Alan Myers (translator)
Encyclopedia
Alan Myers was a noted translator
, most notably of works by Russian authors
.
, County Durham
, in 1933. He attended the University of London
between 1957 and 1960 and Moscow University from 1960-61. Subsequently he taught Russian and English in Hertfordshire 1963-86.
During this period, he published reviews, translations and educational articles, and in summer worked as a travel courier
on Russian Baltic liners, and as interpreter for the British Council
in Britain and the USSR. He has broadcast on BBC Radio 3
and the BBC World Service
on Russian themes. He retired in 1986 to work as a freelance literary translator.
has stated that translating rhymed poetry into English rhymed poetry is the most difficult of all arts. Myers took on the challenge and produced mimetic rhymed versions of 19th century Russian poetry (such as An Age Ago published by Penguin Books
in 1989) extracts from which appear in the Oxford Dictionary of Quotations. He has written of his approach to poetry translation in The Sunday Times
(23.4.89).
, Vasil Bykaŭ, Dostoevsky's The Idiot in 1992 and his A Gentle Creature and Other Stories
in 1995 both of which were published by Oxford University Press
as was Pushkin's Queen of Spades and Other Stories
. The Myers translation of The Idiot has been chosen for publication in the People's Republic of China
(in English with notes in Chinese). This translation is described in the Oxford Guide to Translated Literature in English (2000) as the best currently available.
, which appeared in The New York Review of Books
, The New Yorker
, Vogue
, The Times Literary Supplement
and later in Brodsky's books: A Part of Speech; Less than One; Urania; So Forth and Collected Poems in English. His extended Brodsky interview appeared in Valentina Polukhina's Joseph Brodsky in the Eyes of his Contemporaries. Brodsky's poetry cycle "In England" is dedicated to Myers and his wife Diana (who both appear in the work). Other Brodsky translations included his only two plays Marbles (published by Penguin Books
in 1988) and Democracy!- the latter performed at London's Gate Theatre
. Both of the above have received critical praise in the national press.
's Blockade Diary, and Yuri
Dombrovsky's epic novel The Faculty of Useless Knowledge. Myers has also translated literary memoirs such as Kruchenykh's Our Arrival, avant-garde art criticism and The Jewish Artistic Heritage by Ansky (RA, 1994).
Myers' translation of the Efros essay and the catalogue for the Ansky world exhibition was described as 'brilliant... executed by one of the finest English literary translators.'
Other works include a docu-novel on the Chernobyl disaster
by Julia Voznesenskaya
. Stories by Zinovy Zinik
including the much anthologized "Hooks" appeared in The New Yorker and elsewhere, while mimetic rhymed versions of Irina Ratushinskaya
have been broadcast on BBC Radio 3
and published by Bloodaxe Books
.
In addition, Myers has translated a wide range of modern Russian novels and stories, including thrillers and science fiction - Edward Topol's Red Gas (translated into Braille), Friedrich Neznansky
's Operation Faust; the Strugatsky
brothers' Snail on the Slope and Far Rainbow
. The Bronze Snail is a Russian science fiction award named after the former complex work.
The Myers Collection of Russian speculative fiction, the most extensive in the country, is held at the University of Liverpool
, along with his history of the genre.
Myers has also published research articles in The Slavonic and East European Review
(1990–93) and elsewhere on Yevgeny Zamyatin
's life and writings in Newcastle 1916-17. This extensive original research has demonstrated the crucial influence of the author's Tyneside sojourn on his masterpiece We
(a strong influence on Orwell
's Nineteen Eighty-Four
). Myers took part in a BBC Radio 3
documentary on Zamyatin
in December 2003.
His last translations appeared in Utopias (Penguin Books
, 1999), a survey of Russian modernism. These include his versions of Mandelstam
, Akhmatova, Kharms, Vaginov
and Zamyatin
.
his website.
He was co-author, with Robert Forsythe of W. H. Auden
: Pennine Poet (North Pennines Heritage Trust, 1999). It contains considerable original research on the landscape and industrial remains of the North Pennine hills - the poet's "Mutterland" - a region which strongly influenced Auden as a boy and which remained a recurrent source of reference throughout his life. Myers may be said to have helped establish this theme in the mainstream of Auden criticism.
He was also a contributor to the Oxford Companion to English Literature and the Dictionary of National Biography
(2004) for which he wrote the entry on Orwell's friend Jack Common
.
Translation
Translation is the communication of the meaning of a source-language text by means of an equivalent target-language text. Whereas interpreting undoubtedly antedates writing, translation began only after the appearance of written literature; there exist partial translations of the Sumerian Epic of...
, most notably of works by Russian authors
Russian literature
Russian literature refers to the literature of Russia or its émigrés, and to the Russian-language literature of several independent nations once a part of what was historically Russia or the Soviet Union...
.
Biography
Myers was born in South ShieldsSouth Shields
South Shields is a coastal town in Tyne and Wear, England, located at the mouth of the River Tyne to Tyne Dock, and about downstream from Newcastle upon Tyne...
, County Durham
County Durham
County Durham is a ceremonial county and unitary district in north east England. The county town is Durham. The largest settlement in the ceremonial county is the town of Darlington...
, in 1933. He attended the University of London
University of London
-20th century:Shortly after 6 Burlington Gardens was vacated, the University went through a period of rapid expansion. Bedford College, Royal Holloway and the London School of Economics all joined in 1900, Regent's Park College, which had affiliated in 1841 became an official divinity school of the...
between 1957 and 1960 and Moscow University from 1960-61. Subsequently he taught Russian and English in Hertfordshire 1963-86.
During this period, he published reviews, translations and educational articles, and in summer worked as a travel courier
Courier
A courier is a person or a company who delivers messages, packages, and mail. Couriers are distinguished from ordinary mail services by features such as speed, security, tracking, signature, specialization and individualization of express services, and swift delivery times, which are optional for...
on Russian Baltic liners, and as interpreter for the British Council
British Council
The British Council is a United Kingdom-based organisation specialising in international educational and cultural opportunities. It is registered as a charity both in England and Wales, and in Scotland...
in Britain and the USSR. He has broadcast on BBC Radio 3
BBC Radio 3
BBC Radio 3 is a national radio station operated by the BBC within the United Kingdom. Its output centres on classical music and opera, but jazz, world music, drama, culture and the arts also feature. The station is the world’s most significant commissioner of new music, and its New Generation...
and the BBC World Service
BBC World Service
The BBC World Service is the world's largest international broadcaster, broadcasting in 27 languages to many parts of the world via analogue and digital shortwave, internet streaming and podcasting, satellite, FM and MW relays...
on Russian themes. He retired in 1986 to work as a freelance literary translator.
Poetry
Robert ConquestRobert Conquest
George Robert Ackworth Conquest CMG is a British historian who became a well-known writer and researcher on the Soviet Union with the publication in 1968 of The Great Terror, an account of Stalin's purges of the 1930s...
has stated that translating rhymed poetry into English rhymed poetry is the most difficult of all arts. Myers took on the challenge and produced mimetic rhymed versions of 19th century Russian poetry (such as An Age Ago published by Penguin Books
Penguin Books
Penguin Books is a publisher founded in 1935 by Sir Allen Lane and V.K. Krishna Menon. Penguin revolutionised publishing in the 1930s through its high quality, inexpensive paperbacks, sold through Woolworths and other high street stores for sixpence. Penguin's success demonstrated that large...
in 1989) extracts from which appear in the Oxford Dictionary of Quotations. He has written of his approach to poetry translation in The Sunday Times
The Sunday Times
The Sunday Times is a British Sunday newspaper.The Sunday Times may also refer to:*The Sunday Times *The Sunday Times *The Sunday Times *The Sunday Times...
(23.4.89).
Prose
In prose, major translations include works by Valentin RasputinValentin Rasputin
Valentin Grigoriyevich Rasputin is a Russian writer. He was born and lived much of his life in the Irkutsk Oblast in Eastern Siberia. Rasputin's works depict rootless urban characters and the fight for survival of centuries-old traditional rural ways of life...
