Marian Schwartz
(2001-2003)

Whenever pressed to explain why I've spent my life translating Russian literature, I've always cited the lofty aim of sharing fine--or at least entertaining--literature with the American audience. How could we and our literature thrive without partaking of these delights? In truth, though, translation is a guilty pleasure that requires no abstract mission and that I would be hard pressed to give up. It is no wonder at all to me how many gifted translators have persisted in practicing their art in the face of creeping marginalization in the late twentieth and now early twenty-first centuries. There is something basic and human about wanting to translate; apparently no amount of neglect or disregard can dissuade translators and their readers from seeking out foreign literatures. That this is true bolsters my faith in the human spirit over the long haul.

Marian Schwartz has been translating Russian contemporary and classic fiction, history, criticism, fine arts, and other nonfiction for three decades. She is the principal English translator of Nina Berberova and translated Edvard Radzinsky's best-seller The Last Tsar She was the translator on four volumes in Yale's Annals of Communism series and translated twenty full issues of Russian Studies in Literature. Her latest published translations include Yuri Olesha's Envy, Mikhail Lermontov's A Hero of Our Time, and Nina Berberova's Moura: The Dangerous Life of the Baroness Budberg, cotranslated with Richard D. Sylvester. Schwartz has won several prizes for her translations and was awarded an NEA Translation Fellowship in 1988.