Helen Lane

"This article is about the translator. For the cancer patient and originator of the HeLa cell line, see Henrietta Lacks."

Helen Lane (1921 – August 29 2004) was a renowned translator of Spanish, Portuguese, French and Italian language literary works into English. She translated works by a number of noted authors among them are Augusto Roa Bastos, Juan Goytisolo, Juan Carlos Onetti, Jorge Amado, Luisa Valenzuela, Mario Vargas Llosa, Marguerite Duras, Nélida Piñon, and Curzio Malaparte.

Career

Lane began her career in the 1940s as a government translator in Los Angeles, before moving to New York to work for publishers there. She became a freelance translator in 1970, and moved to the Dordogne in France. In addition to her books, she also provided subtitles for films by Jean-Luc Godard and Haskell Wexler.

Life

She was born Helen Ruth Overholt in Minneapolis and graduated "summa cum laude" in 1943 from the University of California, Los Angeles, where in 1953 she went on to gain a master's degree. after that, she continued there in postgraduate work, as well as at the Sorbonne.

List of translations

*"Of Heroes and Tombs"
*"A Fish in the Water" (Mario Vargas Llosa)
*"Essays on Mexican Art"
*"Caetana's Sweet Song"
*"Massacre in Mexico" (Elena Poniatowska)
*""
*"State of Siege"
*"The Perón Novel"
*"Santa Evita"
*"The Memoirs of Fray Servando Teresa de Mier" (Servando Teresa de Mier)
*"I, the Supreme" (Augusto Roa Bastos)

References