, Vasil Bykaŭ, Dostoevsky's The Idiot in 1992 and his A Gentle Creature and Other Stories
A Gentle Creature
"A Gentle Creature" , sometimes also translated as "The Meek One", is a short story written by Fyodor Dostoyevsky in 1876. The piece comes with the subtitle of "A Fantastic Story", and it chronicles the relationship between a pawnbroker and a girl that frequents his shop. The story was inspired by...
in 1995 both of which were published by Oxford University Press
Oxford University Press
Oxford University Press is the largest university press in the world. It is a department of the University of Oxford and is governed by a group of 15 academics appointed by the Vice-Chancellor known as the Delegates of the Press. They are headed by the Secretary to the Delegates, who serves as...
as was Pushkin's Queen of Spades and Other Stories
The Queen of Spades (story)
"The Queen of Spades" is a short story by Alexander Pushkin about human avarice. Pushkin wrote the story in autumn 1833 in Boldino and it was first published in the literary magazine Biblioteka dlya chteniya in March 1834...
. The Myers translation of The Idiot has been chosen for publication in the People's Republic of China
People's Republic of China
China , officially the People's Republic of China , is the most populous country in the world, with over 1.3 billion citizens. Located in East Asia, the country covers approximately 9.6 million square kilometres...
(in English with notes in Chinese). This translation is described in the Oxford Guide to Translated Literature in English (2000) as the best currently available.
Essays
Myers translated poems and essays for his friend, Nobel laureate Joseph BrodskyJoseph Brodsky
Iosif Aleksandrovich Brodsky , was a Russian poet and essayist.In 1964, 23-year-old Brodsky was arrested and charged with the crime of "social parasitism" He was expelled from the Soviet Union in 1972 and settled in America with the help of W. H. Auden and other supporters...
, which appeared in The New York Review of Books
The New York Review of Books
The New York Review of Books is a fortnightly magazine with articles on literature, culture and current affairs. Published in New York City, it takes as its point of departure that the discussion of important books is itself an indispensable literary activity...
, The New Yorker
The New Yorker
The New Yorker is an American magazine of reportage, commentary, criticism, essays, fiction, satire, cartoons and poetry published by Condé Nast...
, Vogue
Vogue (magazine)
Vogue is a fashion and lifestyle magazine that is published monthly in 18 national and one regional edition by Condé Nast.-History:In 1892 Arthur Turnure founded Vogue as a weekly publication in the United States. When he died in 1909, Condé Montrose Nast picked up the magazine and slowly began...
, The Times Literary Supplement
The Times Literary Supplement
The Times Literary Supplement is a weekly literary review published in London by News International, a subsidiary of News Corporation.-History:...
and later in Brodsky's books: A Part of Speech; Less than One; Urania; So Forth and Collected Poems in English. His extended Brodsky interview appeared in Valentina Polukhina's Joseph Brodsky in the Eyes of his Contemporaries. Brodsky's poetry cycle "In England" is dedicated to Myers and his wife Diana (who both appear in the work). Other Brodsky translations included his only two plays Marbles (published by Penguin Books
Penguin Books
Penguin Books is a publisher founded in 1935 by Sir Allen Lane and V.K. Krishna Menon. Penguin revolutionised publishing in the 1930s through its high quality, inexpensive paperbacks, sold through Woolworths and other high street stores for sixpence. Penguin's success demonstrated that large...
in 1988) and Democracy!- the latter performed at London's Gate Theatre
Gate Theatre
The Gate Theatre, in Dublin, was founded in 1928 by Hilton Edwards and Micheál Mac Liammóir, initially using the Abbey Theatre's Peacock studio theatre space to stage important works by European and American dramatists...
. Both of the above have received critical praise in the national press.
Essays and memoirs
Other notable translations included Lydia GinzburgLydia Ginzburg
Lidiya Yakovlevna Ginzburg was a major Soviet literary critic and historian and a survivor of the siege of Leningrad.She was born in Odessa in 1902 and moved to Leningrad in 1922...
's Blockade Diary, and Yuri
Dombrovsky's epic novel The Faculty of Useless Knowledge. Myers has also translated literary memoirs such as Kruchenykh's Our Arrival, avant-garde art criticism and The Jewish Artistic Heritage by Ansky (RA, 1994).
