Yusuf Vrioni

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Jusuf Vrioni (born March 16, 1916 in Corfu , Greece ; died June 1, 2001 in Paris ) was an Albanian diplomat and translator .

Life

Jusuf Vrioni was a son of the Albanian politician Iliaz Vrioni . At first he lived in Berat . His father was at times Albanian foreign minister and also ambassador to France, he died in 1932. Vroni grew up in Paris from 1925 and graduated from the Lycée Janson de Sailly . He then studied at the École des hautes études commerciales de Paris (HEC) and at Sciences Po . After the Italian occupation of Albania in 1939, he lived in Rome and after the Italian surrender in 1943 in German-occupied Tirana .

Vrioni was arrested by the Albanian communists on September 13, 1947 and sentenced in 1950 to 15 years of hard labor. In 1958 he was released and placed under house arrest in the city of Fier . From 1960, thanks to his knowledge of foreign languages, he was allowed to work as a translator in Tirana. In the following years he translated works by the guide Enver Hodscha into French. In addition, literature from Albanian into French, although his name was not disclosed by the Albanian censors until the 1980s. He also translated works by Ismail Kadare , which was the basis for his popularity in Western Europe. His queries with Kadare often led to text changes before the translation, so that the French translations are also an authorized new version of the original text in places. David Bellos' translations into English are based on the French versions.

After the fall of the communist government in Albania in 1990, Vrioni worked for the Albanian Helsinki Committee for Human Rights . During the unrest in Albania in 1997 , Vrioni went to Paris and was Albanian representative to UNESCO from 1998 to 2001 . Since Kadare had also fled to France, they continued the translation work here.

In France, Vrioni was made a Knight of the Legion of Honor in 1998 . Posthumously he became an honorary citizen of Berat, and a street in Tirana was named after him. The Albanian government awarded a translation prize with his name.

Fonts

  • with Éric Faye : Mondes effacés, souvenirs d'un Européen . Paris: JC Lattès, 1998
Translations (selection)

literature

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ David Bellos: The Englishing of Ismail Kadare. Notes of a retranslator , in: Complete review , Volume VI, Issue 2, May 2005
  2. Distinguished translator awarded Knight of Legion of Honor , at hri, May 22, 1998