MacDonald Translator

David Jack

David Jack was born in Glasgow, but was raised in George MacDonald’s own North East corner of Scotland. Seven years ago, he began translating all of his countryman’s Scottish novels into English, so that the broad “Doric” Scots, familiar to both David and MacDonald from childhood, would no longer prove a barrier to a worldwide readership. His new “Scots-English” editions are complete and unabridged, with the original Aberdeenshire dialogue appearing side-by-side with David’s modern English translation.

Central to these new editions is the belief that MacDonald is at least as valuable a writer as those he inspired, such as G K Chesterton, C S Lewis, and J R R Tolkien, and that therefore he deserves to be read (and the public deserves to be able to read him) in unabridged form, as his heirs are still read today. The aim has been to champion George MacDonald’s works in the twenty-first century as C S Lewis did in the twentieth, with a special emphasis on the undiscovered, because linguistically challenging, novels set in Scotland. With this in mind, it has been a particular pleasure that Lewis’s stepson Douglas Gresham has recognised the value of this objective: providing introductions and endorsements not only for new editions of the fairy tales, but for the “Scots-English” editions of “Sir Gibbie,” “What’s Mine’s Mine“, “Malcolm,” and more.

David is a graduate of Aberdeen University, where MacDonald also earned his first degree. His grandfather fished the same waters as one of MacDonald’s most enduring characters, Malcolm MacPhail, and before he had even heard about his famous countryman (who remains more celebrated on the other side of the Atlantic) he used to pay frequent visits to the author’s home town of Huntly, which is situated a mere fifty miles from his own boyhood home.