Myers' translation of the Efros essay and the catalogue for the Ansky world exhibition was described as 'brilliant... executed by one of the finest English literary translators.'
Other works include a docu-novel on the Chernobyl disaster
Chernobyl disaster
The Chernobyl disaster was a nuclear accident that occurred on 26 April 1986 at the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant in Ukraine , which was under the direct jurisdiction of the central authorities in Moscow...
by Julia Voznesenskaya
Julia Voznesenskaya
Julia Voznesenskaya ; born 1940 in Leningrad is a Russian author of books with an Orthodox Christian worldview.In 1976 Voznesenskaya was sentenced to four years of exile for Anti-Soviet Propaganda. In 1980 she emigrated to Germany. In 1996-1999 she lived in Lesninsky Russian Orthodox Convent in...
. Stories by Zinovy Zinik
Zinovy Zinik
Zinovy Zinik is a novelist and broadcaster.Zinik was born in Moscow in 1945. He studied painting at an art school and later studied topology at Moscow University. He started writing prose in the 1960s and contributed to the journal Teatr.He emigrated to Israel in 1975...
including the much anthologized "Hooks" appeared in The New Yorker and elsewhere, while mimetic rhymed versions of Irina Ratushinskaya
Irina Ratushinskaya
Irina Borisovna Ratushinskaya is a prominent Russian dissident, poet and writer.Irina was educated at Odessa University, the city of her birth, and was graduated with a Master's Degree in physics in 1976...
have been broadcast on BBC Radio 3
BBC Radio 3
BBC Radio 3 is a national radio station operated by the BBC within the United Kingdom. Its output centres on classical music and opera, but jazz, world music, drama, culture and the arts also feature. The station is the world’s most significant commissioner of new music, and its New Generation...
and published by Bloodaxe Books
Bloodaxe Books
Bloodaxe Books is a British publishing house specialising in poetry.-History:It was founded in 1978 in Newcastle upon Tyne by Neil Astley, who is still editor and managing director. Joined in 1982 by chairman Simon Thirsk, Astley was later awarded an honorary D.Litt by Newcastle University in 1995...
.
In addition, Myers has translated a wide range of modern Russian novels and stories, including thrillers and science fiction - Edward Topol's Red Gas (translated into Braille), Friedrich Neznansky
Friedrich Neznansky
Friedrich Neznansky is a popular Russian crime novelist. He is a lawyer by education, practiced law in Moscow, and was an investigator at the Moscow Prosecutor General’s office for fifteen years; his hero in most of his books, Aleksandr Turetsky, reflects that experience. Turetsky is a flawed...
's Operation Faust; the Strugatsky
Arkady and Boris Strugatsky
The brothers Arkady and Boris Strugatsky are Soviet Jewish-Russian science fiction authors who collaborated on their fiction.-Life and work:...
brothers' Snail on the Slope and Far Rainbow
Far Rainbow
Far Rainbow is a 1963 science fiction novel by Boris and Arkady Strugatsky set in the Noon Universe.- Plot summary :The novel tells the story of the Rainbow catastrophe of 2156. It starts very simple, as a Wave observer Robert Sklyarov notices an unusually persistent Wave and reports it to the...
. The Bronze Snail is a Russian science fiction award named after the former complex work.
The Myers Collection of Russian speculative fiction, the most extensive in the country, is held at the University of Liverpool
University of Liverpool
The University of Liverpool is a teaching and research university in the city of Liverpool, England. It is a member of the Russell Group of large research-intensive universities and the N8 Group for research collaboration. Founded in 1881 , it is also one of the six original "red brick" civic...
, along with his history of the genre.
Myers has also published research articles in The Slavonic and East European Review
The Slavonic and East European Review
The Slavonic and East European Review , the journal of the School of Slavonic and East European Studies at University College London, is an international peer-reviewed multidisciplinary academic journal in the fields of social sciences and humanities founded in...
