Today I am talking to translator and baritone George Roberts who is currently doing a postgraduate degree in voice at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama in London. In our chat George talks about the rhythm and melody inherent in the written word, the fascinating journey of translating a text from German or Italian to English, and how his work in the publishing industry and his love of singing influence each other daily.
George Robarts is a baritone and prizewinning translator based in London, where he is a postgraduate at the Guildhall School of Music & Drama, studying singing with Robert Dean. He is a regular song recitalist, with recent highlights including Butterworth's Six Songs from A Shropshire Lad, Beethoven's An die ferne Geliebte, Schumann’s Dichterliebe and Vaughan Williams’s Songs of Travel. George graduated with first-class honours in German and Italian from New College, Oxford, in 2017, where his lead roles in student operas included Mozart’s Figaro, Purcell’s Aeneas and Monteverdi’s Orfeo. After graduating, George worked for three years as an editor at a commercial publishing house, while also working as a freelance translator. His first book translation, The Wisdom of Old Dogs by Elli H. Radinger, was published by Mirror Books in 2019 and has sold over 10,000 copies. In 2020, he won third prize in the International Humanities Non-Fiction Translation Competition, awarded by the German Publishers’ and Booksellers’ Association in association with Frankfurt Book Fair New York.
https://www.amazon.co.uk/Wisdom-Old-Dogs-Lessons-friendship/dp/1912624907/
Twitter: @GeorgeRobarts