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If This Be Treason: Translation and its Dyscontents
Gregory Rabassa’s influence as a translator is tremendous. His translations of Gabriel García Márquez’s One Hundred Years of Solitude and Julio Cortázar’s Hopscotch have helped make these some of the the most widely read and respected works in world literature. (García Márquez was known to say that the English translation of One Hundred Years was better than the Spanish original.) In If This Be Treason: Translation and Its Dyscontents, Rabassa offers a coolheaded and humorous defense of translation, laying out his views on the translator’s art. Anecdotal and always illuminating, Rabassa traces his career from a boyhood on a New Hampshire farm, his school days “collecting” languages, the two and a half years he spent overseas during WWII, and his South American travels, until one day “I signed a contract to do my first translation of a long work [Cortázar’s Hopscotch] for a commercial publisher.” Additionally, Rabassa offers us his “rap sheet,” a consideration of the various authors and the over 40 works he has translated. This longawaited memoir is a joy to read, an instrumental guide to translating, and a look at the life of one of its great practitioners.
208 pages, Paperback
First published April 27, 2005
About the author
Gregory Rabassa
68 books131 followersGregory Rabassa was a literary translator from Spanish and Portuguese to English who taught at Queens College. His translations include works by literary giants such as António Lobo Antunes, Jorge Amado, Mario Vargas Llosa, José Lezama Lima, Gabriel García Márquez and Eça de Queirós.
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September 27, 2016RIP Gregory Rabassa. Our world literature owes you a huge debt.
http://bigstory.ap.org/article/886ae6...
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There are two kinds of people who do things -- those who can talk about what they do and those that can't. Of those that can I'll give as evidence for instance John Barth and William Gass both of whom talk about what they do as well as they do what they do. Also, I'll never forget this first impression of mine of a very young Hilary Hahn talking about playing the violin like as if she'd been doing it and thinking about it for decades already :: The Art of the Violin. You don't have to listen long to know if a competent practitioner is also a competent commentator upon that same practice. ALL athletes are incompetent to comment upon their practice -- no matter how excellently they may excel at what it is they do. At any rate, I'll have to place Rabassa more in the latter camp than the former. His memoir is a nice thing to pass through ;; but let's just say that in comparison to Suzanne Jill Levine's book Rabassa's sheds only a slight light upon what he does. Read what he does by all means! His doing is of that kind of excelling excellence! I mean, you'll not forget Gabo's quip about his Englishing of Solitude exceeding the excellence of his own Spanishing of that same novel. And pay no mind to those nasty little bugs Señor Rabassa calls Professor Horrendo with their literalist caviling "What is lost! What is lost!" paying no mind to what is gained [the recent stuff re: P&V is about as dull as dishsoap]. Also, those Professors Horrendo, you just smile at them and patiently ask if they've read Larva. If they've read Three Trapped Tigers. Etc.
A thing re :: The Devil to Pay in the Backlands -->
http://bigstory.ap.org/article/886ae6...
___________
There are two kinds of people who do things -- those who can talk about what they do and those that can't. Of those that can I'll give as evidence for instance John Barth and William Gass both of whom talk about what they do as well as they do what they do. Also, I'll never forget this first impression of mine of a very young Hilary Hahn talking about playing the violin like as if she'd been doing it and thinking about it for decades already :: The Art of the Violin. You don't have to listen long to know if a competent practitioner is also a competent commentator upon that same practice. ALL athletes are incompetent to comment upon their practice -- no matter how excellently they may excel at what it is they do. At any rate, I'll have to place Rabassa more in the latter camp than the former. His memoir is a nice thing to pass through ;; but let's just say that in comparison to Suzanne Jill Levine's book Rabassa's sheds only a slight light upon what he does. Read what he does by all means! His doing is of that kind of excelling excellence! I mean, you'll not forget Gabo's quip about his Englishing of Solitude exceeding the excellence of his own Spanishing of that same novel. And pay no mind to those nasty little bugs Señor Rabassa calls Professor Horrendo with their literalist caviling "What is lost! What is lost!" paying no mind to what is gained [the recent stuff re: P&V is about as dull as dishsoap]. Also, those Professors Horrendo, you just smile at them and patiently ask if they've read Larva. If they've read Three Trapped Tigers. Etc.