(1990–93) and elsewhere on Yevgeny Zamyatin
Yevgeny Zamyatin
Yevgeny Ivanovich Zamyatin was a Russian author of science fiction and political satire. Despite having been a prominent Old Bolshevik, Zamyatin was deeply disturbed by the policies pursued by the CPSU following the October Revolution...
's life and writings in Newcastle 1916-17. This extensive original research has demonstrated the crucial influence of the author's Tyneside sojourn on his masterpiece We
We (novel)
We is a dystopian novel by Yevgeny Zamyatin completed in 1921. It was written in response to the author's personal experiences during the Russian revolution of 1905, the Russian revolution of 1917, his life in the Newcastle suburb of Jesmond, and his work in the Tyne shipyards during the First...
(a strong influence on Orwell
George Orwell
Eric Arthur Blair , better known by his pen name George Orwell, was an English author and journalist...
's Nineteen Eighty-Four
Nineteen Eighty-Four
Nineteen Eighty-Four by George Orwell is a dystopian novel about Oceania, a society ruled by the oligarchical dictatorship of the Party...
). Myers took part in a BBC Radio 3
BBC Radio 3
BBC Radio 3 is a national radio station operated by the BBC within the United Kingdom. Its output centres on classical music and opera, but jazz, world music, drama, culture and the arts also feature. The station is the world’s most significant commissioner of new music, and its New Generation...
documentary on Zamyatin
Yevgeny Zamyatin
Yevgeny Ivanovich Zamyatin was a Russian author of science fiction and political satire. Despite having been a prominent Old Bolshevik, Zamyatin was deeply disturbed by the policies pursued by the CPSU following the October Revolution...
in December 2003.
His last translations appeared in Utopias (Penguin Books
Penguin Books
Penguin Books is a publisher founded in 1935 by Sir Allen Lane and V.K. Krishna Menon. Penguin revolutionised publishing in the 1930s through its high quality, inexpensive paperbacks, sold through Woolworths and other high street stores for sixpence. Penguin's success demonstrated that large...
, 1999), a survey of Russian modernism. These include his versions of Mandelstam
Osip Mandelstam
Osip Emilyevich Mandelstam was a Russian poet and essayist who lived in Russia during and after its revolution and the rise of the Soviet Union. He was one of the foremost members of the Acmeist school of poets...
, Akhmatova, Kharms, Vaginov
Konstantin Vaginov
Konstantin Konstantinovich Vaginov was a Russian poet and novelist. In twenties he was a member of almost all the poetic groups of Saint Petersburg. In 1921 he joined Nikolai Gumilyov's Guild of Poets....
and Zamyatin
Yevgeny Zamyatin
Yevgeny Ivanovich Zamyatin was a Russian author of science fiction and political satire. Despite having been a prominent Old Bolshevik, Zamyatin was deeply disturbed by the policies pursued by the CPSU following the October Revolution...
.
Other work
Myers was contributing associate editor of Northern Review in Newcastle for many years and author of the comprehensive Myers' Literary Guide: The North East (1995, 1997) (Carcanet/MidNag). This, and much other North East data can be found onhis website.
He was co-author, with Robert Forsythe of W. H. Auden
W. H. Auden
Wystan Hugh Auden , who published as W. H. Auden, was an Anglo-American poet,The first definition of "Anglo-American" in the OED is: "Of, belonging to, or involving both England and America." See also the definition "English in origin or birth, American by settlement or citizenship" in See also...
: Pennine Poet (North Pennines Heritage Trust, 1999). It contains considerable original research on the landscape and industrial remains of the North Pennine hills - the poet's "Mutterland" - a region which strongly influenced Auden as a boy and which remained a recurrent source of reference throughout his life. Myers may be said to have helped establish this theme in the mainstream of Auden criticism.
He was also a contributor to the Oxford Companion to English Literature and the Dictionary of National Biography
Dictionary of National Biography
The Dictionary of National Biography is a standard work of reference on notable figures from British history, published from 1885...
(2004) for which he wrote the entry on Orwell's friend Jack Common
Jack Common
Jack Common was a British novelist.He was born in Heaton, Newcastle upon Tyne, close to the rail-sheds where his father worked as an engine-driver...
.
External links
- http://www.myersnorth.co.uk/