Alan Myers (translator)

Alan Myers (18 August 1933 – 8 August 2010) was a noted translator, most notably of works by Russian authors.

Myers was born in South Shields, County Durham, in 1933. He attended the University of London between 1957 and 1960 and Moscow University from 1960–61. Subsequently he taught Russian and English in Hertfordshire 1963–86.

During this period, he published reviews, translations and educational articles, and in summer worked as a travel courier on Russian Baltic liners, and as interpreter for the British Council in Britain and the USSR. He has broadcast on BBC Radio 3 and the BBC World Service on Russian themes. He retired in 1986 to work as a freelance literary translator.

Robert Conquest has stated that translating rhymed poetry into English rhymed poetry is the most difficult of all arts. Myers took on the challenge and produced mimetic rhymed versions of 19th century Russian poetry (such as An Age Ago published by Penguin Books in 1989) extracts from which appear in the Oxford Dictionary of Quotations. He has written of his approach to poetry translation in The Sunday Times (23.4.89).

In prose, major translations include works by Valentin Rasputin, Vasil Bykaŭ, Dostoevsky's The Idiot in 1992 and his A Gentle Creature and Other Stories in 1995 both of which were published by Oxford University Press as was Pushkin's Queen of Spades and Other Stories. The Myers translation of The Idiot has been chosen for publication in the People's Republic of China (in English with notes in Chinese). This translation is described in the Oxford Guide to Translated Literature in English (2000) as the best currently available.

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