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| Edith Grossman | |
Edith Grossman, "whose acclaimed translations of Love in the Time of Cholera by Gabriel García Márquez and Don Quixote by Miguel de Cervantes raised the profile of the often-overlooked role of the translator," died September 4, the New York Times reported. She was 87. Grossman "dedicated herself to translating Latin American and Spanish authors at a time when literary translation was not considered a serious academic discipline or career." She "believed that translation was a creative act undertaken in harmony with the author, the way an actor speaks the lines of a playwright."
In her book Why Translation Matters (2010), Grossman wrote that she saw the role of translator "not as the weary journeyman of the publishing world, but as a living bridge between two realms of discourse, two realms of experience, and two sets of readers."
She was among the first to insist that her name appear on the cover of any book she translated, along with that of the author. When her translation of Don Quixote was released in 2003, "it elevated not only her own career but also helped raise the stature of literary translation. Her Don Quixote, published by a HarperCollins imprint, became widely admired as the definitive English version, and she went on to inspire a new generation of translators," the Times noted.
Grossman also wanted publishers to commission translations of more books and accused them of "linguistic isolationism" for not doing so, the Times wrote, adding: "Not only did they not want to pay translators adequately, she said, but in her view they were ignoring a global conversation that builds mutual understanding through the exchange of ideas, culture and a shared love of literature."
Her technique helped make her one of the most sought-after translators of Latin American literature in the 1980s and '90s. She was among those who gave English-language readers access to the works of García Márquez, Isabel Allende, Carlos Fuentes, Laura Esquivel, and many others.
Grossman was widely respected across the industry--the literary critic Harold Bloom described her as "the Glenn Gould of translators, because she, too, articulates every note," the Guardian reported.
Her many honors and awards include the PEN/Ralph Manheim Medal for Translation in 2006; the Arts and Letters Award in Literature in 2008; and the Queen Sofia Spanish Institute Translation Prize in 2010 for her 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 a speech at the 2003 PEN Tribute to Gabriel García Márquez, Grossman spoke about the role of the translator. "Fidelity is surely our highest aim, but a translation is not made with tracing paper. It is an act of critical interpretation. No two languages, with all their accretions of tradition and culture, ever dovetail perfectly. They can be linked by translation, as a photograph can link movement and stasis, but it is disingenuous to assume that either translation or photography, or acting for that matter, are representational in any narrow sense of the term."