A thing re :: The Devil to Pay in the Backlands -->
August 10, 2017
One of the great translators, and someone whose list of translations should just be ported straight over into your tbr list.
February 9, 2014
This year, I'm trying to tackle the books on my shelves that sit half-read, but show some sort of promise. In that spirit, I picked up If This be Treason for the third time. Third time's a charm: I finally finished it.
I pre-ordered this book a decade ago as soon as it was announced, as I was translating a book (Dos Mujeres en Praga) for my senior thesis in undergrad. A year later, a close friend gave me a second copy (he was unaware I had a first). Unfortunately, the first part of the book turned me off. I was disappointed by Rabassa's platitudes about translation, I was bored by the personal history that brought him to the trade.
It was particularly unfortunate because the first part nearly kept me from the second, a much richer, more personal account of the translator's craft. I put the book down with the hackneyed plan of reading the other bits whenever I got around to tackling the books he was discussing. Ten years later, I still hadn't gotten around to any of them. I'm glad I abandoned that plan because Rabassa's discussion was plenty interesting without having read most of the books. He might even inspire me to pick a few of them up sooner rather than later.
I liked reading the more specific particularities and problems he encountered as he translated. I enjoyed the passages about his personal relationships with several of the authors. That said, the whole book hangs together quite loosely. I am the ideal audience: both a big fan of Latin American Literature and an amateur translator with a fascination for the craft. I still found the book only mildly interesting.
Rabassa brings up his aversion to non-fiction (except the most novelistic variety) on several occasions, and I think that comes through in this book. He is passionate about literature, but not so much translation - he enjoys translation as an act of deep reading, little more. As such, he seems bored by his own stories of translation, resigned to the impossible problems, not quite satisfied but neither nagged by dissatisfaction. This may be exactly what makes him a great translator, but it produces a rather dull memoir.
I pre-ordered this book a decade ago as soon as it was announced, as I was translating a book (Dos Mujeres en Praga) for my senior thesis in undergrad. A year later, a close friend gave me a second copy (he was unaware I had a first). Unfortunately, the first part of the book turned me off. I was disappointed by Rabassa's platitudes about translation, I was bored by the personal history that brought him to the trade.
It was particularly unfortunate because the first part nearly kept me from the second, a much richer, more personal account of the translator's craft. I put the book down with the hackneyed plan of reading the other bits whenever I got around to tackling the books he was discussing. Ten years later, I still hadn't gotten around to any of them. I'm glad I abandoned that plan because Rabassa's discussion was plenty interesting without having read most of the books. He might even inspire me to pick a few of them up sooner rather than later.
I liked reading the more specific particularities and problems he encountered as he translated. I enjoyed the passages about his personal relationships with several of the authors. That said, the whole book hangs together quite loosely. I am the ideal audience: both a big fan of Latin American Literature and an amateur translator with a fascination for the craft. I still found the book only mildly interesting.
Rabassa brings up his aversion to non-fiction (except the most novelistic variety) on several occasions, and I think that comes through in this book. He is passionate about literature, but not so much translation - he enjoys translation as an act of deep reading, little more. As such, he seems bored by his own stories of translation, resigned to the impossible problems, not quite satisfied but neither nagged by dissatisfaction. This may be exactly what makes him a great translator, but it produces a rather dull memoir.
April 18, 2020
I was quite excited when I spotted this at my local Algoritam: the literary memoirs of a well respected translator (he Englished several works by García Márquez, Cortázar and Vargas Llosa, among many others) with the subtitle: “Translation and Its Dyscontents”. I happen to be fascinated by translation, and I love to analyse - and lived with - its discontents, so what’s not to like here?
Well, for one, Mr Rabassa has very little to say on the subject.
