Jarka Vrbova – Translator of the Month April 2017

The translators are the most important stakeholders we have for bringing Norwegian literature to the world. Their work is of vital importance and to showcase this work in January 2015 we started the interview series «Translator of the Month». Here we become better acquainted with translators from the Norwegian language and their challenging work, which introduces Norwegian literature to all the different languages of the world.

The translator of the month for April is Jarka Vrbova. She has translated a long list of Norwegian books into Czech and in 2009 was conferred with the honour Knight 1st Class by the Royal Norwegian Order of Merit for her contribution to the promotion of Norwegian-Czech alliances, particularly in the fields of literature and culture.
In addition to her work as a translator, she teaches Norwegian at Charles University in Prague and has thereby played a wholly central role in the work of spreading enthusiasm for Norwegian language and literature in the Czech Republic and also in terms of recruiting budding translators. We at NORLA are very thankful for all her work!

This spring Jarka is of current interest with all of three translations: Jostein Gaarder’s Dukkeføreren (The Puppeteer), Henrik Svensen’s nonfiction book Bergtatt (In High Places) and Bjørg Vik’s Små nøkler, store rom (Small Keys, Large Rooms).
Read our interview (in Norwegian) here.