Wordtrans comment on the death of an influential translator of modern Italian literature, William Weaver.
(1888PressRelease) November 26, 2013 - Renowned translator William Weaver has died at the age of 90. According to his nephew, John Paulson, Weaver had been living in a retirement home in Rhinebeck, New York and had been in poor health since a stroke some years earlier.
A company spokesperson at Wordtrans said:
"Weaver was a hugely important figure in the world of translation. His works and achievements have inspired and impressed many translators, readers and writers. His loss is a sad day for the literary community. Our thoughts are with his family and friends."
Weaver was a native of Virginia and worked in Italy in World War Two as an ambulance driver. He translated many popular Italian books in to English, including Umberto Eco's The Name of the Rose and Italo Calvino's Invisible Cities.
His translation of The Name of the Rose, Eco's murder mystery set in an Italian monastery, is surely his most famous work. The novel was published in English in 1983 and sold 275,000 copies in its first year of release. The Name of the Rose and was later made into a film starring Sean Connery and Christian Slater.
Born in 1923, the youngest of five siblings, Weaver studied at Princeton University. He spent a significant part of his adult life in Italy and was heavily involved in Rome's cultural community of artists and writers. He won a US National Book Award for translation in 1969 and The New York Times said he first discovered his talent for translation when he agreed to help a friend in translating their novel.
Weaver's translations were not just limited to works of fiction. He also translated poetry, prose and librettos.
In an interview with the Paris Review in October 2000, Weaver spoke with affection about his father, his childhood and his uncovering of translated works.
"I remember a French book, Sans famille, called in English Nobody's Boy, which my father read to me when I was four or five. It was about a little orphan boy who runs away from the orphanage and goes off with an Italian organ-grinder who has a pet monkey and a lot of stray dogs, all of them with names.
"Since I came from a large family with all these older brothers and sisters, the dream of my life was to be an orphan, so I thought, Oh, this lucky kid. He's an orphan, and he gets to wander the roads with all these animals and this nice Italian. I thought it a great happy book, but you were supposed to be dissolved in tears from beginning to end. My father understood perfectly."
Writers, academics and translators have paid tribute to a man revered for his translation abilities and his warm personality.
Wordtrans comment on the death of an influential translator of modern Italian literature, William Weaver. 
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