Milan Richter (born 25 July 1948 in Bratislava) is a Slovak writer, playwright, translator, publisher and a former high-ranking diplomat.
For eleven years he devoted himself exclusively to the translation of literary texts, especially novels from German, English and Swedish.
In 2000 he founded his own publishing house MilaniuM, specializing in Slovakian poetry, as well as in poetry and prose from Scandinavia and other countries, publishing authors such as H. C. Andersen, Emily Dickinson, R. M. Rilke, Franz Kafka, Edith Södergran, Harry Martinson, Elias Canetti, Milan Rufus, Tomas Tranströmer, Reiner Kunze, Volker Braun, and many more.
Richter has published 10 books of poetry: His poems have been translated and published in 11 books abroad: in German (Die Wurzeln in der Luft; Horn, Austria, 1992), in Norwegian (Røter i lufta; Oslo, Norway, 1996) in Bulgarian (Vremeto, koeto razdava udari, Sofia, Bulgaria, 1999), in Czech (Five Seasons, Prague, 2002), in Arabic (Masacre in Beirut, Horn, Syria, 2002 - anti-Communist verses), in French (Par-dessus l´épaule du poéme (Esch-sur-Alzette, Luxembourg, 2005), in Hebrew (An Angel with Black Wings, Jerusalem, Israel, 2005), in Spanish (El silencio de los árboles en Hyde Park, Barcelona, Spain, 2007), in Chinese (Living Stones from the Bottom of a Lake, Taipei, Taiwan, 2010), in Macedonian (An Angel With Black Feathers, Struga, Macedonia, 2010) and in Serbian (Seen in the Snow, 2018).
Milan Richter suffered an unofficial publication ban, mostly for his poetry, from 1977 to 1986 and was not allowed to be a member of the Slovak Writers' Union until 1987.
He translated more than 75 books and theatre plays from German, English, Swedish, Norwegian, Danish, Czech and in linguistic cooperation from Spanish and Chinese.
His major translations are: Goethe's Urfaust and major parts of Faust I/II, Rilke's Duino Elegies, Kafka's aphorisms and short prose, T. Transtromer's collected poems, as well as selected poems of E. Dickinson, P. Neruda, E. Cardenal, E. Hemingway, A. Lundkvist, H. Martinson, O. Sjostrand, K. Espmark, K. Odegard, P. Tafdrup, R. M. Rilke, E. Jandl, the Prophet of K. Gibran, E. Ström, novels of J. Cheever, R. Hochhuth, L. Gustafsson, plays of L. de Vega, P. O. Enquist (6 plays altogether), E. Jelinek and E. Canetti, fairy-tales of H. C. Andersen and O. Wilde.