Ellen Elias-Bursać (born 1952) is an American scholar and literary translator. Specializing in
South Slavic literature, she has translated numerous works from
Bosnian,
Croatian, and
Serbian.
During her undergraduate studies, she attended a study abroad programme in
Yugoslavia. She worked as a freelance translator, and studied towards a master's degree at the University of Zagreb.[5]
In 1999, she received a
PhD from
University of Zagreb in
philology; her dissertation was titled Augustina-Tina Ujevića prijevodi iz anglo-američke književnosti: komparativno/kontrastivna lingvo-stilistička analiza.[6]
Career
Elias-Bursać worked as a language preceptor in the Slavic department of
Harvard University for 10 years. In 2005, she joined the English Translation Unit of the
International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY), in
The Hague.[7] Since leaving the ICTY she has been working as a free-lance translator, an independent scholar, and a contributing editor to Asymptote. She is a past president of the American Literary Translators Association.
[8]
Bosnian, Croatian, Serbian, a Textbook: With Exercises and Basic Grammar. University of Wisconsin. 2010.
ISBN978-0299236540. (With
Ronelle Alexander)
Translating Evidence and Interpreting Testimony at a War Crimes Tribunal: Working in a Tug-of-War. Palgrave. 2015.
ISBN978-1137332660.
Awards
In 1998, Elias-Bursać received the
AATSEEL Award for best translation from a Slavic or East European language for
David Albahari's Words are Something Else. In 2006, she was given the
National Translation Award for Albahari's Götz and Meyer.[5] Her translation of Trieste by
Daša Drndić won the Independent Foreign Fiction Readers' Prize in 2013.[9]
The Association for Women in Slavic Studies recognized Translating Evidence and Interpreting Testimony at a War Crimes Tribunal: Working in a Tug-of-War with the Mary Zirin Prize in 2015.[10]
References
^Massey, James L. (March 2002). "Obituary Peter Elias, 1923–2001". IEEE Information Theory Society Newsletter. 51 (1): 1–4.
CiteSeerX10.1.1.442.286.