He disdains translation theory, his mantra is: “I simply follow the words of the author”. Forrestgumpish, I'd call that statement.
He never reads a book in its entirety before starting out on his translation of it, and defends this lazy habit with the disingenuous argument that it “keeps his translation fresh”. He calls translation an art and not a craft, hence unteachable. (“You can teach Picasso how to mix his paints, but you cannot teach him how to paint his demoiselles.” - you can count on Mr Rabassa to do some serious name-dropping whenever given half a chance. You are no Picasso, Mr Rabassa.)
So why did he write a book about this ineffable, arty endeavour he is loath to theorize about? Out of vanity, I'm afraid. This is more about Mr Rabassa himself than about his arts and crafts. But me, myself and I, we happen to find translation more interesting than Mr Rabassa's musings.
Here's another quote I swear I did not make up:
“When I’m translating a book, I’m simply reading it in English. The further technicalities, many of which I have obviously missed, are taken care of by the copy editor.”
I can only say I hope the copy editor was payed well.
In the second part of the book Mr Rabassa reminisces about each and every translation he did in his life and finally discusses some points other translators might find useful.
You have to respect the differing voices of the different characters - yes, obviously. You have to be careful with regionalisms - duh.
You leave foreign adresses untranslated when they contain a proper name, when they contain a common name you render them in English. So Praça Bolivar stays Praça Bolivar, while Praça da Bolívia becomes Bolivia Square. Makes sense to you? Not to me.
He also argues some details (I love details, the devil is in them), such as why he translated "Cien años de soledad" as “One hundred years of solitude”. Are you convinced this is a better translation than “A hundred years of loneliness”? I am not.
But let me end by stating clearly that all of the above is not meant to suggest Mr Rabassa is a bad translator.
Translation is not a science, many decisions are judgment calls and I do not pretend to know better than the many who find Mr Rabassa’s translations to be excellent, Gabriel García Márquez amongst them (although I don’t know how good Mr García Márquez's English is…).
I think he's a poor writer, that’s all.
Well, for one, Mr Rabassa has very little to say on the subject.
He disdains translation theory, his mantra is: “I simply follow the words of the author”. Forrestgumpish, I'd call that statement.
He never reads a book in its entirety before starting out on his translation of it, and defends this lazy habit with the disingenuous argument that it “keeps his translation fresh”. He calls translation an art and not a craft, hence unteachable. (“You can teach Picasso how to mix his paints, but you cannot teach him how to paint his demoiselles.” - you can count on Mr Rabassa to do some serious name-dropping whenever given half a chance. You are no Picasso, Mr Rabassa.)
So why did he write a book about this ineffable, arty endeavour he is loath to theorize about? Out of vanity, I'm afraid. This is more about Mr Rabassa himself than about his arts and crafts. But me, myself and I, we happen to find translation more interesting than Mr Rabassa's musings.
Here's another quote I swear I did not make up:
“When I’m translating a book, I’m simply reading it in English. The further technicalities, many of which I have obviously missed, are taken care of by the copy editor.”
I can only say I hope the copy editor was payed well.
In the second part of the book Mr Rabassa reminisces about each and every translation he did in his life and finally discusses some points other translators might find useful.
You have to respect the differing voices of the different characters - yes, obviously. You have to be careful with regionalisms - duh.
You leave foreign adresses untranslated when they contain a proper name, when they contain a common name you render them in English. So Praça Bolivar stays Praça Bolivar, while Praça da Bolívia becomes Bolivia Square. Makes sense to you? Not to me.
He also argues some details (I love details, the devil is in them), such as why he translated "Cien años de soledad" as “One hundred years of solitude”. Are you convinced this is a better translation than “A hundred years of loneliness”? I am not.
But let me end by stating clearly that all of the above is not meant to suggest Mr Rabassa is a bad translator.
Translation is not a science, many decisions are judgment calls and I do not pretend to know better than the many who find Mr Rabassa’s translations to be excellent, Gabriel García Márquez amongst them (although I don’t know how good Mr García Márquez's English is…).
