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Gregory Rabassa

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Template:Infobox academicGregory Rabassa (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.<ref name=abcobit>Template:Cite news</ref>

Life and careerEdit

Rabassa was born in Yonkers, New York, to a family headed by a Cuban émigré. After serving during World War II as an OSS cryptographer, he received a bachelor's degree from Dartmouth. He earned his doctorate at Columbia University and taught there for over two decades before accepting a position at Queens College, City University of New York.<ref name=nytimes>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref><ref name=finebooks>Template:Cite news</ref><ref name=utdallas>Template:Cite journal</ref><ref>Template:Cite news</ref><ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref>

Rabassa translated literature from Spanish and Portuguese. He produced English-language versions of the works of several major Latin American novelists, including Julio Cortázar, Jorge Amado and Gabriel García Márquez. On the advice of Cortázar, García Márquez waited three years for Rabassa to schedule translating One Hundred Years of Solitude. He later declared Rabassa's translation to be superior to the Spanish original.<ref>Template:Cite news</ref>

He received the PEN Translation Prize in 1977 and the PEN/Ralph Manheim Medal for Translation in 1982. Rabassa was honored with the Gregory Kolovakos Award from PEN American Center for the expansion of Hispanic Literature to an English-language audience in 2001.<ref name=nytimes/><ref name=finebooks/><ref name=utdallas/>

Rabassa had a particularly close and productive working relation with Cortázar, with whom he shared lifelong passions for jazz and wordplay. For his version of Cortázar's novel, Hopscotch, Rabassa shared the inaugural U.S. National Book Award in Translation.<ref name=nytimes/><ref name=finebooks/><ref name=utdallas/><ref name=nba1967>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }} There was a "Translation" award from 1967 to 1983.</ref>

Rabassa taught at Queens College, from which he retired with the title Distinguished Professor Emeritus. In 2006, he was awarded the National Medal of Arts.<ref name=nytimes/><ref name=finebooks/><ref name=utdallas/>

He wrote a memoir of his experiences as a translator, If This Be Treason: Translation and Its Dyscontents, A Memoir, which was a Los Angeles Times "Favorite Book of the Year" for 2005 and for which he received the PEN/Martha Albrand Award for the Art of the Memoir in 2006.<ref name=nytimes/><ref name=finebooks/><ref name=utdallas/><ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref>

Translation methodsEdit

Rabassa sometimes translated without having read the book beforehand.<ref name="utdallas" />

In a 2006 interview with the University of Delaware, Rabassa said "I just let the text lead me along. In my mind, the book I’m translating exists in English even before it’s translated. I just have to pull it out. I do a first draft, “write” the book as the author him- or herself would have written it if they’d spoken English. Ideally, a different style emerges for each author being translated".<ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref>

DeathEdit

Rabassa died on June 13, 2016, at a hospice in Branford, Connecticut.<ref name=abcobit /> He was 94.

Selected translationsEdit

HonoursEdit

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ReferencesEdit

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External linksEdit

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