Shaun Whiteside (born 1959) is a

Northern Irish Northern Irish people is a demonym for all people born in Northern Ireland or people who are entitled to reside in Northern Ireland without any restriction on their period of residence. Most Northern Irish people either identify as Northern ...

translator Translation is the communication of the meaning of a source-language text by means of an equivalent target-language text. The English language draws a terminological distinction (which does not exist in every language) between ''transl ...

of French,

Dutch Dutch commonly refers to: * Something of, from, or related to the Netherlands * Dutch people () * Dutch language () Dutch may also refer to: Places * Dutch, West Virginia, a community in the United States * Pennsylvania Dutch Country People E ...

German German(s) may refer to: * Germany (of or related to) ** Germania (historical use) * Germans, citizens of Germany, people of German ancestry, or native speakers of the German language ** For citizens of Germany, see also German nationality law **Ge ...

, and

Italian literature Italian literature is written in the Italian language, particularly within Italy. It may also refer to literature written by Italians or in other languages spoken in Italy, often languages that are closely related to modern Italian, including ...

. He has translated many novels, including '' Manituana'' and ''Altai'' by

Wu Ming Wu Ming, Chinese for "anonymous", is a pseudonym for a group of Italian authors formed in 2000 from a subset of the Luther Blissett community in Bologna. Four of the group earlier wrote the novel '' Q'' (first edition 1999). Unlike the open n ...

, ''The Weekend'' by

Bernhard Schlink Bernhard Schlink (; born 6 July 1944) is a German lawyer, academic, and novelist. He is best known for his novel '' The Reader'', which was first published in 1995 and became an international bestseller. He won the 2014 Park Kyong-ni Prize. Ear ...

, '' Serotonin'' by

Michel Houellebecq Michel Houellebecq (; born Michel Thomas, 26 February 1956 or 1958) is a French author, known for his novels, poems and essays, as well as an occasional actor, filmmaker and singer. His first book was a biographical essay on the horror writer ...

, and ''Magdalene the Sinner'' by

Lilian Faschinger Lilian Faschinger (born 29 April 1950 in Tschöran, Carinthia) is an Austrian novelist, short story writer, poet, and literary translator. Life Faschinger studied literature, history, and English at the University of Graz, earning a doctorate i ...

, which won him the Schlegel-Tieck Prize for German Translation in 1997. Since May 2021, he has served as the president of the European Council of Literary Translators' Associations.

Life

Whiteside was born in

County Tyrone County Tyrone (; ) is one of the six counties of Northern Ireland, one of the nine counties of Ulster and one of the thirty-two traditional counties of Ireland. It is no longer used as an administrative division for local government but retai ...

Northern Ireland Northern Ireland ( ga, Tuaisceart Éireann ; sco, label= Ulster-Scots, Norlin Airlann) is a part of the United Kingdom, situated in the north-east of the island of Ireland, that is variously described as a country, province or region. Nort ...

in 1959. He graduated with a

First First or 1st is the ordinal form of the number one (#1). First or 1st may also refer to: *World record, specifically the first instance of a particular achievement Arts and media Music * 1$T, American rapper, singer-songwriter, DJ, and rec ...

in Modern Languages at

King's College, Cambridge King's College is a constituent college of the University of Cambridge. Formally The King's College of Our Lady and Saint Nicholas in Cambridge, the college lies beside the River Cam and faces out onto King's Parade in the centre of the cit ...

. After he finished his studies, he worked as a business journalist and television producer before translating full-time. As he said in a brief interview, "Did I always want to be a translator? I certainly wanted to do something that involved travel and languages, but even when my work in television took me to far-off places, I kept coming back to translation, first for fun, and eventually as a way of earning a living." Whiteside is the former Chair of the Translators Association of the

Society of Authors The Society of Authors (SoA) is a United Kingdom trade union for professional writers, illustrators and literary translators, founded in 1884 to protect the rights and further the interests of authors. , it represents over 12,000 members and ass ...

. He currently lives in London with his wife and son, where he sits on the PEN Writers in Translation committee, the editorial board of New Books in German, and the Advisory Panel of the British Centre for Literary Translation, where he regularly teaches at the summer school. He has stated that he would like to "have a go at Uwe Tellkamp's ''Der Turm'' (''The Tower''), a massive great project but a worthwhile one."

Selection of translated titles

* ''

The Wall ''The Wall'' is the eleventh studio album by the English progressive rock band Pink Floyd, released on 30 November 1979 by Harvest/EMI and Columbia/ CBS Records. It is a rock opera that explores Pink, a jaded rock star whose eventual self-imp ...