I think he's a poor writer, that’s all.
May 19, 2007
This book is actually kind of slow-going, mostly consisting of strange linguistic digressions and discussions of authors I've never read, or even heard of. It's nerdery at its best, but only makes sense to read if you're really into any of the authors whose books he's done.
But the discussions on Cortazar made it all worth it, for me. For those of you who've read Hopscotch and 62: A Model Kit, I'll tell you this, which will blow your mind: Rabassa translated them without having read them first. He just made it up as he went along. Right? He also discusses translating Magda and Juan's Gliglish (Gliglicio in Spanish), as well as some of the cooler / crazier sections in both books. Furthermore, while translating Julio's works, Gregory consider's himself Julio's paredros, and, as the two were actually lifelong friends, Julio calls Gregory cronopio, a title Gregory says he bears 'with the pride of a knight'.
But the discussions on Cortazar made it all worth it, for me. For those of you who've read Hopscotch and 62: A Model Kit, I'll tell you this, which will blow your mind: Rabassa translated them without having read them first. He just made it up as he went along. Right? He also discusses translating Magda and Juan's Gliglish (Gliglicio in Spanish), as well as some of the cooler / crazier sections in both books. Furthermore, while translating Julio's works, Gregory consider's himself Julio's paredros, and, as the two were actually lifelong friends, Julio calls Gregory cronopio, a title Gregory says he bears 'with the pride of a knight'.
November 3, 2015
After reading Gregory Rabassa's memoir, I can see why he was heralded as a great translator. He has a wonderful facility with words and a great sense of humor. I thoroughly enjoyed this book and I am inspired to read more Spanish and more translations.
September 21, 2011
I'd like to see a book like this from Howard Goldblatt, one of the most prolific translators of Chinese literature.
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May 19, 2020I've been a fan of Gregory Rabassa's translations of One Hundred Years of Solitude and Chronicle of a Death Foretold for a while and admire him greatly. Though I think he's an excellent writer on his own, as is shown by this wry and clever memoir, I agree with others who think he's not very passionate about writing ABOUT writing. He doesn't explain how he translates in great detail, save for the broad "follow the voice of the writer." His chapters about each writer he translated are fun to read, less because of the explanations of the translating process than because of Rabassa's relationship with each writer. He was close with Julio Cortázar in particular, who is described as a genial man who got along splendidly with children (he was "a great child" himself, says Rabassa) and sometimes changed his own manuscripts to better fit ideas Rabassa had for the translation. I'm glad I read the book, but I don't know that I'd call it a favorite.
August 15, 2018
Seek out Mark's comments.mi could not say things any better.
Rabassa was without s doubt the finest translator from Spanish and Portuguese in the last century. And I imagine his lectures at Queens College might have been the kind where you kind of forget to take notes, but just listen.
Sad to say, I was sorely disappointed by this "memoir." While there were sparking moments of insight, I was the work of a man already in his eighties, and, I felt, winding down.
His brief essays on individual authors are probably the best part of the book, but all too often I felt it was an exercise in, "Now, I need to write 500 words on X. What can I say?"
I am sure when the idea of this great translator's impressions was pitched, it seemed a good idea at the time.
My advice? Read the translations. If you want information about individual writers, look them up on Wikipedia.
Rabassa was without s doubt the finest translator from Spanish and Portuguese in the last century. And I imagine his lectures at Queens College might have been the kind where you kind of forget to take notes, but just listen.
Sad to say, I was sorely disappointed by this "memoir." While there were sparking moments of insight, I was the work of a man already in his eighties, and, I felt, winding down.
His brief essays on individual authors are probably the best part of the book, but all too often I felt it was an exercise in, "Now, I need to write 500 words on X. What can I say?"
I am sure when the idea of this great translator's impressions was pitched, it seemed a good idea at the time.
My advice? Read the translations. If you want information about individual writers, look them up on Wikipedia.
