By Sarah-Claire Jordan
We don’t tend to think of translators as being famous or even as important as writers, but they really do make a huge contribution to whatever sector they work in. Here are five famous ones you should know about:
1. Edith Grossman
Born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, Edith Grossman ended up being one of the most important translators of Latin American literature in the past one hundred years. She focused on fiction, and was best known for her work translating for Gabriel García Márquez, Miguel de Cervantes, Mario Vargas Llosa, and more. She was known for her method that didn’t focus so much on literal translation and instead on getting the true meaning and tone of the writing across.
2. Ioannis Ikonomou
Ikonomou is currently the only person that the European Commission in Brussels will trust with any classified Chinese documents. He works for them as an in-house translator, and he is a polyglot who speaks 36 languages fluently. He learned English first, starting at the age of 6, which led him to continue to learn other languages as he enjoyed it. His native language is Greek, and he will continue to learn as many languages as he can. Ikonomou immerses himself completely in a language when he is learning it, which is probably why he has been so successful at it.
3. Charles Baudelaire
Though an accomplished poet himself, Baudelaire was also one of the most famous translators of Edgar Allan Poe’s work. Both poets shared similar feelings about life and were a bit obsessed with the darker sides of it, and so Baudelaire immediately took an interest in Poe’s work. From the time he discovered Poe in 1847 to 1865, he spent the majority of his time meticulously translating Poe’s poetry into his native French. He was not the first French writer to translate Poe’s work, but he was regarded as one of the best. Baudelaire was extremely scrupulous when translating, and this showed, as his translations were widely published in France. Unfortunately, much of his own work was recognized for its brilliance only after he died.
4. Hitoshi Igarashi
The story of Hitoshi Igarashi, the Japanese-Arabic-Persian translator, is a very interesting one. Igarashi was born in 1947 and ended up getting a doctorate in Islamic art. He then went on to be a research fellow at the Royal Academy of Iran up until the 1979 Islamic Revolution. Igarashi is most famous for translating the Satanic Verses by Salman Rushdie, which ultimately cost him his life. Shortly after the fatwa was issued for Salman Rushdie, Igarashi was found stabbed to death in his own office.
5. Samuil Marshak
Marshak was a Russian translator, writer, and children’s book author. He is best known for his translations of Shakespeare’s work, including his sonnets. Though he translated other works from other writers as well, he did such an excellent job at translating Shakespeare into Russian that his translations are still considered classics. Some of these translations have been set to music, and many Russians see Marshak as much more than just a translator of Shakespeare, as he embodied Shakespeare’s spirit so well in his translations.
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