On August 16, 2003, Gjon Shllaku, the pioneering translator of Homer’s Iliad and a distinguished expert in ancient Greek and Latin, passed away.

Born in 1923, Shllaku began his translation career early. At just 17, he translated Lew Wallace’s novel “Ben Hur”, laying the groundwork for his future translations of world classics.

In 1946, at the age of 22, Shllaku was sentenced to 101 years in prison for his involvement with the “Bashkimi shqiptar” (Albanian Union) political group. While imprisoned in the notorious Burrel prison, he began translating the Iliad, using cement sacks and newspaper strips. He continued this work after his release in 1957, having served 11 years.

Shllaku devoted his life to translation, bringing to Albanian the works of Sophocles, Euripides, Shakespeare, Aeschylus’s “Prometheus Bound”, and Virgil’s “Aeneid” and “Georgics”.

He also compiled two significant dictionaries for Albanian scholars: “Ancient Greek-Albanian” with 20,000 entries and “Old Latin-Albanian” with 65,000 entries.

For his contributions, Shllaku was honored with Greece’s “Silver Disc” and Albania’s “Naim Frashëri Gold Medal” in 1995. He passed away in Shkodër in 2003, leaving a lasting legacy in the Albanian language.

/a.p./