Zlatko Gorjan

Zlatko Gorjan (15 July 1901 – 21 June 1976) was a notable Croatian and Yugoslav translator and poet.

Born in Sremska Mitrovica, Gorjan graduated from high school in Banja Luka in 1919.

From 1936 to 1940 Gorjan worked as dramaturge for Warner Bros. (after its acquisition of First National Pictures in 1936) in Zagreb. After the war Gorjan worked as editor at several Zagreb-based publishing companies, such as Prosvjeta, Matica hrvatska and Znanje. Gorjan was a founding member and president of the Croatian Literary Translators Association (DHKP), and in 1963 he was elected president of the International Federation of Translators (FIT), and was member of the editing board of the federation's scholarly journal Babel.

Gorjan wrote poetry, novellas and essays but is best known for his translating work - in his career he translated some 150 works of prose and poetry from German, English, and French languages into Croatian. The most important translations Gorjan penned include Herman Melville's Moby-Dick (Moby Dick ili Bijeli kit; 1953), James Joyce's Ulysses (Uliks; 1957), Olav Duun's six-part series The People of Juvik (Ljudi s Juvika; 1959) and Robert Musil's modernist novel The Man Without Qualities (Čovjek bez svojstava; 1967). Throughout the 1950s and 1960s he also translated and brought to Yugoslav audiences several works by Charles Dickens, George Eliot, D. H. Lawrence, Carson McCullers and Heinrich Böll.