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Frederika Randall

Frederika Randall (1948 – 12 May 2020) was an American-Italian translator and journalist. Born in western Pennsylvania, she expatriated to Italy in 1985 at the age of 37. As a journalist, she wrote in both English and Italian for publications such as the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, and Internazionale [it]; from 2000 until her death, she was the Rome correspondent to The Nation. A prolific translator, her works included Confessions of an Italian, considered one of the most important Italian novels of the 19th century.

Frederika Randall
Randall c. 1986–1987
Born1948
Died12 May 2020(2020-05-12) (aged 71–72)
CitizenshipUnited States, Italy
Occupation(s)Translator, journalist

Early life

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Randall was born in 1948, in a town "downstream from Pittsburgh on the Ohio River".[1] She attended Harvard University, where she graduated with a B.A. in English literature in 1970, and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, where she attained an M.A. in urban planning working towards a Ph.D., which was left at the all but dissertation level. For a short period, she worked as an urban planner.[2][3]

Journalism

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Randall was the Rome correspondent for The Nation, where she was described as "an acute chronicler of the postwar death spiral of Italian democracy".[4] She was an outspoken critic of Silvio Berlusconi and Matteo Salvini.[5][6] In addition to her work at The Nation, Randall was a freelance writer for the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, and Internazionale.[7]

Translation

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Randall shifted her focus from journalism to translation in 2002, after she was catastrophically injured jumping from a third-story balcony; the disabilities she suffered as a result of the fall impaired her ability to work in the journalistic field.[8] She was "enormously admired" by her peers in Italian-to-English translation,[7] and translated seminal works such as Confessions of an Italian. Randall's translation of Confessions of an Italian, the first unabridged English version, was highly praised.[9][10] She acquired a reputation for successful translations of works previously labelled "untranslatable", such as Deliver Us (Libera nos a Malo [it]) by Luigi Meneghello.[11][12]

Randall was awarded a PEN/Heim Translation Prize in 2009 and shortlisted for the Italian Prose in Translation Award in 2017.[13] She would later be posthumously awarded the 2020 Italian Prose in Translation Award for I Am God.[14]

Personal life

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Randall moved to Rome from the United States in 1985.[8] She identified as a "dispatriate", intentionally distancing herself from her nation of origin.[7] She was married to an Italian national and had one son, the biologist Tommaso Jucker.[15]

Notable translations

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References

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  1. ^ Randall, Frederika (14 October 2014). "Biography". Frederika Randall. Retrieved 6 February 2021.
  2. ^ Randall, Frederika (January 2020). "Frederika Randall CV January 2020" (PDF). Frederika Randall. Retrieved 6 February 2021.
  3. ^ Zaman, Amal; Randall, Frederika (27 February 2017). "10 Questions for Frederika Randall". The Massachusetts Review. Retrieved 6 February 2021.
  4. ^ a b Guttenplan, D.D. (28 May 2020). "Remembering Frederika Randall (1948–2020)". The Nation. Retrieved 6 February 2021.
  5. ^ Randall, Frederika (29 May 2019). "Italy's Right-Wing Demagogue Matteo Salvini Wins Big in the EU Elections". The Nation. Retrieved 6 February 2021.
  6. ^ Randall, Frederika (24 September 2009). "A Tale of Two Countries". The Nation. Retrieved 6 February 2021.
  7. ^ a b c Brock, Geoffrey (9 July 2020). "Special Feature: Tributes to Frederika Randall (1948–2020)". The Arkansas International. Retrieved 6 February 2021.
  8. ^ a b Brock, Geoffrey; Randall, Frederika (Fall 2020). "Dispatriata". The Arkansas International. No. 9. Fayetteville.
  9. ^ Parks, Tim (9 July 2020). "Tim Parks tribute to Frederika Randall". The Arkansas International. Retrieved 6 February 2021.
  10. ^ a b Hughes-Hallet, Lucy (10 October 2014). "Blowing hard for Liberty". Times Literary Supplement.
  11. ^ a b Howard, Paul (6 April 2012). "Perbenito". Times Literary Supplement.
  12. ^ "Deliver Us". Northwestern University Press. Retrieved 24 February 2021.
  13. ^ Segnini E (20 July 2018). "Elisa Segnini speaks to Frederika Randall: tilting at the Leaning Tower, or translating irony in two writers from Northeast Italy". The Translator. 27 (3): 302–312. doi:10.1080/13556509.2018.1500132. S2CID 149474487. Retrieved 6 February 2021.
  14. ^ "Italian Prose in Translation Award (IPTA)". Italian Prose in Translation Award. Retrieved 6 February 2021.
  15. ^ Botsford, Clarissa (9 July 2020). "Clarissa Botsford tribute to Frederika Randall". The Arkansas International. Retrieved 6 February 2021.
  16. ^ Chacoff, Alejandro (28 December 2020). "The Italian Novelist Who Envisioned a World Without Humanity". The New Yorker. Retrieved 6 February 2021.
  17. ^ Stavans, Ilan (10 July 2020). "A Tribute to Frederika Randall, "Translator of the Unsaid"". Restless Books. Retrieved 5 February 2021.
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