Vocation : Writers : Translator

Josephus Carel Franciscus (Jef) Last (2 May 1898 in The Hague – 15 February 1972 in Laren) was a Dutch poet, writer, translator and cosmopolitan.Jef Last was a writer and socially compassionate man. He had a Catholic background. However, he was very young member of the SDAP and the "AJC". With these principles, he could not practice as an assistant manager of the Enka in Ede, and eventually he resigned.He left the revisionist social democracy to become a member of Henk Sneevliet's Revolutionary Socialist Party. With his revolutionary friend André Gide, he traveled in the summer of 1936 to the Soviet Union. The pair was well received, but saw through the organized tribute and returned to the west disillusioned. Much later Last wrote a book about his friendship with Gide.He last fought in the Spanish Civil War in the International Brigades, which was on the side of the Spanish Republic. As a result, he lost his Dutch citizenship because of military service for a foreign power. Shortly after the Second World War, his citizenship was returned.From 1950 to 1953, he lived in Indonesia, particularly in Singaraja (Bali), where he worked as a teacher at a secondary school. He was friends with president Sukarno and Mohammad Hatta.

Leah Goldberg or Lea Goldberg (Hebrew: לאה גולדברג; May 29, 1911, Königsberg – January 15, 1970, Jerusalem) was a prolific Hebrew-language poet, author, playwright, literary translator, illustrater and painter, and comparative literary researcher.
Her writings are considered classics of Israeli literature.

Louis Gustave Fortuné Ratisbonne (29 July 1827 – 24 September 1900) was a French man of letters.
He was born at Strasbourg. He was the son of the banker Adolphe Ratisbonne and his wife Charlotte Oppenheim (daughter of Salomon Oppenheim), and the nephew of the priests Marie Theodor Ratisbonne and Marie-Alphonse Ratisbonne. He studied at the school of his native town and at the College Henry IV in Paris. He was connected with the Journal des Debats from 1853 to 1876; became librarian of the palace of Fontainebleau in 1871, and three years later to the Senate.
Louis Ratisbonne's most important work was a verse translation of the La Divina Commedia (The Divine Comedy), in which the original is rendered tercet by tercet into French. L'Enfer (1852) was crowned by the Academy; Le Purgatoire (1857) and Le Paradis 1859) received the prix Bordin.
He is also the author of some charming fables and verses for children: La Comédie enfantine (1860), Les Figures jeunes (1865) and others. He was literary executor of Alfred de Vigny, whose Destinées (1864) and Journal d'un poète (1867) he published. Ratisbonne died in Paris.

Through the influence of Thiers, Ratisbonne was appointed librarian at Fontainbleau, where he succeeded Octave Feuillet, and later he was transferred to the Palais du Luxembourg.

Julien Auguste Pélage Brizeux (12 September 1803 – 3 May 1858) was a French poet. He was said to belong to a family of Irish origin, long settled in Brittany. He was educated for the law, but in 1827 he produced at the Théâtre Français a one-act verse comedy, Racine, in collaboration with Philippe Busoni.
His most important works are, first, Marie (1832, 1836, 1840), then, Les Bretons (1845, 1846). He also wrote in the Breton language, notably Telenn-Arvor and Furnez Breiz.

Charles-Jean-Melchior de Vogüé (18 October 1829 – 10 November 1916) was a French archaeologist, diplomat, and member of the Académie française in seat 18.

Jean-Marie Guyau (28 October 1854 – 31 March 1888) was a French philosopher and poet.
Guyau was inspired by the philosophies of Epicurus, Epictetus, Plato, Immanuel Kant, Herbert Spencer, and Alfred Fouillée, and the poetry and literature of Pierre Corneille, Victor Hugo, and Alfred de Musset.

Gilles Quispel (30 May 1916 – 2 March 2006) was a Dutch theologian and historian of Christianity and Gnosticism. He was professor of early Christian history at Utrecht University.
Born in Rotterdam, after finishing secondary school in Dordrecht, Quispel studied classical philology from 1934 to 1941 at the Leiden University. At Leiden he also began to study theology, which he continued at the University of Groningen. Quispel completed his doctoral work in 1943 at Utrecht University with a dissertation examining the sources utilized in Tertullian's Adversus Marcionem. He devoted study to several Gnostic systems, particularly Valentinianism. In 1948-1949 he spent a year in Rome as a Bollingen fellow and was appointed professor of the history of the early Church at Utrecht University in 1951. Quispel served as a visiting professor at Harvard University in 1964-1965 and at the Katholieke Universiteit Leuven in 1968. He was engaged in first editing Nag Hammadi Codex I (the "Jung Codex") and devoted attention to the Nag Hammadi Library and particularly to the Gospel of Thomas throughout the rest of his career. Quispel also made contributions to the study of early "Jewish-Christian" traditions as well as Tatian's Diatessaron (a second-century gospel harmony). He died in El Gouna, Egypt.

Luciano Bianciardi (Italian pronunciation: [luˈtʃaːno bjanˈtʃardi]; 14 December 1922 – 14 November 1971) was an Italian journalist, translator and writer of short stories and novels.
He contributed significantly to the cultural ferment in post-war Italy, working actively with various publishing houses, magazines and newspapers. His work is characterized by periods of rebellion against the cultural establishment, to which he also belonged, and by a careful analysis of social habits during Italian economic miracle.
He was the first Italian translator of Henry Miller's Tropic of Cancer and Tropic of Capricorn, Saul Bellow's Henderson the Rain King, John Steinbeck's The Winter of Our Discontent and Travels with Charley, Jack London's John Barleycorn, J.P. Donleavy's The Ginger Man and William Faulkner's A Fable and The Mansion.
Among the others, he also translated: Stephen Crane's Maggie and The Red Badge of Courage, Fred Hoyle's The Black Cloud, Osamu Dazai's The Setting Sun, Cyril Northcote Parkinson's Parkinson's Law, Mary Renault's The King Must Die, Brendan Behan's Borstal Boy, Irwin Shaw's Tip on a Dead Jockey, Aldous Huxley's Brave New World Revisited, Richard Brautigan's A Confederate General from Big Sur, Thomas Berger's Little Big Man and Killing Time.

Frederic Prokosch (May 17, 1906 – June 2, 1989) was an American writer, known for his novels, poetry, memoirs and criticism. He was also a distinguished translator.