Ewald Osers brought the poetry, novels, plays and non-fiction of significant eastern European writers to an English-speaking audience, translating from Czech, Macedonian, Slovak, Bulgarian, Silesian and German into English.

During his career he was responsible for more than 165 translated publications as well as three volumes of his own English poetry and an autobiography first published in Czech and then in English.

Mr Osers, who lived in Sonning Common, was a popular figure in his profession and held office in many trade bodies. He received numerous awards, prizes and honours for his translations.

He was born in Prague on May 13, 1917. After the early death of his father, he was brought up by his mother in an affluent German-speaking family. His maternal grandfather was Austria-Hungary’s first Jewish High Court judge.

Mr Osers adopted British citizenship and later completed a degree in Russian at the University of London. At the outbreak of war, he began working for the BBC’s Monitoring Service at Caversham Park, initially listening to German language farming programmes to check for references to the weather, then progressing to work on sensitive and high-level documents and transmissions.

His career at the BBC spanned 38 years, ending in 1977 when he retired as assistant head of the eastern Europe department.

Mr Osers moved to Sonning Common in 1945, buying a house in Kennylands Road for £400 before moving to Reades Lane in 1965 into a bungalow he had built.

He published more than 50 collections, translating from five languages. When the Czech poet Jaroslav Seifert was awarded the Nobel prize in 1984, he acknowledged that Mr Osers’ translation of his work had substantially contributed to his success.

Mr Osers was a poet in his own right, writing three collections inspired by his travels. He wrote about the changing landscape of Europe as well as his long and happy marriage to Mary, travels in America, skiing expeditions and visiting friends and family in Prague.

His many accolades, included the Medal of Merit in recognition of his achievements as an unofficial ambassador for Czech culture.

He was a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature and was the only translator ever to win the International Federation of Translators Aurora Borealis Prize for outstanding translation in the fiction and non-fiction categories in the same year (2002).

He was chairman of the Translators’ Association and the Translators’ Guild and was awarded an honorary doctorate by the University of Olomouc in the Czech Republic in 1990 and was made a Fellow of University College London in 2008.

See: Henley Standard