Utta Roy-Seifert

Utta Roy-Seifert (2013)

Utta Roy-Seifert (born September 13, 1926 in Breslau ) is an Austrian literary translator and founder of the translators interest group .

Life

Utta Roy-Seifert was born as the daughter of the art dealer and copper engraving specialist Roderich von Roy and his wife Erna (née Feldmann) in Breslau , where she grew up with her younger brother until a year before the outbreak of war. The family suffered (for "racial" and political reasons) under constant threat from the Nazi regime and lost their material security, the father was excluded from the Reichskunstkammer . In 1938 the family moved to Berlin . In the chaos of war in 1944, Utta Roy went to Austria, initially to Ausseerland , while part of the family settled in Vienna .

Utta Roy spent the last months of the war in Gmunden, where she attended high school and graduated. From 1945 she lived in Vienna and initially worked for the American Marshall Plan Authority and in the textile trade of an emigrant who had returned to Vienna, where she learned her English.

She began studying English and art history at the University of Vienna , but was unable to complete it for financial reasons. She found access to the socialist student association VSStÖ and also to Protestant discussion groups, where she met the young writer Ilse Aichinger . After initially working as a freelance translator and occasionally as an interpreter , she began translating literary texts on behalf of Paul Zsolnay Verlag in the late 1950s . Here she met her husband, the chemist Hans Seifert († 2003), with whom she has two daughters.

Roy-Seifert was politically active in the Social Democratic Academic Association (BSA) and met artists like Emmy Werner and Marie-Thérèse Escribano .

In 1981 she founded the translator community (today's IG Translators, also known as ÜG ), initially as an “office in your own back room”, and since 1991 based in the Literaturhaus Wien . She networked the ÜG with other interest groups at home and abroad (e.g. IG authors authors , European Writers' Council / EWC , Fédération internationale des traducteurs / FIT , Conseil européen des associations de traducteurs littéraires / CEATL ) and successfully supported the Equal treatment of literary translators as authors, for example when they are included in the library royalty or the social fund of the collecting society Literar-Mechana and for the creation of an Austrian state award for literary translation (since 1987).

Roy-Seifert has translated a number of literary works from English (mostly fiction, but also non-fiction and radio plays) and was awarded the aforementioned State Prize in 1992. She likes to quote the sentence of the Portuguese Nobel Prize winner José Saramago : “The author creates national literature with his language. World literature is made by translators. "

In addition, she was active in the PEN Club for a long time , initially in the Austrian PEN , where she temporarily served as Vice President, but resigned her membership in 2000 in order to finally join the PEN Center Germany . She was particularly committed to the PEN projects Writers in Prison and Writers in Exile and made a significant contribution to establishing Vienna as a place of refuge for persecuted authors in this network (together with the ÜG and the Austrian writers' association IG Autorinnen Authors ).

In 2010 she penned her memoir, known as The Web Bug. Memories were published in Limbus-Verlag .

Utta Roy-Seifert lives in Vienna.

Awards

• 1992 Austrian State Prize for Literary Translation (awarded in 1993)
• 1998 Austrian Cross of Honor for Science and Art

Translations from English (selection)

• Margaret Rumer Godden : The Blue Flowers of Catstreet , 1956
• Egon Hostovský : The Midnight Patient , 1958
• Esther Warner: The Journey to the Great Devil , 1957
  • The dark and the light sister , 1962
• Walter Sullivan: Men and Powers at the South Pole , 1962
• James Aldridge : A Pony for Two , 1974
  • The wonderful Mongol , 1975
  • The Songbirds Tournament , 1977
• HG Wells : Plattner's Story , 1979
• Barbara Rose : American Painting: The Twentieth Century , 1980
  • Warhol '80 , 1981
• Angela Carter : The Groom , 1985
• Ruth Prawer Jhabvala : Heat and Dust , 1985
  • A widow with money. Stories from India , 1989
• Anita Desai : The Guardians of True Friendship , 1987
• Daniel Yergin : The Price - The Hunt for Oil, Money and Power , 1991
• Zibby Oneal: Are you sad, mirror image? , 1991
• Don Haworth : The Deadline (radio play), 1991
• Ama Ata Aidoo : Conversation on the Way to the Funeral , 1993
• Nick Stafford: Whether man, whether woman (radio play), 1993
• Grace Nichols : Morning Sky , 1996
• Iris Murdoch : With good intentions , 1999
• Sarita Jenamani: Shards of sky (with Brigitte Rapp). 2006

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Utta Roy-Seifert: The Art of Translation Portrait in the radio station Ö1
2. ↑ Press release April 4, 2000
3. ↑ Reading tip from the Tyrolean Education Service
4. ^ Website of the Federal Chancellery, Art and Culture Department
5. ^ Wiener Zeitung of December 11, 1998