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.