Literary translator, Patricia Crampton (1925-2016), translated over 200 children’s books and over 50 adult novels, primarily from German, French, Dutch and Scandinavian languages. Patricia was a strong advocate for the rights of translators and received numerous literary awards and prizes.
At the age of 21, Patricia’s first professional post was document translator and reviewer at the Nuremberg war crimes trials. Her letters home (1947-1949) describe some harrowing moments as Nazi doctors, SS officers and chemical company officials took to the stand. The war was over, yet right in front of her, as she worked long hours to get this very serious work done. The upside to this intense and grim work was that post-war Nuremberg was a gathering point for young interpreters and translators from across America and Europe. Friendships formed and together they enjoyed winter sports, the arts, extensive travel in the most beautiful parts of central Europe, and relentless shopping.
Following a relationship with translator Charles MacNamara, Patricia met interpreter Wolfgang Hildesheimer. They had hoped to marry however these plans were dropped in the light of her father’s anti-Semitism. Despite this pain, she and Wolfgang remained friends and in 1984 Patricia won the Schlegel-Tieck Prize for her translation of his novel ‘Marbot’.
In 1949 Patricia moved to London (and later Paris) where she worked as a commercial translator, including for NATO and the British American Tobacco Company. She set up as a freelance book translator following her marriage to sculptor Seán Crampton in 1959.
Patricia was part of a small team that fought its way through the meeting of the UNESCO Committee of Experts in Paris, to achieve in 1976, at its general conference in Nairobi, the signing of the ‘Nairobi Recommendation’ for the legal protection of translators, and later interpreters.
In 1996 Patricia received the coveted Pierre-François Caillé medal in recognition of her outstanding services to the profession.
The archive includes biographical material on some of the authors whom Patricia translated: Astrid Lindgren, Paul Biegel and Dick Bruna (Dutch author, artist, illustrator and graphic designer).
Dick Bruna
Throughout the sixties and seventies Methuen published Dick Bruna’s picture books, particularly his increasingly popular Miffy and friends’ series. Miffy is a simple graphic-like fictional rabbit. Alongside each illustration, Bruna (1927-2017) would always create four lines of Dutch rhyming verse – however his editor at Methuen always denied it was possible to translate these lines into corresponding English verse. Bruna had grown to accept Methuen’s English versions in prose, even though he believed strongly that young children remember stories in rhyme far more easily. Then one day he happened to see an English translation of a book that a Dutch psychologist had written analysing his work. Surprised and impressed, Bruna discovered Patricia Crampton had translated his Dutch verse into perfect English meter, and thus began their long working partnership. He gave her 40 of his past books to re-translate, this time into English verse.
The Archive contains editorial correspondence with Mercis Publishers to whom Patricia submitted her drafts and final scripts.
After the death of her husband in 1999, Patricia stopped translating altogether with the exception of Bruna's little square books about Miffy and friends. These she had agreed to translate as each new book was completed, as well as his entire backlog. The last of her Miffy translation manuscripts is dated 2010.
The British Archive of Contemporary Writing is delighted to hold Patricia’s fascinating, varied and colourful archive.
