Edith Grossman

Edith Grossman in 2012

Edith Grossman (born March 22, 1936) is an American Spanish-to-English literary translator. She is one of the most important translators of Latin American fiction in the past century, and into the 21st, translating the works of Nobel laureate Mario Vargas Llosa, Nobel laureate Gabriel García Márquez, Mayra Montero, Augusto Monterroso, Jaime Manrique, Julián Ríos, Álvaro Mutis, and of Miguel de Cervantes.[1]

Early life

Born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, Grossman now lives in New York City. She received a B.A. and M.A. from the University of Pennsylvania, did graduate work at UC Berkeley, and received a Ph.D. from New York University. Her career in translation began when in 1972 a friend, Jo-Anne Engelbert, asked her to translate a story for her collection of short works by an early, fairly obscure, Argentine avant-garde writer, Macedonio Fernández.[2] She subsequently changed the focus of her work from scholarship and criticism to translation.

Method

In a speech delivered at the 2003 PEN Tribute to Gabriel García Márquez, in 2003, she explained her method:

Awards and recognition

Grossman's translation of Miguel de Cervantes's Don Quixote, published in 2003, is considered one of the finest English-language translations of the Spanish novel, by authors and critics including Carlos Fuentes[4] and Harold Bloom. However, the reaction from Cervantes scholars has been more critical. Tom Lathrop, reviewing her translation in the journal of the Cervantes Society of America, said:

Serious students of literature in translation should consider looking elsewhere for more faithful translations, such as Starkie and the discontinued and lamented Ormsby-Douglas-Jones version. There are just too many things that just are not right, or are confusing, in this translation.[5]

Both Lathrop and Daniel Eisenberg criticize her for a poor choice of Spanish edition as source, leading to inaccuracies; Eisenberg adds that "she is the most textually ignorant of the modern translators".[6]

She received the PEN/Ralph Manheim Medal for Translation in 2006.[7] In 2008, she received the Arts and Letters Award in Literature by the American Academy of Arts and Letters.[8] In 2010, Grossman was awarded the Queen Sofia Spanish Institute Translation Prize for her 2008 translation of Antonio Muñoz Molina's A Manuscript of Ashes.[9] In 2016 she received the Officer’s Cross of the Order of Civil Merit awarded by the King of Spain Felipe VI.[10]

In 1990 Gabriel García Márquez said that he prefers reading his own novels in their English translations by Grossman and Gregory Rabassa.[11]

Selected translations

Miguel de Cervantes

Gabriel García Márquez

Mario Vargas Llosa

Ariel Dorfman

  • Last Waltz in Santiago and Other Poems of Exile and Disappearance, Penguin, 1988.
  • In Case of Fire in a Foreign Land: New and Collected Poems from Two Languages, Duke University Press, 2002

Mayra Montero

  • In the Palm of Darkness, HarperCollins, 1997.
  • The Messenger: A Novel, Harper Perennial, 2000.
  • The Last Night I Spent With You, HarperCollins, 2000.
  • The Red of His Shadow, HarperCollins, 2001.
  • Dancing to "Almendra": A Novel, Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2007.
  • Captain of the Sleepers: A Novel, Picador, 2007.

Álvaro Mutis

  • The Adventures of Maqroll: Three Novellas, HarperCollins, 1992.
  • The Adventures of Maqroll: Four Novellas, HarperCollins, 1995.
  • The Adventures and Misadventures of Maqroll, NYRB Classics, 2002.

Other works

  • José Luis Llovio-Menéndez, Insider: My Hidden Life as a Revolutionary in Cuba, Bantam Books, 1988.
  • Augusto Monterroso, Complete Works & Other Stories, University of Texas Press, 1995.
  • Julián Ríos, Loves That Bind, Knopf, 1998.
  • Eliseo Alberto, Caracol Beach: A Novel, Vintage, 2001.
  • Julián Ríos, Monstruary, Knopf, 2001.
  • Pablo Bachelet, Gustavo Cisneros: The Pioneer, Planeta, 2004.
  • Carmen Laforet, Nada: A Novel, The Modern Library, 2007.
  • The Golden Age: Poems of the Spanish Renaissance, W.W. Norton, 2007.
  • Antonio Muñoz Molina, A Manuscript of Ashes, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2008.
  • Why Translation Matters, Yale University Press, 2010.
  • Luis de Góngora, The Solitudes, Penguin, 2011.
  • Carlos Rojas, The Ingenious Gentleman and Poet Federico Garcia Lorca Ascends to Hell, Yale University Press, 2013.
  • Carlos Rojas, The Valley of the Fallen, Yale University Press, 2018.

References

  1. ↑ Hecht, Randy B. "Interview with Edith Grossman, translator". AARP. Retrieved 2018-05-25.
  2. ↑ "Archived copy". Archived from the original on 2016-03-10. Retrieved 2014-04-19.
  3. ↑ Grossman, Edith. "Narrative Transmutations". PEN American Centre. Retrieved 26 April 2014.
  4. ↑ Fuentes, Carlos (2 November 2003). "Tilt". Nyimes.com. Retrieved 21 December 2017.
  5. ↑ Lathrop, Tom (2006). "Edith Grossman's Translation of Don Quixote" (PDF). Cervantes, bulletin of the Cervantes Society of America. pp. 237–255.
  6. ↑ Eisenberg, Daniel (2006). "The Text of Don Quixote as Seen by its Modern English Translators" (PDF). Cervantes, bulletin of the Cervantes Society of America. pp. 103–126.
  7. ↑ "PEN/Ralph Manheim Medal for Translation Winners - PEN America". Pen.org. 29 April 2016. Retrieved 21 December 2017.
  8. ↑ "Awards – American Academy of Arts and Letters". artsandletters.org. Retrieved 2018-05-25.
  9. ↑ López, Enrique Ávila (2015-12-07). Modern Spain. ABC-CLIO. p. 211. ISBN 9781610696012.
  10. ↑ "En traducción. Edith Grossman". April 30, 2016. Retrieved July 30, 2018.
  11. ↑ Padgett, Tim (October 8, 1990), "Battling over Bolívar's Soul", Newsweek, 116 (15): 70, retrieved 2008-03-17 .
This article is issued from Wikipedia. The text is licensed under Creative Commons - Attribution - Sharealike. Additional terms may apply for the media files.