Gjon Shllaku, translator and professor, was born in Shkodër. He attended the franciscan school and the Pontifical Seminary in his hometown, where he studied philosophy and followed the advanced theology course. He acquired a fundamental knowledge of several classical and modern foreign languages. Gjon Shllaku was imprisoned in 1946, for political reasons. After serving his sentence, he devoted himself entirely to translations from classical literature, which he started in prison: Homer’s “Iliad” (Tirana, 1965); in 1995 “The Complete Work” of Sophocles, translated with a high artistic level (Tirana, 1995); Virgil’s “Georgics” (Prishtina, 2000); “Song of Roland” the well-known medieval French epic (Tirana, 2003). He left manuscript translations from Aeschylus and Euripides, the “Latin-Albanian Dictionary”, and the “Greek-Albanian Dictionary”, which remained unfinished. He was decorated with the “Grand Master” order. He passed away in 2003. (In the photo: Gjon Shllaku)
Text: Albanian encyclopedic dictionary – Vol. 3 , Academy of Sciences of Albania, “Kristalina-KH”, Tirana, 2009, page 2502.
Photo: © https://kujto.al/personat/gjon-shllaku/
Graphic processing: AHCF
