Outstanding British

Translators
Famous translators from various fields and
their significant contributions to society
through their work

Khimyak Bozhena
FL - 33
“Translators are the unsung heroes of any society.
These hardworking individuals ensure that an
individual from one part of the world can understand
another individual from a completely different
culture.”
Vera Rich
Vera Rich - famous British translator of Taras Shevchenko's works.

She was an accomplished translator of Ukrainian and Belarussian

literature and poetry. Born Faith Elizabeth Joan in 1936 in Canonbury,
North London, but widely known as Vera — the direct Ukrainian
translation of Faith — she came into contact with Ukrainian refugees
who settled in Britain after the Second World War through her mother’s
work with the Red Cross.

Her first published translation in 1957, of the prologue to the poem

Moses by Ivan Franko, was considered such an important milestone in
Ukrainian culture that 40 years later the Union of Ukrainian Writers in
Kiev presented Rich with a special award in memory of Franko. He was
the first of 47 Ukrainian poets and authors she tackled, but it was her
translations of one of Ukraine’s most famous sons, the folk poet Taras
Shevchenko, who founded the fledgeling people’s literary tradition,
that confirmed her credentials.
When her seminal volume, Song out of Darkness, the
translation of a collection of Shevchenko’s most
influential poems, was published in London in 1961,
academics noticed how Rich’s dedication to the feel
and rhythm of the poetry distinguished her from the
competition.

A staged version was presented at the Cripplegate

Theatre, London, and an extract from her
translation of The Caucusus appears on the
monument to Shevchenko in Washington, which was
unveiled on June 24, 1964.
Lucy Hutchinson
The first translator to do an English translation of De
rerum natura, which was written in Latin by Lucretius.

Lucy Hutchinson (29 January 1620 – October 1681) was an

English translator, poet, and biographer, and the first person
to translate the complete text of Lucretius's De rerum natura
(On the Nature of Things) into English verse, during the years
of the Interregnum (1649–1660).
However her work was published only in 1996 after being in the
possession of family members, and subsequently in the British
Museum, before being rediscovered.

The reasoning for her translation of this document has been debated
by historians, as parts of its hedonistic and effectively atheistic
nature are at odds with Lucy’s staunch puritanism. The fact of
Lucretius denying the existence of an immortal soul would have sat
very ill with her theology.

Lucy herself states that her reason was to better understand and
engage with the then widely read classical work, even though she
herself denounced it as ‘pagan mud’.
Anne Bacon
Anne Bacon was born in the mid-16th century. The English
scholar’s first work was the English translation of the Ochines
Sermons, which was written in Italian by Bernardino Ochino. She
later translated the Apologie of the Anglican Church from Latin
into English.

Bacon wrote in Latin, published a translation of Sermons by the

Italian Calvinist Reformer Bernadino Ochino and in 1564, made
her mark on English religious prose with her translation from
Latin of a leader of the Reformers in England John Jewel’s
Apologie of the Church of England making her words the voice of
the established church. In her widowhood, she took on a more
activist role to advance her strong reformist convictions.
Even though she lived during a time when women were
not often recognized for their intellectual abilities,
Anne made significant contributions to the world of
scholarship. Her passion for knowledge inspired her
son and others around her.

Lady Bacon’s formidable personality comes most

vividly to life in letters to her sons, most between 1592
and 1597. She counselled her adult sons about their
bodily health, spiritual welfare, financial solvency, fit
use for their talents, housing arrangements, and male
companions, with a persistence only intensified by her
frustration at the limited credit they gave her advice.
She impoverished herself to help with their debts.
Geoffrey Chaucer
Experts say he is “the father of English literature”.

He was a philosopher, astronomer, diplomatic and

author, and he also was a very good translator. He
translated Le Roman De La Rose, a poem by
Guillaume de Lorris and Jean de Meung, from French
into English. He also knew Latin and Italian and
loved to translate poems as well as to write them.
The Consolation of Philosophy, written by the
Roman philosopher Boethius (early 6th
century), a Christian, was one of the most
influential of medieval books. Its discussion of
free will, God’s foreknowledge, destiny,
fortune, and true and false happiness—in
effect, all aspects of the manner in which the
right-minded individual should direct his
thinking and action to gain eternal salvation—
had a deep and lasting effect upon Chaucer’s
thought and art.

His prose translation of the Consolation is

carefully done, and in his next poem—Troilus
and Criseyde—the influence of Boethius’s book
is pervasive.
Margaret Tyler
Margaret Tyler published The Mirrour of Princely Deeds and
Knighthood from the Spanish of Diego Ortúñez de Calahorra’s
Espejo de príncipes y cavalleros, the first translation of an
entire chivalric romance from the Spanish, the success of
which started a long-lasting vogue for reading romance in
England.

In an “Epistle to the reader” which accompanies her book,

Tyler writes from an openly gendered position, defending
her role as a woman translator of a much stigmatised genre
and makes a number of theoretical comments on the
activity of translation.
Margaret Tyler and her work were neglected and excluded from the canon for
centuries, until she was recognised as a protofeminist by scholars of women’s
studies in the 1980’s, yet in the field of translation studies and history her
position remains relatively marginal even today.

An analysis of Tyler’s important “Epistle” and the reception of her work will be
carried out in order to investigate the cultural practices that have determined
Tyler’s destiny and fame both as a woman translator and as a translator of
romance.

Margaret Tyler’s case is thus relevant to three areas of study: translation history
and theory; feminist literary criticism and women’s/gender studies; the workings
of canon formation, especially in relation to the shaping of English prose fiction,
the idea of the “femininity of romance” and the myth of “the rise of the English
novel”.
The professionals and artists mentioned
are just some of the translators who
made history and changed our world.

Their contributions helped literature and

science to spread all over the globe and
created thousands of new readers.

Their job may be underrated but we

wouldn’t be able to read the bible and
other classics without them.