en

Martin Aitken

Martin Aitken is a British literary translator renowned for his English translations of Danish and Norwegian fiction. In 2019, his translation of Hanne Ørstavik’s Love received the PEN America Translation Prize and was shortlisted for the US National Book Award. He has also translated works by authors such as Karl Ove Knausgaard, Helle Helle, Ida Jessen, and Olga Ravn. His work has been recognised with the US National Translation Award in Prose (2022) and the American-Scandinavian Foundation’s Nadia Christensen Prize (2012).

Originally from the north of England, Martin Aitken studied community theatre and creative writing in Newcastle. He later completed a PhD in linguistics and held a university post before choosing to leave academia. “I knew I wanted to work creatively with language,” he says. He settled in Denmark and began working as a full-time translator, focusing on contemporary Scandinavian literature.

His first major Norwegian project was co-translating My Struggle: Book 6 (2018) by Karl Ove Knausgaard. Aitken translated the first 850 pages of the nearly 1,200-page novel. “It was a baptism of fire,” he later said, referring to the lengthy essay section on Paul Celan, Nazism, and philosophical thought. He described the challenge as rendering the original’s “unfiltered immediacy” into natural English.

Aitken’s translation of Ørstavik’s Love brought wider attention. The novel, first published in 1997, follows a mother and son over one cold day in rural Norway. “It’s such a small book,” Aitken said, “so low-key and so restrained… yet it leaves you so completely devastated.” He was introduced to the project by Archipelago Books in Brooklyn and felt immediately drawn to its tone and structure.

Martin Aitken typically works independently from authors. “I need to be left alone,” he said, noting that collaboration often takes place later with editors. He has translated more than 35 books, including works by Fine Gråbøl, Kim Leine, and Josefine Klougart, and continues to translate short stories, poetry, and novels.

His translations have appeared on the shortlists of the International Dublin Literary Award (2017), the International Booker Prize (2021), and the Ursula K. Le Guin Prize (2022). Recent and forthcoming projects include Olga Ravn’s The Employees and Ørstavik’s The Priest.
years of life: 1961 present

Citações

finalfadeoutfez uma citaçãohá 6 meses
STATEMENT 097
You want to know what I think about this arrangement? I think you look down on me. The way I see it, you’re a family that’s built a house. And from the warm rooms of that house you now look out at the pouring rain. Safe from menace, you delight at the rain. You’re dry and snug. You’re reaping the rewards of a long process of refinement. When the storm gets up, it only heightens your enjoyment. I’m standing in the rain you think can never fall on you. I become one with that rain. I’m the storm you shelter from. This entire house is something you built just to avoid me. So don’t come to me and say I play no part in human lives.
finalfadeoutfez uma citaçãomês passado
It was boiling hot.
The air was nearly glowing.
I liked it better when it was windy and raining. I could lie in my room then and watch films or read and sleep without feeling guilty about it. The sun was so unsparing. You were meant to be out in it, meant to be out with friends, meant to be having a good time. If I lay in my room then, there’d be something the matter with me, I’d be letting myself down, even though I’d be doing exactly the same thing, and even though my life was my own.
finalfadeoutfez uma citaçãohá 22 dias
It was all their own doing, and yet they acted like it was something that just happened to them, like it was the same for everyone.
fb2epub
Arraste e solte seus arquivos (não mais do que 5 por vez)