Re-translating Classics Old and New
Peter Bush
Peter Bush is a renowned translator of literature from Catalan, French, Spanish and Portuguese. He has translated such writers as Juan Goytisolo, Leonadro Padura, Luis Sepúlveda and Chico Buarque. Recent projects include a new translation of the renaissance bawdy tragedy, Celestina, by Fernando de Rojas and A Not So Perfect Crime, the first novel by Catalan writer Teresa Solana. Current projects include La intimidad by Nuria Amat and L'últim patriarca by Najat el Hachmi. He put together and edited The Voice of the Turtle, an anthology of Cuban stories. He has also translated film scripts by Pedro Almodóvar and Senel Paz and texts of social or political relevance such as Narcís Serra’s account of The Military in the Spanish Transition. He was Professor of Literary Translation at the University of Middlesex, where he set up the MA in the Theory and Practice of Translation, and at the University of East Anglia, where he initiated a doctoral programme in literary translation. He also directed the British Centre for Literary Translation at UEA. He is currently Visiting Professor at the University of Málaga, and has served the profession as vice-president of the Fédération Internationale and EC member of the TA and ALTA. He founded In Other Words, the journal of the Translators Association (UK) and is a Fellow of the ITI. Now fully dedicated to translation, Professor Bush lives in Barcelona.
We are pleased Professor Bush has agreed to speak on aspects of the special ways translators read and their role as writers. His essay “The writer of translations” can be read online as the second chapter of The Translator as Writer, co-edited with Susan Bassnet. The talk will focus on the writing strategies that informed his new and radically different translations of Celestina and Juan Goytisolo's Juan the Landless.