Writer Tekkatho Sein Tin was a winner in the national literary awards.

Myanmar’s most prestigious national literary awards, organised by the National Literary Award Scrutinising Committee under the Ministry of Information, were recently announced on November 27.

In total, one lifetime achievement award and eleven national awards were decided on. The awards will be formally presented at a ceremony on December 28 in Nay Pyi Taw.

The national literary awards have been running since 1949 and was originally called the Sarpay Beikman 1000 (Kyat) Award. The lifetime achievement award is a fairly recent invention. This year it has been awarded to Saya Hsinbyugyun Aung Thein, who is the seventh person to receive it.

U Myo Thant (whose penname is Saya Mg Su Shin), is a popular writer and former chairman of the Myanmar writers and journalists association stated “There are twelve types of national literary award and we have chosen eleven for 2007. Each winner will get around 300,000 Kyat, while the winner of the lifetime achievement award receives twice this amount.”

Although the judges decided on twelve awards they still feel there is some room for improvement in some genres.

“We find that children’s literature, youth literature and drama literature could all be improved as there are few writers engaged in these three subjects even though readers would like to read these forms of literature,” said Saya Mg Su Shin.

It hasn’t always been this way. Drama literature was very popular around 1920 but declined with the growth of the film industry.

Saya Mg Su Shin continued: “As far as I am concerned, drama in the form of one act plays can convey an effective message to people through performance and recitation. We could use the drama in schools to convey messages to young people through performance. This would be good fun for young people too”.

Writer Tekkatho Sein Tin was awarded in the belles-letters genre with his book “Biography of Grandma U Zun”, a woman who established a number of homes for the aged around the country, including Hninzigon Home for the Aged in Yangon, which is this year celebrating its Diamond Jubilee.

“I want to give good samples to youths about famous leaders and other honourable people in Myanmar, which is why I have been writing biographical reviews.

When writing biographical books, writing about people who passed away is much more difficult then writing about people who are still alive. I have to travel a lot to collect information from different people; it is not a kind of literature which could be filled up with my own ideas alone”.

Although literature for young people is not particularly strong in Myanmar, writer and doctor Linkaryikyaw who won the Youth Literature award for his work “Voice of a crane’s flapping” (Kyokyar Taungpan Khathan), is trying to push the genre. As well as writing fiction he also writes medical features for the magazine Doctor Ye` (Child Specialist).

“I admit our outputs are influenced by our writers’ characters, however I always try to create different characters in my work although I have not got much time to collect knowledge from fields other than medicine. I get raw material from my juniors and young doctors about their love, life and struggle in their work. So you can say that their characters also play out in my scripts,” said Linkaryikyaw.

This is certainly true of his work “Voice of a crane’s flapping”, in which older people provide important role models, guiding people away from self-interest to work for the common good.

“I emulate them; I always try to be like them as far as I can. I want our juniors to have goodwill like them. This is the vital element of “Voice of a crane’s flapping”. It is a work of fiction in which a middle aged doctor longs to communicate a message to his juniors. Doctors always want to achieve the best as they are the cleverest students in Myanmar. But we can not accomplish all our desires. I see our seniors who are thinking their whole life is successful by helping others”.

Readers of translated books are few in Myanmar and such books are often not commercially feasible. Nonetheless Saya Tin Maung Myint has chosen to work in this field and translates classic foreign novels as a means of sharing knowledge.

This year Saya Tin Maung Myint won the translation genre award for the book “Black dream, green love” (A place for Kathy), written by Henry Denker)
“To be a good translator, you should not only be good at translating but also the usage of the local language very well. To improve your skill at translating you should read many translated books, and also original books written by the original authors. To translate well it’s essential to understand the message the author wants to communicate to the reader. You should put emotion into your work just like the original writer.”