Edith Grossman (born March 22, 1936) is an award-winning American Spanish-to-English literary translator. She is one of the most important translators of Latin American fiction in the past century, translating the works of Nobel laureate Mario Vargas Llosa, Nobel laureate Gabriel García Márquez, Mayra Montero, Augusto Monterroso, Jaime Manrique, Julián Ríos and of Álvaro Mutis.
In a speech delivered at the 2003 PEN Tribute to Gabriel García Márquez, in 2003, she explained her method:
| “ | Fidelity is surely our highest aim, but a translation is not made with tracing paper. It is an act of critical interpretation. Let me insist on the obvious: Languages trail immense, individual histories behind them, and 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. Fidelity is our noble purpose, but it does not have much, if anything, to do with what is called literal meaning. A translation can be faithful to tone and intention, to meaning. It can rarely be faithful to words or syntax, for these are peculiar to specific languages and are not transferable. | ” |
She and Gregory Rabassa were given the unprecedented compliment from Gabriel Garcia Marquez when he revealed that he prefers reading his own novels in their English translation.
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 translation of Cervantes' Don Quixote, published in 2003, is considered one of the finest translations of the Spanish masterpiece in the English language, praised by such author/critics as Carlos Fuentes and Harold Bloom". She received the PEN/Ralph Manheim Medal for Translation in 2006. In 2010, Edith Grossman was awarded the Queen Sofia Spanish Institute Translation Prize for her 2008 translation of Antonio Muñoz Molina's A Manuscript of Ashes.
Famous quotes containing the word edith:
“The ghost of the heart of manred Cain
And the more murderous brain
Of Man, still redder Nero that conceived the death
Of his mother Earth, and tore
Her womb, to know the place where he was conceived.”
—Dame Edith Sitwell (1887–1964)