David McDuff
Life
McDuff attended the University of Edinburgh, where he studied Russian and German, gaining a PhD in 1971.{{Cite web |last=McDuff |first=D. |date=1971 |title=Poetry and aesthetics of Innokenty Annensky |url=http://hdl.handle.net/1842/17392 |language=en |hdl=1842/17392}} He married mathematician Dusa McDuff, but they separated around 1975.{{citation|first1=Donald J.|last1=Albers|first2=Gerald L.|last2=Alexanderson|author2-link=Gerald L. Alexanderson|year=2011|title=Fascinating Mathematical People: interviews and memoirs|contribution=Dusa McDuff|pages=215–239|publisher=Princeton University Press|isbn=978-0-691-14829-8}}. After living for some time in the Soviet Union, Denmark, Iceland, and the United States, he eventually returned to the United Kingdom, where he worked for several years as a co-editor and reviewer on the literary magazine Stand. He then moved to London, where he began his career as a literary translator.
McDuff's translations include both foreign poetry and prose, including poems by Joseph Brodsky and Tomas Venclova, and novels including Fyodor Dostoyevsky's Crime and Punishment, The Brothers Karamazov, and The Idiot (all three in Penguin Classics). His Complete Poems of Edith Södergran (1984, 1992) and Complete Poems of Karin Boye (1994) were published by [http://www.bloodaxebooks.com Bloodaxe Books]. McDuff’s translation of the Finnish-language author Tuomas Kyrö’s 2011 novel The Beggar and the Hare was published in 2014.
Among literary awards, he has received the 1994 TLS/George Bernard Shaw Translation Prize for his translation of
Gösta Ågren's poems, A Valley In The Midst of Violence, published by Bloodaxe, and the 2006 Stora Pris of the Finland-Swedish Writers' Association ([http://www.forfattarna.fi Finlands svenska författareförening]), Helsinki.
From 2007 to 2010, David McDuff worked as an editor and translator with [https://www.watchdog.cz Prague Watchdog], the Prague-based NGO which monitored and discussed human rights abuses in Chechnya and the North Caucasus.
McDuff was honoured with the [http://www.finlit.fi/fili/en/fili-en/state-prize-for-translation/ Finnish State Award for Foreign Translators] in 2013.[http://yle.fi/uutiset/david_mcduff_honoured_with_state_translators_prize/6831259?origin=rss David Mcduff Honoured With State Translators Prize], Yleisradio News in English
In November 2019 McDuff's new translation of Karin Boye's dystopian novel Kallocain was published by [https://www.penguin.co.uk/books/309767/kallocain/9780241355589.html Penguin Classics].
McDuff was honoured with the Swedish Academy's [https://www.svenskaakademien.se/press/svenska-akademiens-tolkningspris-2021 Interpretation Prize (Tolkningspris) 2021].
McDuff’s translation of Anteckningar by Tua Forsström (I walked on into the forest, Bloodaxe, 2021) was The Poetry Book Society's [https://www.poetrybooks.co.uk/blogs/news/winter-2021-selections Translation Choice for Winter 2021].
Works
- Osip Mandelʹshtam Selected poems, Writers and Readers, 1983, {{ISBN|9780863160530}}
- Edith Södergran Complete poems, Bloodaxe Books, 1984, {{ISBN|9780906427385}}
- Marina Tsvetaeva, Selected Poems, Bloodaxe Books, 1987, {{ISBN|9781852240257}}
- Ice around our lips: Finland-Swedish poetry, Bloodaxe Books, 1989, {{ISBN|9781852240110}}
- Tua Forsström, Snow leopard, Bloodaxe, 1990, {{ISBN|9781852241117}}
- {{cite book|author=Isaak Babel|title=Collected Stories|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=OPZGLukDQF4C|year=1994|publisher=Penguin|isbn=978-0-14-018462-4}}
- Andrei Bely Petersburg, Penguin. 1995. {{ISBN|014-01-8696-4}}
- Ivan Sergeevich Turgenev, Rudin: On the eve, Oxford University Press, 1999, {{ISBN|9780192833334}}
- Fyodor Dostoyevsky (30 January 2003). [https://www.amazon.co.uk/Punishment-Penguin-Classics-Fyodor-Dostoyevsky/dp/0140449132/ref=sr_1_1?dchild=1&keywords=mcduff+penguin+crime+and+punishment+dostoyevsky&qid=1593943643&sr=8-1 Crime and Punishment.] Penguin Books Limited. {{ISBN|978-0-14-044913-6}}
- {{cite book|author=Fyodor Dostoyevsky|title=The Brothers Karamazov|url=https://archive.org/details/brotherskaramazo00dost_1|url-access=registration|date=27 February 2003|publisher=Penguin Books Limited|isbn=978-0-14-191568-5}}
- {{cite book|author=Fyodor Dostoyevsky|title=The Idiot|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=2-ly7aL57XgC|date=31 August 2004|publisher=Penguin Group US|isbn=978-1-101-16055-8}}{{cite news|work=The Guardian|title=Prince of Fools|last=Byatt|first=A.S.|url=https://www.theguardian.com/books/2004/jun/26/highereducation.classics |date=25 June 2004|quote=I had known, without fully understanding before I read this excellent new translation, that the idea of death in this novel is peculiarly pinned to the idea of execution - what I had not thought through was that in a materialist world the dead man in the painting is an executed man, whose consciousness has been brutally cut off.}}
- Fyodor Dostoyevsky (2003) The House of the Dead. Penguin Books Limited. ISBN 978-0-14-044456-8
- Tua Forsström, I studied once at a wonderful faculty, Bloodaxe, 2006, {{ISBN|9781852246495}}
- Karin Boye, Kallocain, Penguin Classics, 2019, {{ISBN|9780241355589}}
- Tua Forsström, I walked on into the forest, Bloodaxe, 2021, {{ISBN|9781780375823}}
References
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External links
- [http://wordpress.englishphrasings.co.uk/publicat.htm The complete list of McDuff's published books of translation]
- [https://web.archive.org/web/20110927180957/http://www.bloodaxebooks.com/personpage.asp?author=David+McDuff Database entry at Bloodaxe Books]
- [http://www.watchdog.cz/?show=000000-000015-000008-000001&lang=1 Prague Watchdog's select bibliography of Chechnya-related works, compiled by David McDuff and others]
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Category:Translators of Fyodor Dostoyevsky
Category:Alumni of the University of Edinburgh
Category:Swedish–English translators
Category:Russian–English translators
Category:Finnish–English translators
Category:People from Sale, Greater Manchester
Category:20th-century Scottish translators