Aleida Gerarda Schot, 1900-1969 (English)

Aleida Schot is credited with ridding the translation of Russian literature of all incompetence and bungling. Before World War II, one did not see a problem with translating Dostoevsky, Tolstoy, and the other greats of classical Russian literature directly from the editions in English, German, or French. After Schot’s extraordinarily diligent translations of such classic literature, in particular Pushkin, including The Tales of the Late Ivan Petrovich Belkin and Chekhov (all of his well-known plays and a large number of stories), most of which appeared in the years after 1945, that was no longer acceptable. Schot showed us how it was done, and made a case for ‘real’ translations. Since then, publishing companies did not dare to release Russian literature in translations by translators who did not know the original language. In all, Aleida Schot has translated some 60 texts from classical Russian literature. Most of them have been reprinted a number of times, often also with different publishers.

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