Francis R. Jones
Francis R. Jones (born 1955 in Wakefield, UK) is a poetry translator 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. 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.