January 3, 2022
Gregory Rabassa has been my favorite translator before I read this book and now he is my favoritest. I have read his translations with the utmost admiration. Now reading this memoir, I understood what made them beautiful. He is a literalist, it seems. Being a translator, I agree with most of what he says. He takes minimum liberty with the texts. He yields to the source text. His discussion of translating the titles is truly interesting. Indeed, he is my role model.
Like the leaves on trees, words age, yellow, and drop off after a time (16)
This bears out my thesis that a good translation is essentially a good reading. (49)
I read the complete novel (Hopscotch by Julio Cortazar) only as I translated it (51)
We translators will not be shot at cock's crow, but neither shall we walk about free of our own doubts that we may have somehow done something treasonable in our work. (189)
Like the leaves on trees, words age, yellow, and drop off after a time (16)
This bears out my thesis that a good translation is essentially a good reading. (49)
I read the complete novel (Hopscotch by Julio Cortazar) only as I translated it (51)
We translators will not be shot at cock's crow, but neither shall we walk about free of our own doubts that we may have somehow done something treasonable in our work. (189)
February 2, 2022
I enjoyed this book so much; first on a linguistic level, enjoying the play and negotiation in the specificity with which Rabassa addresses diction choices from Spanish or Portuguese into English. Secondly in just being such a profound fan of Rabassa himself as a translator and the works he has translated (while he of course gave us the most beautiful rendering of Aureliano Buendía’s memory of ice, he also made an absolute masterwork in the Autumn of the Patriarch). It was true fun to read upon embarking into his recollection of translation each author and his processes. An excellent, clear eyed memoir filing insight into a wonderful literary prism.
September 25, 2018
There is a lot to learn from the art of translation in this book. Mr. Rabassa tries to prove with examples the impossibility of translation and how this task will usually imply some kind of treason. He also walks us through every published translation (and also those awaiting publishing) he ever did, the relationship he had with the authors he translated, and the major difficulties he encountered along the way. All in all, if you have been in this craft for a while, you'll identify with what he is referring to when he claims dissatisfaction of what he has translated.
December 12, 2018
This was a very interesting peek into the world and challenges translators face. It’s an interesting format how the author goes book by book noting the translation difficulties posed by each unique work in his career. It started to feel repetitive towards the end, but the chapters shortened as the book went on. The heady intro and conclusion seemed a bit divorced from the “rap sheet” but the book stands up well because the material is good and the author is well networked and has a great self deprecating sense of humor.
June 23, 2022
A truly enjoyable book, especially if you've been a literary translator for some years. There is much here to like and mull over, from the difficulties with titles and names to translating places and times that one has missed in one's own life. There are many gems here that need to be savoured over and over again. A great memoir for translators and those interested in them.
September 26, 2020
A rather entertaining memoir from one of the best translators out there.
Want to read
April 6, 2023to-read
July 12, 2014
A TOP SHELF review, originally published in the July 12, 2014 edition of The Monitor
After WWII, the English-speaking world experienced a boom of interest in Latin-American literature that arguably had a profound effect on writing published across the globe. Vital to this movement was the work of Gregory Rabassa, who translated some of the key texts into English and opened the floodgates for others.
Rabassa has won multiple awards for his work: the PEN Translation Prize, the Ralph Manheim Medal for Translation, the Gregory Kolovakos Award, and the U.S. National Book Award for Translation.
As a translator, I was excited to learn of his book If This Be Treason: Translation and Its Dyscontents, A Memoir, recipient of the PEN/Martha Albrand Award for the Art of the Memoir. Though written by a man pushing 90, the volume is full of wit and verve as well as invaluable insight into the process of one of our greatest translators.
