Misplaced Pages

John E. Woods (translator)

Article snapshot taken from Wikipedia with creative commons attribution-sharealike license. Give it a read and then ask your questions in the chat. We can research this topic together.
This article is about the translator. For other people, see John Woods (disambiguation). American translator (1942–2023)
This article needs additional citations for verification. Please help improve this article by adding citations to reliable sources. Unsourced material may be challenged and removed.
Find sources: "John E. Woods" translator – news · newspapers · books · scholar · JSTOR (March 2023) (Learn how and when to remove this message)

John Edwin Woods (August 16, 1942 – February 15, 2023) was an American translator who specialized in translating German literature, since about 1978. His work includes much of the fictional prose of Arno Schmidt and the works of contemporary authors such as Ingo Schulze and Christoph Ransmayr. He also translated all the major novels of Thomas Mann, as well as works by many other German writers.

Early life and education

Woods was born in Indianapolis, Indiana, and lived with a foster family in Fort Wayne Indiana until 1949. He attended Wittenberg University, then studied English literature at Cornell and the Lutheran Theological Seminary at Gettysburg, Pennsylvania. He learned German at the Goethe-Institute, and married his teacher, Dr. Ulrike Dorda. Woods lived for many years in California before moving to Berlin in 2005.

Selected translations

Alfred Döblin

  • A People Betrayed
  • Karl and Rosa

Doris Dörrie

  • Love, Pain, and the Whole Damn Thing
  • What Do You Want from Me?

Friedrich Dürrenmatt

  • A Monster Lecture on Justice and Law
  • The Execution of Justice

Günter Grass

  • Show Your Tongue

Thomas Mann

Libuše Moníková

Wilhelm Raabe

  • Horacker

John Rabe

Christoph Ransmayr

Arno Schmidt

Ingo Schulze

  • Simple Storys: Simple Stories
  • 33 Augenblicke des Glücks: 33 Moments of Happiness
  • Neue Leben: New Lives
  • Handy: dreizehn Geschichten in alter Manier: One More Story: Thirteen Stories in the Time-Honored Mode
  • Adam und Evelyn: Adam and Evelyn

Patrick Süskind

Hans-Ulrich Treichel

  • Leaving Sardinia

Awards

For his edition of Schmidt's Evening Edged in Gold, Woods received the 1981 U.S. National Book Award in category Translation (a split award). He won the PEN Prize for translation twice, for that work and again for Perfume in 1987. Woods was also awarded the Helen and Kurt Wolff Translator's Prize for his translations of Thomas Mann's The Magic Mountain and Arno Schmidt's Nobodaddy's Children in 1996; as well as the Schlegel-Tieck Prize for the translation of Christoph Ransmayr's The Last World in 1991. He was awarded the Ungar German Translation Award in 1995, and later the prestigious Goethe-Medal from the Goethe Institute in 2008.

References

  1. Winkler, Willi (February 20, 2023). "Fahndung nach der Melodie: Zum Tod von John E. Woods". Süddeutsche Zeitung. Retrieved 20 February 2023.
  2. ^ Sandomir, Richard (March 27, 2023). "John Woods, Masterly Translator of Thomas Mann, Dies at 80". New York Times. Vol. 172, no. 59740. p. A17. ISSN 0362-4331. Retrieved 2023-03-28.
  3. ^ "National Book Awards – 1981". National Book Foundation. Retrieved 2012-03-10.
    There was a "Translation" award from 1966 to 1983.
  4. "John E. Woods: Recipient of the 1996 Helen and Kurt Wolff Translator's Prize". Goethe Institute. Retrieved 2011-01-09.

External links

Categories: