Professor Peter Newmark passed away.

Professor Peter Newmark

1916-2011
A personal memory

Known worldwide as an early pioneer of the nascent discipline of Translation Studies, our friend and colleague, Professor Newmark, has died aged 95 in his home town of Guildford. ‘Passions’ and ‘commitments’ are a common and often weakened currency in the language of the 21st century. Not so for Peter. He was truly passionate about and committed to the learning and teaching of modern languages, was vehemently opposed to restrictive changes in government policy, and dedicated his time, expertise and energies to his beloved Institute of Linguists.

For Peter, life was a matter of absolutes: truth, family, friendship, literature, music, Palestine, ethics, good translation and bad translation. In a valueless (as Peter saw it) post-modernist world, this got him into trouble in many ways and on many occasions, but it also won him friends and admirers.

In the early 1980s, Peter was a true friend to the newly born Centre for Translation Studies at Surrey, founded in the aftermath of the Thatcher government’s university cuts by Nigel Reeves and our friend and colleague Gunilla Anderman, whose own death in 2007 greatly affected Peter until the end.

Peter continued to teach and lecture in the Centre during the following decades. His final lecture at Surrey was given only two years ago to a packed room, full of students eager to see and hear the man whose books and publications they had read and learnt from.

I shared many jokes with Peter about social class, disagreed with him about corpus linguistics and lexicography, and indulged in many a welcome glass of wine. Peter’s roots were firmly planted in a close family life. Our thoughts are with Pauline, Liz and Matt.

I will miss Peter, as will not only my colleagues but also our future generations of students, whom he would have loved to go on teaching.

The funeral is for close family only. A memorial will be held for Peter on 17th October in the Guildford Guildhall. No more details at present.

Margaret Rogers
12th July 2011

Centre for Translation Studies
University of Surrey
http://www.surrey.ac.uk/translation/
Tel.: + 44 (0)1483 682832
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