Edith Grossman

Edith Grossman (born March 22, 1936) is an American Spanish-to-English literary translator. One of the most important contemporary translators of Latin American and Spanish literature, she has translated the works of Nobel laureate Mario Vargas Llosa, Nobel laureate Gabriel García Márquez, Mayra Montero, Augusto Monterroso, Jaime Manrique, Julián Ríos, Álvaro Mutis, and Miguel de Cervantes. She is a recipient of the PEN/Ralph Manheim Medal 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 when in 1972 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 and Harold Bloom, 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 PEN/Ralph Manheim Medal for Translation 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.
Selected translations.
Miguel de Cervantes:
Gabriel García Márquez:
Mario Vargas Llosa:
Ariel Dorfman:
Mayra Montero:
Álvaro Mutis:
Other works: