The translator, writer and linguist Albert Jané Riera (Barcelona, ??1930) has been awarded the 56th Honorary Award for Catalan Letters awarded by Òmnium Cultural.
Jané has focused her professional activity on the study and teaching of language and children’s and youth literature, although she has also written poetry and her career is closely linked to ‘Cavall fort’, a magazine of which she was director between 1979 and 1997.
Jané has collaborated on the grammar ‘Signe’, has written manuals such as ‘Essential Grammar of the Catalan Language’ and ‘Diccionari Catalan de sinónimos y los dietarios ‘Tal dia farà l’any’ and ‘The Days and the Places’, and is translator of children’s and youth works.
In total he has published about sixty books, more than 200 translated works and more than 150 albums of translated comics, such as the series ‘Els Barrufets’ or ‘Aquil·les Taló’, traditional stories such as ‘El soldat de plom’ (1983), ‘ La Caputxeta vermella’ (1984) or film scripts such as ‘La Ventafocs’, the first children’s film to be translated into Catalan.
The jury highlighted that Jané, who received the Creu de Sant Jordi in 1990, is “an undisputed reference in the field of language.” “He has worked tirelessly for the Catalan language, with essential contributions in the field of children’s and youth literature, as well as in translations and adaptations of stories, legends, fables, fables, popular narratives and comics, which have educated children and young people. in reading in Catalan”.
Jané has seen his professional career recognized with different awards. In 1980 he obtained the Eduard Artells Prize, awarded by the Society of Language and Literature, a subsidiary of the Institut d’Estudis Catalans. In 1990 he was awarded the Sant Jordi Cross by the Generalitat de Catalunya; in 1997 the National Prize for Written Journalism and, in 1998, the Poetry Prize of the Parc Taulí de Sabadell.
In 2000 he joined the Institut d’Estudis Catalans and, since then, he has been part of the Grammar and Lexicographic commissions. He has also combined this work with regular collaboration in the magazines ‘Lengua Nacional’ and ‘Cavall Fort’. His adaptation of the ‘Odyssey’ received, in 2009, the Serra d’Or Critics’ Prize for youth fiction.
In 2010 he received the Pompeu Fabra Award for the projection of the Catalan language and, in 2017, the Special Jury Award for the Martí Gasull Platform for the Language Award, for his role in the construction of a collective children’s imagination in the Catalan language, and for his academic contribution as a grammarian in Termcat and IEC. In addition, he is an honorary member of the Catalan Language Writers Association.
