Woods, John E.

John E. Woods was born in Indiana in 1942. He lived in Berlin, Germany, where he died in February 2023. He has worked as an editor and is the translator from the German of over forty books. Among the authors he has translated are: Thomas Mann, Alfred Döblin, Arno Schmidt, Patrick Süskind, Christoph Ransmayr, Libuse Monikova, and Ingo Schulze. His prizes and awards include: the American Book Award for Translation and the PEN Translation Prize (1981) for Arno Schmidt, Evening Edged in Gold; the PEN Translation Prize (1987) for Patrick Süskind, Perfume; the Schlegel-Tieck Prize for Translation (1990) for Christoph Ransmayr, The Last World; the PEN West Literary Award in Translation, the German Literary Prize of the American Translator’s Association, and an Outstanding Translation Award of the American Literary Translation Association (1995) for Arno Schmidt, Collected Novellas; the Helen and Kurt Wolff Prize (1996) for Thomas Mann, The Magic Mountain and Arno Schmidt, Nobodaddy’s Children. In 2008 he also was awarded the Goethe Medal of the Federal Republic of Germany for his contribution to making German culture available to English speaking readers. He has recently completed his translation of Arno Schmidt’s Zettel’s Traum (Eng. Bottom’s Dream), which will be published in the fall of 2016.

Weinstock, John

John Weinstock holds a Ph.D. in Indo-European Linguistics and Scandinavian Studies, University of Wisconsin 1966 and is a Professor Emeritus at the University of Texas at Austin 2011. He has translated among others Matti Aikio, In Reindeer Hide. Agarita Press, 2015, Matti Aikio, The Village at the Riverbend. Agarita Press, 2014 and Ailo Gaup, Night Between the Days [Natten mellom dagene], Nordic Studies Press, 2011, from Sámi resp. Norwegian.
 
His recent publications include: “Thoughts About Saami Prehistory.” In “Samar som ‘den andre’, samar om ‘den andre’: Identitet og etnisitet i nordiske kulturmøte,” Sámi dutkan – Samiska studier. Umeå, 2010.
"Wagner's Leit Vox Germanica: Essays in Germanic Languages and Literature in Honor of James E. Cathey. ACMRS, 2012.
"Sami prehistory revisited: assimilation, transactions, admixture and the phylogeographic picture of Scandinavia." International Sami Research Seminar. Forthcoming 2012.
“Genetic heterogeneity in Scandinavia: Not only the Sami (also in Norwegian: Genetisk heterogenitet i Skandinavia: ikke bare samene).” L'Image du Sápmi II. Études comparées Textes réunis par Kajsa Andersson. Humanistica Oerebroensia, 2013.
“Two champions of Sami literature and culture: Laila Stien and Ailo Gaup.” L'Image du Sápmi III. Études comparées Textes réunis par Kajsa Andersson. Humanistica Oerebroensia, 2013.
“Assimilation of the Sámi: Its Unforeseen Effects Scandinavian Studies. Winter2013, Volume 85, Issue 4.
“At the frontier: Sámi linguistics gets a boost from outside.” New Trends in Nordic and General Linguistics. Ed. M. Hilpert, J-O. Östman, C. Mertzlufft, M. Rießler and J. Duke. De Gruyter, 2015.
“Sámi language(s) in the European context.”and Prospects. Sture Ureland and John Stewart [Eds.]. Studies in Eurolinguistics, Vol. 9, 2015
“To forkjempere for samisk litteratur og kultur” (also in English: Two Champions of Sami literature and culture). L'Image du Sápmi II. Études comparées Textes réunis par Kajsa Andersson. Humanistica Oerebroensia, 2015.
 

King Ælfred

Ælfred (849 – 899) was King of Wessex from 871 to 899. Ælfred successfully defended his kingdom against the Danes, and by the time of his death had become the dominant ruler in England. He is the only English monarch to be accorded the epithet "the Great". Details of his life are described in a work by bishop Asser. Ælfred's reputation has been that of a learned and merciful man who encouraged education and improved his kingdom's legal system and military structure.

