Philip Mitchell

Philip Mitchell is an author, playwright, poet and translator. Born in Manchester, England and an established author with BBC Radio Drama, he is perhaps most famous for his acclaimed translation of Caradog Prichard's Welsh language novel "Un Nos Ola Leuad", as "One Moonlit Night". (ISBN 0-8112-1342-0)

Mitchell discovered Prichard's novel when studying Welsh A-level (for which it was a set text) and was surprised to find that it had never been translated fully into English. Indeed, there were those who claimed the novel could "not" be translated into English as it is written entirely in a dialect common in the Bethesda district of North Wales (where Prichard was born) but little-known outside that area.

Canongate Press in Edinburgh first accepted the translation for publication but the rights to publish Mitchell's translation were later acquired by publishers Penguin Books in London and New Directions in New York.

"Those of us who do not know Welsh can only speculate about the texture and cadences of the original. As Philip Mitchell says in his translator's note, he hoped that by "tuning in to the sounds of the words" he could create a narrative capable of producing "the same strong feelings that the original work evokes in the Welsh reader." In this he would seem to have succeeded brilliantly." [New York Times]

Foreign language translations of Mitchell's English translation have made the book available to readers in several European countries.