Tim Wilkinson

Tim Wilkinson (1947 –2020) was an English translator of Hungarian. He is best known for his translations of Nobel Prize laureate Imre Kertész and Miklós Szentkuthy.

Biography After studying biochemistry at the University of Liverpool, he moved to Budapest in 1970 to work at the Central Institute of Physics. He arrived not knowing Hungarian and learnt the language “on the hoof” by living in Budapest with his Hungarian wife. He was also concerned with the general lack of English translations of Hungarian literature, noting that on average ten times more Hungarian titles are published annually in translation in Germany than the United Kingdom.

Wilkinson also produced a new translation of Fatelessness which won the PEN America translation prize in 2005 and the Jewish Quarterly-Wingate Prize in 2006. The latter part of his professional life was dedicated to translating Miklós Szentkuthy.