Remarkably, Ælfred, undoubtedly with the advice and aid of his court scholars, translated four works from Latin himself: Gregory the Great's Pastoral Care, Boethius's Consolation of Philosophy, St. Augustine's Soliloquies, and the first fifty psalms of the Psalter. The Old English versions of Orosius's Histories against the Pagans and Bede's Ecclesiastical History of the English People are nowadays no longer seen as Ælfred's own translations because of lexical and stylistic differences. Nonetheless, the consensus remains that they were part of the Ælfredian programme of translation. In the Orosius text he included two travelogues reported to him by Ohthere, a Norwegian trader, and Wulfstan, who travelled the Baltic Sea.

 

Lyngstad, Sverre

The distinguished critic and translator Sverre Lyngstad was born in Norway in 1922. He studied English, History, Comparative Literature and Philosophy at the University of Oslo, the University of Washington, Seattle, and New York University. He taught at the New Jersey Institute of Technology in Newark. Hunger (1996), the first of his many translations of Knut Hamsun in English established him as sensitive to language and dialect, as well as meticulously faithful to the original text while recreating all its poetic qualities.

More were to follow: Pan (1998), On Overgrown Paths (1999), Mysteries (2001), The Last Joy (2003), and Growth of the Soil (2007). He also translated a number of other Norwegian classics; Arne Garborg’s Weary Men (1999); and Sigurd Hoel’s Meeting at the Milestone (2002) as well as a range of outstanding modern writers, like Faldbakken, Solstad, B. Haff. His reflections on them were drawn together in Jonas Lie (1977), Sigurd Hoel’s Fiction (1984), and Knut Hamsun, Novelist: A Critical Assessment (2005).

Dr. Lyngstad was the recipient of several grants, prizes and awards, and has been honored by the King of Norway with the St. Olav Medal and the Knight’s Cross First Class, of the Royal Norwegian Order of Merit. He died in Port Jefferson, N.Y. in May 2011.

Lehbert, Margitt

Margitt Lehbert (*1957) was born in Geneva, Switzerland, to German parents. She grew up in Geneva, Mexico City, Washington D.C. and Bonn. Initially she studied philosophy and German at the University of Konstanz in Germany, later switching to the University of Iowa, where she studied comparative literature and completed a Master of Fine Arts in Literary Translation in 1985. She spent twelve years in Berlin and today lives with her two children on a farm in south Sweden, where she runs Edition Rugerup, a small press she founded in 2006.
Margitt Lehbert’s publications include Les Murray: Übersetzungen aus der Natur; Gedichte, groß wie Photos (both Edition Rugerup), Traumbabwe (Ammann Verlag) and Ein ganz gewöhnlicher Regenbogen (Hanser Verlag); Elizabeth Bishop: Die Farben des Kartographen (Residenz Verlag); Paul Muldoon: Auf schmalen Pfaden durch den tiefen Norden (with Hans-Christian Oeser, Hanser Verlag); Carol Ann Duffy: Die Bauchrednerpuppe (Residenz Verlag); Don Coles: Die weißen Körper der Engel (Edition Rugerup); Robin Fulton: Grenzflug (Edition Rugerup). Into English her books include: Georg Trakl, The Poems of Georg Trakl (Anvil Press Poetry), Sarah Kirsch, Winter Music (Anvil Press Poetry) and Michael Augustin, Koslowski - 52 Pointers from Hearsay (Arc Press). Also a few novels into German and many contributions to literary and other magazines.

Graves, Peter

Peter Graves was born in Wales in 1942. He taught Swedish and Scandinavian literature at the Universities of Aberdeen and Edinburgh, Scotland. Since retiring in 2008 he has been a full-time translator, concentrating in particular on Lagerlöf and Strindberg.
His new translation of "The People of Hemsö" appeared in 2012, his new translation of "Nils Holgersson's Wonderful Journey" being published at Norvik Press in 2013.