Gregory Rabassa

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Gregory Rabassa (b. 9 March 1922) is a renowned literary translator. He was born in Yonkers, New York, USA, to a family headed by a Cuban émigré. After serving as a cryptographer in the OSS during World War II and receiving a bachelor's degree at Darmouth, Rabassa enrolled as a graduate student at Columbia University, where he eventually earned a doctorate. He also taught at Columbia for more than two decades before accepting a position at Queens College.

His chief working languages are Spanish and Portuguese. He has produced English-language versions of novels by many major novelists writing in those languages, including Julio Cortázar, Jorge Amado, and Gabriel García Márquez. The latter has declared Rabassa's translation of One Hundred Years of Solitude superior to the Spanish original. Typically, Rabassa translates without reading the book beforehand, working as he goes.

Rabassa had a particularly close and productive working relationship with Cortázar, with whom he shared lifelong passions for jazz and wordplay. He received the National Book Award for Translation for his version of Cortázar's novel Hopscotch.

Rabassa currently teaches at Queens College, where he holds the title of Distinguished Professor. In 2006, he was awarded the National Medal of Arts. He has written a memoir detailing his experiences as a translator, If This Be Treason: Translation and Its Dyscontents, A Memoir.

[edit] Selected translations

Julio Cortázar
- Hopscotch, 1966 ("Rayuela")
- A Manual for Manuel, 1978 ("Libro de Manuel")
- 62: A Model Kit, ("62: Modelo para Armar")

Gabriel García Márquez
- One Hundred Years of Solitude, 1970 ("Cien años de soledad")
- The Autumn of the Patriarch, 1976 ("El otoño del patriarca"), for which he received the Pen Translation Prize.
- Chronicle of a Death Foretold, 1982 ("Crónica de una muerte anunciada")
- Leaf Storm ("La hojarasca")