About
Chris Miller is a senior translator specialising in fine-arts translation from French. He is based in Oxford where he has access to all the libraries, museums, and other resources which are essential to his work.
He is a Qualified Member of the Institute of Translation and Interpreting. His forte is working in close collaboration with his authors, ensuring the final text in English exactly reflects the author’s intention, as this emerges from the translation process.
Chris has worked for many of the major museums of the world, from MONA (Tasmania), the Musée du Luxembourg, and the National Gallery of Singapore to Tate Modern, the Getty Museum and Kunstmuseum Basel. His translations have been published by the Getty Research Institute, Yale, Skira, Penguin, Holzwarth, Taschen, Blackwell, and Reaktion amongst others.
He has translated works by artists (Matisse), critics (Todorov, Cixous, Kristeva), and scholars (Dario Gamboni, Christian Michel, Jacqueline Lichtenstein, Dominique Poulot), and texts historical (Quatremère de Quincy, the Conférences of the Académie Royale de Peinture et de Sculpture) and contemporary (Galerie Max Hetzler, BFAS Geneva, etc.)
Chris has worked in the areas of painting – from the Old Masters to Impressionism and Contemporary – sculpture, architectural history, conceptual art, photography, rock art and film, translating on any scale from catalogues and works of art history to press releases, captions and audioguides for gallery and museum exhibitions. He is himself an author and critic.
He also translates from Spanish (Dalí Theatre-Museum, Getty Museum, Tate Modern, and Manuel Saiz).
C.V.
2003 to date: Incorporated as Chris Miller Ltd.
1996-2002: Freelance translator, reviewer, and author.
1984-96: Intermittently Oxford Intensive School of English, preparing students for BCC, BTS, GEC, GES, CAPES, Agrégation; academic language-editing.
1990: Second-year French literature seminar and tutorials for Magdalen College; research assistant in Colombia for doctoral thesis; co-founder of Oxford Amnesty Lectures (first series 1992).
1989: French translation tutorials for St. Peter’s College, French literature tutorials for Wadham and Magdalen Colleges.
1988: Translated Arasse, The Guillotine and the Terror (Viking); language-edited Richter, The Art of the Daguerreotype (Viking) and European Polyphony, ed. Lemaitre et al. (Copenhagen University/ Macmillan).
1985-90: Intermittently reader and French translation consultant for Penguin books.
1984: Resident in Oxford: correspondent of European Photography:
1982-83: Staff representative at l’École Fax. 80-83: agréé by the French Ministry of Education to teach Brevet de technicien supérieur (BTS); state examiner for BTS; Paris correspondent for European Photography.
1979-83: Resident in Paris.
1977-9: TEFL at Oxford Intensive School of English.
1973-77: BA Litterae Humaniores, Classics, University of Oxford.