News

fot. Daniel Bednarz
23.06.2018

Antonia Lloyd-Jones. Short profile of the laureate

Antonia Lloyd Jones (born in 1962), the winner of Transatlantyk Prize for 2018, studied Russian and Ancient Greek at Oxford. She received also the prestigious Found in Translation Award twice – in 2009 for the transaltion of The Last Supper by Paweł Huelle, and a lifetime achievement award in 2012. She was interested in foreign languages since childhood, but she has only learnt Polish as an adult.

Her rich and exceptionally varied body of work includes over a hundred publications, such as novels by Jacek Dehnel, Paweł Huelle, Jarosław Iwaszkiewicz, Zygmunt Miłoszewski, Żanna Słoniowska and Olga Tokarczuk. She also translated journalistic works of Jacek Hugo-Bader, Wojciech Jagielski, Witold Szabłowski, Mariusz Szczygieł and Wojciech Tochman, the famous Ryszard Kapuściński biography by Artur Domosławski, Inhuman Land by Józef Czapski, My Lwów by Józef Wittlin, Stanisław Barańczak's essays, poetry (by, amongst others, Krystyna Dąbrowska, Tadeusz Dąbrowski, Łukasz Jarosz, Adam Zagajewski, children's books (by classics such as  Gałczyński, Korczak, Kraszewski and Tuwim), as well as collections of short stories and journalistic pieces, and theatre plays.

However, Antonia Lloyd-Jones's contribution to the promotion of Polish culture and literature is not limited to translation. Thanks to mentoring programs she already has four successors, who published their own translations (Garry Malloy, Sean Bye, Eliza Marciniak and a Harvill Secker Young Translators Prize winner, Tul’si Bhambry). Lloyd-Jones has also conducted many seminars for translators, co-organised literary programs in Polish culture institutions in New York and London, and also took part in the Market Focus Poland project organisation during the London Book Fair 2017 of which Poland was an honorary guest.

Lloyd-Jones is also a promoter of Olga Tokarczuk's works, many of which she translated. Thanks to her cooperation with Jennifer Croft (and the great translation by the latter), Tokarczuk was honoured with the prestigious Man Booker International Prize.