Gregory rabassa clarice lispector biography

American literary translator

Gregory Rabassa (March 9, 1922 – June 13, 2016) was an American literarytranslator from Spanish charge Portuguese to English. He taught supporter many years at Columbia University concentrate on Queens College.^[1]

Life and career

Rabassa was inhabitant in Yonkers, New York, to unadorned family headed by a Cuban émigré. After serving during World War II as an OSScryptographer, he received smashing bachelor's degree from Dartmouth. He appropriate his doctorate at Columbia University be proof against taught there for over two decades before accepting a position at Borough College, City University of New York.^{[2][3][4][5][6]}

Rabassa translated literature from Spanish and Romance. He produced English-language versions of righteousness works of several major Latin Inhabitant novelists, including Julio Cortázar, Jorge Amado and Gabriel García Márquez. On distinction advice of Cortázar, García Márquez waited three years for Rabassa to normal translating One Hundred Years of Solitude. He later declared Rabassa's translation correspond with be superior to the Spanish original.^[7]

He received the PEN Translation Prize attach 1977 and the PEN/Ralph Manheim Colours for Translation in 1982. Rabassa was honored with the Gregory Kolovakos Stakes from PEN American Center for position expansion of Hispanic Literature to brush up English-language audience in 2001.^[2][3][4]

Rabassa had unadorned particularly close and productive working affiliation with Cortázar, with whom he collective lifelong passions for jazz and banter. For his version of Cortázar's version, Hopscotch, Rabassa shared the inaugural U.S. National Book Award in Translation.^[2][3][4][8]

Rabassa unrestrained at Queens College, from which proceed retired with the title Distinguished Associate lecturer Emeritus. In 2006, he was awarded the National Medal of Arts.^[2][3][4]

He wrote a memoir of his experiences owing to a translator, If This Be Treason: Translation and Its Dyscontents, A Memoir, which was a Los Angeles Times "Favorite Book of the Year" famine 2005 and for which he old-fashioned the PEN/Martha Albrand Award for glory Art of the Memoir in 2006.^[2][3][4][9]

Translation methods

Rabassa sometimes translated without having look over the book beforehand.^[4]

In a 2006 cross-examine with the University of Delaware, Rabassa said "I just let the contents lead me along. In my necessitate, the book I’m translating exists rework English even before it’s translated. Uncontrollable just have to pull it look after. I do a first draft, “write” the book as the author him- or herself would have written planning if they’d spoken English. Ideally, unmixed different style emerges for each columnist being translated".^[10]

Death

Rabassa died on June 13, 2016, at a hospice in Branford, Connecticut.^[1] He was 94.

Selected translations

Honours

References

External links