In the first 50 pages or so, Rabassa reflects on the art of translation and its oddly disreputable position among the arts, reviewing broadly some of the linguistic and cultural conundrums translators face. He then sets out to provide personal context for his evolution into a translator: born in Yonkers, New York, into a family whose patriarch was a Cuban émigré, Rabassa lived a linguistically playful life. His college studies were interrupted by World War II, during which conflict he served an OSS cryptographer. Upon his return, he studied Romance languages and literature atDartmouth and Columbia University, where he eventually earned a doctorate and began to teach. It was here that he co-founded the journal Odyssey, which published many Latin-American stories and poems in English for the first time.
Rabassa’s memoir then goes on to walk us through a “bill of particulars,” a chronological review of all the major works in Spanish and Portuguese that he has translated. And what a list it is! Beginning with Julio Cortázar’s Hopscotch (a project that spawned a life-long friendship), Rabassa’s body of work contains some of the most important translations of the 20th century, including A Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel García Márquez, who waited three years to secure Rabassa as translator and who famously said that the English version was better than the original.
From Vargas Llosa to Machado de Assis, the iteration of authors is a veritable round-up of must-reads, and the inside perspective on the authors and their interactions (or lack thereof) with the translator is eye-opening.
In the end, some may find Rabassa’s often hand-wavey explanations of the translation process frustrating. His own practice is to render a book into English as he reads it for the first time, without any real preparation or research (except on-the-fly, as needed). But as a translator, I find this honesty refreshing. Translators, at the end of the day, are just very careful readers with the uncanny skill of reading one language into another.
This book is meant for them and for anyone fascinated by Latin-American literature in general.
After WWII, the English-speaking world experienced a boom of interest in Latin-American literature that arguably had a profound effect on writing published across the globe. Vital to this movement was the work of Gregory Rabassa, who translated some of the key texts into English and opened the floodgates for others.
Rabassa has won multiple awards for his work: the PEN Translation Prize, the Ralph Manheim Medal for Translation, the Gregory Kolovakos Award, and the U.S. National Book Award for Translation.
As a translator, I was excited to learn of his book If This Be Treason: Translation and Its Dyscontents, A Memoir, recipient of the PEN/Martha Albrand Award for the Art of the Memoir. Though written by a man pushing 90, the volume is full of wit and verve as well as invaluable insight into the process of one of our greatest translators.
In the first 50 pages or so, Rabassa reflects on the art of translation and its oddly disreputable position among the arts, reviewing broadly some of the linguistic and cultural conundrums translators face. He then sets out to provide personal context for his evolution into a translator: born in Yonkers, New York, into a family whose patriarch was a Cuban émigré, Rabassa lived a linguistically playful life. His college studies were interrupted by World War II, during which conflict he served an OSS cryptographer. Upon his return, he studied Romance languages and literature atDartmouth and Columbia University, where he eventually earned a doctorate and began to teach. It was here that he co-founded the journal Odyssey, which published many Latin-American stories and poems in English for the first time.
Rabassa’s memoir then goes on to walk us through a “bill of particulars,” a chronological review of all the major works in Spanish and Portuguese that he has translated. And what a list it is! Beginning with Julio Cortázar’s Hopscotch (a project that spawned a life-long friendship), Rabassa’s body of work contains some of the most important translations of the 20th century, including A Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel García Márquez, who waited three years to secure Rabassa as translator and who famously said that the English version was better than the original.
From Vargas Llosa to Machado de Assis, the iteration of authors is a veritable round-up of must-reads, and the inside perspective on the authors and their interactions (or lack thereof) with the translator is eye-opening.
In the end, some may find Rabassa’s often hand-wavey explanations of the translation process frustrating. His own practice is to render a book into English as he reads it for the first time, without any real preparation or research (except on-the-fly, as needed). But as a translator, I find this honesty refreshing. Translators, at the end of the day, are just very careful readers with the uncanny skill of reading one language into another.
This book is meant for them and for anyone fascinated by Latin-American literature in general.
June 30, 2013
The first essay, "The Many Faces of Treason", is necessary reading. Here, just listen to the way it opens:
Commonplaces may come and go, but one that has held forth over the years to the dismay and discouragement of translators is the Italian punning canard traduttore, traditore (translator, traitor), leading one to believe that the translator, worse than an unfortunate bungler, is a treacherous knave. Before copping a plea and offering a nolo contendere, let me see wherein this treason lies and against whom. Then we translators can withdraw once more into that limbo of silent servitors, for, as Prince Segismundo says at the end of Calderon's Life Is a Dream when he awards his liberator the tower where he has been imprisoned, "The treason done, the traitor is no longer needed."What ensues from this point is very much a grand old man holding forth: suspicious of "new" movements such as deconstruction, postmodernism, multiculturalism and, yes, email, yet deeply engaged with many prominent and thoughtful Lusophone, Hispanic and Latin American authors. The strain of the book as a whole tells, however, and there is some repetition of material. Further, this memoir should not be confused for a theoretical text: outside the first few chapters Rabassa contents himself with describing his own memories and judgements of the works and contexts of translated works; he does not, unfortunately, spend much time discussing the how of translation, and even less telling us why. His friendship with the authors he's translated (Gabriel García Márquez, Julio Cortázar, Miguel Ángel Asturias) must have been very rewarding to him. But it does not translate into much of a book, I'm afraid.
February 19, 2017
The ultimate respect for language(s) with all its (their) capricious quirks and intricacies. This is true love.
March 12, 2011
Gregory Rabassa was born in 1922 in New York State in a Cuban sugar dealer's family. He has had an interest in Romance languages all his life: in high school he took French and Latin, in college French, Spanish and Portuguese, and serving in the U.S. Army during the Allied invasion of Italy, he learned Italian. After the war he went to graduate school, defending a dissertation on black characters in Brazilian fiction, and started teaching at Columbia. He befriended several translators of Latin American literature, and later a few Latin American writers themselves. Julio Cortázar asked him to translate his novel Rayuela (it became Hopscotch in English), which started his career as a literary translator. He went on to translate works of some 30 writers from the Spanish and Portuguese into English: Julio Cortázar, Jorge Amado, Gabriel García Márquez and many less famous ones. He translated One Hundred Years (a hundred years? a century?) of Solitude (loneliness?), which begins with the sentence, "Many years later, as he faced the firing squad (firing party in British English), Colonel Aureliano Buendía was to (would?) remember (recall?) that distant (remote?) afternoon when his father took him to discover (know? make the acquaintance of?) ice." Although the novel was a bestseller, the translator did not get royalties, making do with a fixed fee for his services.
July 11, 2009
The Italian canard "traduttore, traditore" (translator, traitor) leads one to feel that the translator has been held to be a lowly and treacherous knave.
Translation of a novel requires considerably more than knowledge of two languages; the translator must appreciate dialect, colloquialism and slang, and betray their meanings in the "target language" (jargon Rabassa avoids). Rabassa handles this treason, his art, making choices and exposing many authors (...too numerous to name here) in no less than three languages (Portuguese, Spanish and English) by linguistically manipulating countless objects, concepts and readers to spawn tens of thousands of "new books" from the handful he began with, finally betraying himself most of all. Or at least, so says he. After reading García Marquez in Spanish (a daunting task) and English (easier, but by no means easy), I doff my hat to the translator.
Read Rabassa’s accounts of several Latin American authors and their works, and of how their English versions emerged.
Translation of a novel requires considerably more than knowledge of two languages; the translator must appreciate dialect, colloquialism and slang, and betray their meanings in the "target language" (jargon Rabassa avoids). Rabassa handles this treason, his art, making choices and exposing many authors (...too numerous to name here) in no less than three languages (Portuguese, Spanish and English) by linguistically manipulating countless objects, concepts and readers to spawn tens of thousands of "new books" from the handful he began with, finally betraying himself most of all. Or at least, so says he. After reading García Marquez in Spanish (a daunting task) and English (easier, but by no means easy), I doff my hat to the translator.
Read Rabassa’s accounts of several Latin American authors and their works, and of how their English versions emerged.
