Janet Shirley M.A.Oxon.

Translator of medieval and modern French
Member of the Translators' Association and of the Society of Authors.

e: janshirley@french-translator.co.uk

Welcome

I hope you find this site interesting. I've put it together so that you can see what sort of translating work I like doing, and if any of you can come up with interesting suggestions - or commissions! - for further work along the same sort of lines, so much the better.

The originals of almost all the books referred to here were written at different times from the eleventh to the fifteenth centuries and I have translated them as carefully as I can. They do not, repeat not, tell us what did actually happen at any given date, but they do tell us how those people saw themselves and their world, how they thought it was, how they wanted it to be.

Truth, says Terry Pratchett, is the soap you can't get hold of in the bathwater of history. Add the scrubbing brush of translation and there's nothing much left but bubbles. Still, I really have tried. Check out some of the excerpts and see what you think.

My other interest is in writing fiction for children aged eight and upwards. Look at Children’s Fiction for more about this.

Krenn now remaindered, some copies still available, see Children's Fiction for bargain offer.
Krenn and the Great Ring of Berren written by Jan Shirley
The Inquisitors Guide translated by Jan Shirley
Song of Roland translated by Jan Shirley
Garniers Becket translated by Jan Shirley
Moroccan Myths and Legends translated by Jan Shirley
Chronicles of the Crusades translated by Jan Shirley
Rainbow Fish to the Rescue translated by Jan Shirley
Rainbow Fish and the Big Blue Whale translated by Jan Shirley
Little Polar Bear translated by Jan Shirley
Valley of the Kings translated by Jan Shirley
The Latin Kingdom of Jerusalem translated by Jan Shirley
Vendee translated by Jan Shirley
A Parisian Journal translated by Jan Shirley
The Capture of Alexandria translated by Jan Shirley
Daurel and Beton translated by Jan Shirley
The Song of the Cathar Wars translated by Jan Shirley