Ranjit Bolt OBE (born 1959) is a British playwright and translator. He was born in Manchester of Anglo-Indian parents and is the nephew of playwright and screen-writer Robert Bolt.[1][2][3] His father is literary critic Sydney Bolt, author of several books including A preface to James Joyce, and his mother has worked as a teacher of English.[3] Bolt was educated at The Perse School and Oxford University, and worked as a stockbroker for eight years but "I was desperate to escape, any escape route would have done, and translating turned out to be the one".[1] As well as his plays he has published a novel in verse, Losing it[4] and a verse translation for children of the fables of La Fontaine, The Hare and the Tortoise. He was awarded the OBE in 2003 for services to literature.
Asked about his approach to translating plays, he has said:[1]
| “ | I try to follow the rule laid down by perhaps the greatest translator of all, John Dryden, who maintained that a translator should – and I paraphrase – make the version as entertaining as possible, while at the same time remaining as faithful as possible to the spirit of the original. | ” |
Ranjit Bolt has translated many classic plays into English, most of them into verse. Among his works are: