FADIL BAJRAJ

 
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Fadil Bajraj is a well-known translator from English into Albanian, focusing in large part on American literature. He was solely responsible for introducing the Beat Generation to the Albanian-speaking world with his translations of Allen Ginsberg, Jack Kerouac, Lawrence Ferlinghetti, Amiri Baraka, Michael McClure, Philip Lamantia, Gregory Corso, Gary Snyder, Carl Solomon, Harold Norse, Peter Orlovsky, Bob Kaufman, etc. Likewise, through his efforts, Ezra Pound was translated and published for the first time in Albanian. Bajraj has rendered selected works by James Joyce, E. E. Cummings, Raymond Carver, John Fante, Dan Fante, Frank O’Hara, Marianne Moore, Charles Bukowski, Robert Frost, T. S. Eliot, William Carlos Williams, William Burroughs, and Ernest Hemingway, among others, into Albanian, as well as Gregory Pardlo and Lou Lipsitz more recently. Through the publication of the Anthology of Rock Lyrics, he introduced Albanian readers to such songwriters as Bob Dylan, Leonard Cohen, Nick Cave, Jim Morrison, Patty Smith, Tom Waits, Lou Reed, Tim Buckley, Jeff Buckley, Joy Division, Bruce Springsteen, and Robert Hunter. He has also published translations from Albanian into English, and from Albanian into Serbian .

In 2023, with the help of friends and patrons, he founded the publishing house, Sabaiumbb, through which limited editions of the work of Neeli Cherkovski, John Yamrus, Jeff Weddle, A.D. Winans, Lawrence Ferlinghetti, and Amiri Baraka have been produced in Albanian translations.