Dr Francis R. Jones (born 1955 in Wakefield, UK) is a poetry translator [1] and Reader in Translation Studies at Newcastle University. He is currently Head of the Translating and Interpreting Section of the School of Modern Languages at Newcastle. He works largely from Dutch and Bosnian/Croatian/Serbian, though also from German, Hungarian, Russian, and Caribbean creoles. [2]
He read German and Serbo-Croat at St John's College, Cambridge, and then spent a year researching poetry at the University of Sarajevo. After working as a Dutch-English in-house translator, he combined freelance translating with teaching English in the Netherlands and Greece. He joined Exeter University in 1988 and Newcastle University in 1990, working initially on foreign-language learning. However, his research and teaching work now focuses on translation studies. His numerous translations include works by Ivan V. Lalić, Vasko Popa and the Dutch poet Hans Faverey. He has twice been awarded the Poetry Society’s European Poetry Translation Prize for his translations of books by Ivan V. Lalić. Both his poetry translations and prose editing (e.g. of works by Rusmir Mahmutćehajić) as well as his academic writing show a strong commitment for a non-ethicized view of South Slav culture, and aim to foster parallels and dialogue within the South Slav/post-Yugoslav cultural space.
Francis Jones' research is largely inspired by his work as a poetry translator from Dutch and Bosnian/Croatian/Serbian. It mainly falls into two overlapping areas:
Foreign/second language learning, especially in the field of self-instruction. This was the topic of his PhD thesis (Going it Alone: Self-Instruction in Adult Foreign Language Learning, Newcastle University, 1996). Though he is no longer actively researching in this area, it still interests him.
He is now working on how ideology is expressed in published poetry translations - via the context of translation, and/or via the translator's decisions while actually translating. He is also interested in exploring poets' processes when they translate other poets.
To date, Francis Jones has given over 30 conference plenary papers, guest lectures, seminars and workshops on literary translation, and over 25 readings of his own poetry translations.
Source: [15]
Francis Jones reads Cathedrals by Ivan V. Lalić on YouTube
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