Edith Grossman (born March 22, 1936) is an American Spanish-to-English

literary translator Translation is the communication of the meaning of a source-language text by means of an equivalent target-language text. The English language draws a terminological distinction (which does not exist in every language) between ''transla ...

. One of the most important contemporary translators of Latin American and Spanish literature, she has translated the works of Nobel laureate

Mario Vargas Llosa Jorge Mario Pedro Vargas Llosa, 1st Marquess of Vargas Llosa (born 28 March 1936), more commonly known as Mario Vargas Llosa (, ), is a Peruvian novelist, journalist, essayist and former politician, who also holds Spanish citizenship. Vargas Ll ...

, Nobel laureate Gabriel García Márquez, Mayra Montero, Augusto Monterroso,

Jaime Manrique Jaime Manrique (born 16 June 1949) is a bilingual Colombian American novelist, poet, essayist, educator, and translator. His work is a representation of his cultural upbringing and heritage mixed with the flavors of his education in English. A pri ...

, Julián Ríos,

Álvaro Mutis Álvaro Mutis Jaramillo (August 25, 1923 – September 22, 2013) was a Colombian poet, novelist, and essayist. His best-known work is the novel sequence '' The Adventures and Misadventures of Maqroll'', which revolves around the character o ...

, and Miguel de Cervantes. She is a recipient of the

PEN/Ralph Manheim Medal for Translation The PEN/Ralph Manheim Medal for Translation, named in honor of U.S. translator Ralph Manheim, is a literary award given every three years by PEN America (the U.S. chapter of International PEN) to a translator "whose career has demonstrated a commit ...

and the 2022 Thornton Wilder Prize for Translation.

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 as a translator began in 1972 when a friend, Jo-Anne Engelbert, asked her to translate a story for a collection of short works by the Argentine avant-garde writer Macedonio Fernández. Grossman 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 Carlos Fuentes Macías (; ; November 11, 1928 – May 15, 2012) was a Mexican novelist and essayist. Among his works are '' The Death of Artemio Cruz'' (1962), '' Aura'' (1962), '' Terra Nostra'' (1975), '' The Old Gringo'' (1985) and ''Christop ...

and

Harold Bloom Harold Bloom (July 11, 1930 – October 14, 2019) was an American literary critic and the Sterling Professor of Humanities at Yale University. In 2017, Bloom was described as "probably the most famous literary critic in the English-speaking worl ...

, who called her "the Glenn Gould of translators, because she, too, articulates every note." However, the reaction from Cervantes scholars has been more critical. Tom Lathrop, himself a translator of ''Don Quixote'', critiqued her translation in the journal of the Cervantes Society of America, saying: 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". She received the

in 2006. In 2008, she received the Arts and Letters Award in Literature by the American Academy of Arts and Letters. 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''. In 2016, she received the Officer's Cross of the Order of Civil Merit awarded by the King of Spain Felipe VI. In 1990 Gabriel García Márquez said that he prefers reading his own novels in their English translations by Grossman and

Gregory Rabassa Gregory Rabassa, ComM (March 9, 1922 – June 13, 2016), was an American literary translator from Spanish and Portuguese to English. He taught for many years at Columbia University and Queens College. Life and career Rabassa was born in Yonkers, ...

Selected translations

Miguel de Cervantes: * '' Don Quixote,'' Ecco/Harper Collins, 2003. * '' Exemplary Novels,'' Yale University Press, 2016. Gabriel García Márquez: * '' Love in the Time of Cholera,'' Knopf, 1988. * ''

The General in His Labyrinth ''The General in His Labyrinth'' (original Spanish title: ) is a 1989 dictator novel by Colombian writer and Nobel laureate Gabriel García Márquez. It is a fictionalized account of the last seven months of Simón Bolívar, liberator and lead ...

,'' Penguin, 1991. * '' Strange Pilgrims: Stories,'' Alfred A. Knopf, 1993. * '' Of Love and Other Demons,'' Knopf, 1995. * '' News of a Kidnapping,'' Alfred A. Knopf, 1997. * '' Living to Tell the Tale,'' Jonathan Cape, 2003. * ''

Memories of My Melancholy Whores ''Memories of My Melancholy Whores'' ( es, link=no, Memoria de mis putas tristes) is a novella by Gabriel García Márquez. The book was originally published in Spanish in 2004, with an English translation by Edith Grossman published in October ...

,'' Vintage, 2005.

: * ''

Death in the Andes ''Death in the Andes'' (''Lituma en los Andes'') is a 1993 novel by the Nobel Prize-winning Peruvian author Mario Vargas Llosa. It follows the character Lituma, from ''Who Killed Palomino Molero?'', after being transferred to the rural town of ...

'', Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1996. * ''The Notebooks of Don Rigoberto'', Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1998. * ''

The Feast of the Goat ''The Feast of the Goat'' ( es, La Fiesta del Chivo, 2000) is a novel by the Peruvian Nobel Prize in Literature laureate Mario Vargas Llosa. The book is set in the Dominican Republic and portrays the assassination of Dominican dictator Rafael Tru ...

'', Picador, 2001. * ''

The Bad Girl ''The Bad Girl'', originally published in 2006 in Spanish as ''Travesuras de la niña mala'' (literally - ''The mischief of the bad girl''), is a novel by Peruvian author Mario Vargas Llosa, who won the Nobel Prize in Literature in 2010. Journali ...

'', Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2007.
''In Praise of Reading and Fiction: The Nobel Lecture''
Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2011. * '' Dream of the Celt'', Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2012. * ''The Discreet Hero'', Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2015. * ''The Neighborhood'', Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2018.

Ariel Dorfman Vladimiro Ariel Dorfman (born May 6, 1942) is an Argentine-Chilean- American novelist, playwright, essayist, academic, and human rights activist. A citizen of the United States since 2004, he has been a professor of literature and Latin Americ ...

: * ''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.

: * ''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 Eliseo Alberto de Diego García Marruz (September 10, 1951 – July 31, 2011) was a Cuban-born Mexican writer, novelist, essayist and journalist. His numerous works include the novel ''Caracol Beach''. Alberto was nicknamed Lichi. Biography Albert ...

, ''Caracol Beach: A Novel'', Vintage, 2001. * Julián Ríos, ''Monstruary,'' Knopf, 2001. * Pablo Bachelet, ''Gustavo Cisneros: The Pioneer'', Planeta, 2004. *

Carmen Laforet Carmen Laforet ( Barcelona 6 September 1921 – Madrid, 28 February 2004) was a Spanish author who wrote in the period after the Spanish Civil War. An important European writer, her works contributed to the school of Existentialist Literatur ...

, ''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. *

Luis de Góngora Luis de Góngora y Argote (born Luis de Argote y Góngora; ; 11 July 1561 – 24 May 1627) was a Spanish Baroque lyric poet and a Catholic priest. Góngora and his lifelong rival, Francisco de Quevedo, are widely considered the most prominen ...

, '' 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. Essay: * ''Why Translation Matters'', Yale University Press, 2010.

References

External links

Interview in Guernica Magazine about "Don Quixote"Edith Grossman's lecture, "Translating Cervantes," delivered at the IDB Cultural Center in Washington, D.C.2016 PEN World Voices Festival: Tribute to Edith Grossman: Making Translation Matter

Podcast Interview with Paula Shackleton BookBuffet.com
{{DEFAULTSORT:Grossman, Edith 1936 births Living people American translators Spanish–English translators Philadelphia High School for Girls alumni Translators of Miguel de Cervantes Writers from Philadelphia University of Pennsylvania alumni New York University alumni Literary translators American women writers American women anthropologists