LANE, Helen R(uth) 1921(?)-2004

OBITUARY NOTICE—

See index for CA sketch: Born c. 1921, in Minneapolis, MN; died of a stroke August 29, 2004, in Albuquerque, NM. Educator, translator, and author. Lane was a noted translator of works by French-, Spanish-, and Italian-speaking authors. Earning a master's degree from the University of California at Los Angeles (UCLA) in 1953, where she also continued graduate study for four more years, she studied at the Sorbonne for a year, as well. Fluent in seven languages, she began her career in translating with the U.S. civil service in Los Angeles in 1943; next, she taught French at UCLA during much of the 1950s, spending the last three years of that decade as a teacher at Goucher College in Maryland and then at New York University. In 1960, Lane switched from academia to publishing, joining the Grove Press staff as foreign editor before becoming a full-time freelancer in 1970. Soon considered a gifted translator, Lane translated dozens of books, both fiction and nonfiction, from writers as well known as Octavio Paz, Claude Simon, and Eugene Ionesco; some of these works won prizes, such as the P.E.N. Club Translation Prize for her 1973 translation of Juan Goytisolo's Count Julian, and the Gulbenkian Foundation Translation Prize for her 1979 translation of The Three Marias: New Portuguese Letters. She also occasionally provided subtitles for foreign films. At the time of her death, Lane was working with Ronald Christ on the six-volume autobiography of Argentine author Victoria Ocampo.

OBITUARIES AND OTHER SOURCES:

PERIODICALS

Albuquerque Journal, September 4, 2004, p. F3.

Los Angeles Times, September 4, 2004, p. B21.

New York Times, September 3, 2004, p. C10.