(ANSA) - TRIESTE, 10 GEN - BELGRADE, JANUARY 9 - The board of directors of the Serbian PEN Center, chaired by writer Vida Ognjenovic, former ambassador of Serbia and Montenegro to Italy, has decided to give the "2020 Award for the translation of Serbian literature" to Italian Luca Vaglio, professor of Southern Slavic Languages ; and Literatures at "La Sapienza" University in Rome and literary translator. Vaglio has translated into Italian masterpieces of modern Serbian literature, such as Ivo Andrić, Miloš Crnjanski, Rastko Petrović, Vladan Desnica, Filip David.

Thanks to Luca Vaglio's translations of five works by the above mentioned Serbian authors, the Lit publishing group in Rome, which includes the publishers Elliot and Castelvecchi, was awarded the prestigious Dositej Obradović Prize in 2018.

Being a University professor and translator, Luca Vaglio has also focused on translating Italian literary texts into Serbian.

In this activity, he assists Sanela Mušija in the arduous and stimulating task of translating two novels by Vincenzo Consolo, "Retablo" and "Il sorriso dell'ignoto marinaio" into Serbian.

From 2014 to 2019, Luca Vaglio taught translation from Serbian to Italian and vice versa, theory and history of translation and Italian language, at the University of Kragujevac, central Serbia.

The prize awarded by the PEN Center since 1965 goes annually to the best literary translator from the Serbian language. Only two Italian translators have won the award until now. In 2014 Alice Parmeggiani, Slavist, professor at the University of Udine and Trieste, was awarded for the Italian versions of numerous Serbian and Southern Slavic authors, including Ivo Andrić and Aleksandar Tisma, up to contemporary authors, including David Albahari, Dragan Velikić, and Jelena Lengold. (ANSA).