In Memoriam: Past President Barbara Harshav

ALTA is saddened to learn of the passing of its past President, Barbara “Bobbi” Harshav, on June 24, 2026. 

Barbara was a prolific translator from French, German, Hebrew, and Yiddish into English. She translated over 40 books from across the genre spectrum, including works by 1966 Nobel laureate Shmuel Yosef Agnon. She served as ALTA’s President from 2009-2011, and was awarded the PEN/Ralph Manheim Medal for Translation in 2018. 

During her term as President of ALTA, the Lucien Stryk Asian Translation Prize was launched (the first winner, In Such Hard Times: The Poetry of Wei Ying-wu, translated from Chinese by Red Pine, published by Copper Canyon Press, was recognized in 2010). She hoped to encourage more emerging translators and book publishers to attend the conference each year, as well as making the conference professionally compelling. Her time in office also saw a complete website redesign, with the aim of making ALTA and literary translation resources more visible and accessible to the membership and beyond. This iteration of the ALTA website was also the first to include a membership directory, where ALTA members could promote their work directly on the site.

“This is a great loss to the literary translation community,” said current ALTA President Corine Tachtiris. “Barbara Harshav leaves a remarkable legacy in her service to ALTA and in her illustrious translation career, which have touched so many colleagues and readers.”

ALTA will honor the life of Barbara Harshav, along with other members of the literary translation community who have passed away in the past year, at an In Memoriam ceremony at the upcoming ALTA conference. We hope you will join us there.

Read a full tribute to Barbara Harshav’s life and works written by past ALTA Board member Aviya Kushner at The Forward. 

In addition, the PEN Translation Committee is gathering tributes to Barbara, and invites ALTA members to share tributes to be published on the PEN Translation Committee website. Please send any memories you’d like to contribute to: translationcommittee@pen.org by the end of August.