Identity: Translator, Editor, Memoirist, Consulting Petroleum Engineer, Literary Researcher

Shoaib Ghaffar is a multifaceted and distinguished writer and translator who has maintained a lifelong engagement with literature, language, and culture alongside a long and truly global professional career. He was born in 1933 in Hyderabad Deccan, the largest princely state of British India, ruled by the Nizam of Hyderabad—one of the most powerful allies of the British Empire.

He learned to recite the Qur’an at the age of four and later, through self-education, gained proficiency in Arabic, Urdu, Persian, English, and French. His enduring interests span literature, arts, poetry, history, philosophy, and languages. He graduated in Mechanical Engineering from Osmania University, Hyderabad, where Urdu was the medium of instruction. Following the annexation of Hyderabad by India, he migrated to Pakistan in 1953.

Under the Burma & Shell Oil Company (UK), Shoaib Ghaffar played a significant role in establishing and developing the natural gas industry in both West and East Pakistan (now Bangladesh), and also contributed to the early development of the North Sea oil fields. Beginning life as a financially destitute twenty-year-old, he built a global career based solely on education and determination, working across India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Libya, the UK, the USA, and the Netherlands.

His memoir, While It Lasts: The Story of a Long Life in Short Stories, published in December 2023, is not merely a personal narrative but a first-hand account of major political and social transformations of the twentieth century, including the Partition of India.

On February 1, 2024, his wife of 62 years, Zainub, tragically lost her life in a fire at their North London home. Shoaib Ghaffar sustained severe injuries while attempting to rescue her and remained in a coma on a ventilator for seven weeks. After his recovery, he embarked on an ambitious literary project as a tribute to her memory.

This resulted in a five-volume series titled Prominent Urdu Poets and a Selection of Their Poetry, presenting the works of fifty major Urdu poets spanning eight centuries, with original text, Roman transliteration, and English translation. The project aims to make the richness of Urdu poetry accessible to a global readership.

He is currently working on Urdu translations of over one hundred English poems, children’s stories, and other prose works. Reflecting on his life and work, he says with gentle humour:
“I am tired, but not retired.”