "cultural and historical concepts" that run through the work rather than in the scientific ones, although it is, as he said, a work of "hard science fiction" characterised by the great "scientific rigour" with which it is written. Altayó assured that the Marcela de Juan Award is "a special award" because it is awarded "by colleagues" and he also highlighted the importance of the commitment translators have to readers.