Nora Gal

Nora Gal (Russian: Нора Галь), full name Eleonora Yakovlevna Galperina (Russian: Элеонора Яковлевна Гальперина, April 27, 1912, in Odessa – July 23, 1991) was a Soviet translator, literary critic, and translation theorist.

She then completed her post-graduate studies with a thesis on the French poet Arthur Rimbaud and published articles on classical and contemporary foreign literature (Guy de Maupassant, Byron, Alfred de Musset).

In the last period of her activity she tackled such masterpieces as "The Stranger" by Albert Camus and "Death of a Hero" by Richard Aldington, as well as books by Thomas Wolfe, Katherine Anne Porter, and by a number of science fiction authors, including Isaac Asimov and Arthur C. Clarke, Roger Zelazny and Ursula K. Le Guin.

There, she challenged conventions and advocated lively word choice and sentence structure over passive, cluttered, and official tone, simplicity and flow over the accepted heavy, cold, and technical style; if it makes more sense but sounds rustic, then so be it.

Since 2012, The Nora Gal Prize for the best translation of short story from English into Russian is awarded yearly.