'' by

Marlen Haushofer Marlen Haushofer (born Marie Helene Frauendorfer; 11 April 1920 – 21 March 1970) was an Austrian author, most famous for her novel ''The Wall'' (1963). Biography Marie Helene Frauendorfer was born in Frauenstein in Upper Austria. She attended C ...

, 1990 * ''Lenin's Brain'' by Tilman Spengler, 1993 * ''

The Birth of Tragedy ''The Birth of Tragedy Out of the Spirit of Music'' (german: Die Geburt der Tragödie aus dem Geiste der Musik) is a 1872 work of dramatic theory by the German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche. It was reissued in 1886 as ''The Birth of Tragedy, Or ...

'' by

Friedrich Nietzsche Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche (; or ; 15 October 1844 – 25 August 1900) was a German philosopher, prose poet, cultural critic, philologist, and composer whose work has exerted a profound influence on contemporary philosophy. He began his ...

, 1993 * ''Magdalene the Sinner'' by

, 1997, winner of the Schlegel-Tieck Prize * ''

The Confusions of Young Törless ''The Confusions of Young Törless'' (german: Die Verwirrungen des Zöglings Törleß), or ''Young Törless'', is the literary debut of the Austrian philosophical novelist and essayist Robert Musil, first published in 1906. Plot introduction Mus ...

'' by Robert Musil, 2001 * ''Let Me Go'' by Helga Schneider, 2001 * ''Payback'' by

Gert Ledig Gert Ledig, full name Robert Gerhard Ledig (4 November 1921, Leipzig – 1 June 1999 in Landsberg am Lech), was a German writer. Biography Gert Ledig, son of a merchant, spent his early childhood in Vienna. From 1929 he lived in Leipzig. After ...

, 2002 * ''Auschwitz: A History'' by Sybille Steinbacher, 2004 * ''Mourning, Murder and Melancholia'' by

Sigmund Freud Sigmund Freud ( , ; born Sigismund Schlomo Freud; 6 May 1856 – 23 September 1939) was an Austrian neurologist and the founder of psychoanalysis, a clinical method for evaluating and treating pathologies explained as originating in conflicts ...

, 2005 * ''The Bonfire of Berlin: A Lost Childhood in Wartime Germany'' by Helga Schneider, 2005 * '' Manituana'' by

, 2009 * ''Altai'' by

, 2013 * ''Swansong 1945: A Collective Diary of the Last Days of the Third Reich'' by Walter Kempowski, 2015 * ''Melnitz'' by

Charles Lewinsky Charles Lewinsky (14 April 1946) is a Swiss screenwriter and playwright (among others '' Fascht e Familie''), as well as a writer of novels and non-fiction, born and living in Zürich. Early life and education Born and raised in Zürich, Canto ...

, 2015 * ''The Giraffe's Neck'' by Judith Schalansky, 2015, commended for the Schlegel-Tieck Prize * ''Malacqua: Four Days of Rain in the City of Naples, Waiting for the Occurrence of an Extraordinary Event'' by Nicola Pugliese, 2017 * ''To Die in Spring'' by

Ralf Rothmann Ralf Rothmann (born May 10, 1953 in Schleswig, Schleswig-Holstein) is a German novelist, poet, and dramatist. His novels have been translated into several languages with Knife Edge (''Messers Schneide'') and Young Light (''Junges Licht'') being t ...

, 2017 * '' Serotonin'' by

, 2019 * ''Time of the Magicians: Wittgenstein, Benjamin, Cassirer, Heidegger, and the Decade That Reinvented Philosophy'' by Wolfram Eilenberger, 2020

External links

Article and review by Whiteside
for

The Independent ''The Independent'' is a British online newspaper. It was established in 1986 as a national morning printed paper. Nicknamed the ''Indy'', it began as a broadsheet and changed to tabloid format in 2003. The last printed edition was publish ...

Interview with Whiteside
by British Centre for Literary Translation (YouTube)
Description
of '' Altai'' at

Verso Books Verso Books (formerly New Left Books) is a left-wing publishing house based in London and New York City, founded in 1970 by the staff of '' New Left Review''. Renaming, new brand and logo Verso Books was originally known as New Left Books. The ...

Description
of '' Manituana'' at

Description
of ''

'' at

Cleis Press Cleis Press is an American independent publisher of books in the areas of sexuality, erotica, feminism, gay and lesbian studies, gender studies, fiction, and human rights. The press was founded in 1980 in Minneapolis, Minnesota. It later moved to ...

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Whiteside, Shaun Irish translators Dutch–English translators French–English translators German–English translators Italian–English translators Translators of Sigmund Freud 1959 births Living people Literary translators 20th-century translators 21st-century translators Translators of Friedrich Nietzsche