Margaret Carroux

Born in Berlin into an international family, she studied economy, English and French before working as a commercial clerk and as foreign language correspondent.

Under the pseudonyms Martin Boor and Emmi Heimann, she translated books by Guillaume Chpaltine [fr] and Leopold Trepper from French to German.

[1][2][3][a] Her father, who was born in Berlin, was originally French and later went to the US where he married his deceased first wife's sister before returning to Germany.

[12] As Martin Boor, she translated La Renonce ou Le tracé des frontières relatives by Guillaume Chpaltine [fr] as Die nichtgespielte Karte; the book appeared in 1963.

[13] As Emmi Heimann, she translated the autobiography of Leopold Trepper, Le grand jeu into German as Die Wahrheit, appearing in 1975.

[14] Other authors translated by Carroux include Betty Friedan, Arthur Janov, Miles Tripp, Sébastien Japrisot, Edna O'Brien, Chaim Potok, Françoise Sagan[15] and Nadine Gordimer.

[21] Carroux arrived on a cold day with a suitcase full of books and was received by Tolkien in his unheated study, a converted garage.

[b] Both Tolkien and his wife were ill, so he was unable to offer any refreshments, and he was testy and tight-lipped, so Carroux left again after just one hour.

[16][10] The Tolkien scholar Susanne Stopfel gives as her overall verdict, "It is a very classy translation that treats its source with enormous respect.

[33] He created his own new translation of the Lord of the Rings that used a greater variety of German styles to correspond to different manners of speech in the original.

While she was not as fascinated as by the original text, she welcomed the challenge posed by the combination of Tolkien-inspired antiquated language with recent dirty American slang.