January 16, 2016
I can't believe what a grumpy old man he is, given that he says how lucky (read: privileged) he's been. I really have to stop reading these autobiographies of people who basically say, "Well, I just knew someone who knew someone and so my life unfolded beautifully, though not without bumps along the way." Sometimes it feels like certain privileged people, looking back over their lives, reach a moment where they have to think about HOW the ball got rolling in their success story. And rather than saying "connections, social status, and presumed competence based on background" they say "Wasn't I lucky?" or "I don't really KNOW how it happened."
A good collection of writers from Latin America to read. Some interesting reflections on translation and its potential pratfalls or betrayals, but his technique mostly boils down to "I am good at it, but I don't have a systematic program or explanation for why [and anyone who tries to teach translation or learn it through a system isn't going to be as good, and maybe even will be doomed to failure]." Meh.
A good collection of writers from Latin America to read. Some interesting reflections on translation and its potential pratfalls or betrayals, but his technique mostly boils down to "I am good at it, but I don't have a systematic program or explanation for why [and anyone who tries to teach translation or learn it through a system isn't going to be as good, and maybe even will be doomed to failure]." Meh.
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January 24, 2016Reading Garcia Marquez's One Hundred Years of Solitude, in English, I realized I was in the hands of two geniuses -- the author and his translator. In this memoir the translator takes us behind the printed page, into his relationship with many Latino authors and their words. How to capture both the meaning and the music? Rabassa explains that his technique includes an initial reading with no translation in mind, then working with a mix of fidelity and whimsy. Sometimes mistakes can lead to a richer understanding: in translating Julio Cortazar, Rabassa mistyped "fired egg" for "fried egg," and the author liked the image enough to leave the typo uncorrected. But such accidents are rare with Rabassa, who seems to have a pitch-perfect ear for tone as well as a keen eye for content. Garcia Marquez commented that in some ways, he preferred Rabassa's version to the original Spanish. (Jeff B., Reader's Services)
January 16, 2016
A memoir by wunderkind translator Gregory Rabassa, the book details his childhood intimations of a facility for languages and his initiation into the art of translation. It also describes, lovingly, his various relationships with authors he translated, the background information on the books he worked on, and his candid estimations of each of his translated author or book. What makes the book very palatable to me, other than Rabassa's priceless interactions with diverse writers, is the inside stories in the process of translation. The book is priceless in this score.
You can view Rabassa's very impressive résumé here.
You can view Rabassa's very impressive résumé here.
September 8, 2009
If interested in the subtle, nuanced, artistic decisions that a literary translator must wrestle with in pursuing their craft, this book is a must read. It chronicles the life's work of one of the greatest translators of Latin American literature into English and a pioneer in the field by none other than himself. However, only the most devoted students of Mr. Rabassa's life and work will be able to wade through the stream of consciousness style that dwells in self-praise and reminiscences of life in the 1950's to find the pithy observations on life and craft valuable enough to ponder.
March 5, 2014
I really didn't have trouble with Rabassa's style -- his bragging rights are well-deserved, in my opinion. The conversational mini-reflections and the exotic locations were a welcome complement to some hefty theory in my life at the moment. Really appreciate the descriptions of specific "troubles" he'd encountered in working with Spanish- and Portuguese-language texts.
September 24, 2014
The man is a masterful translator, but one cannot help but feel that it was his prolonged closeness with publishers which got this out into the world. As a translator it held some points of comfortable identity, but other than that it was a long conversation which, while fascinating in person, was not a book.
August 4, 2016
I received this book as a gift after finishing a Masters degree that focused heavily on translation. I found the autobiography portion of this memoir to be fascinating and entertaining. The in depth details of how he translated each work was not as appealing to me as I have not read many of his translations, but I did pick up some useful tips and felt inspired.
June 30, 2007
the book itself is not amazing - an interesting life told well. however, it is a who's who of Latin American authors who I would never had heard of had I not read this book. For me, it's been a map to finding some of the best books i've ever read.
July 12, 2008
This was a slow read, mainly because I was not familiar with many of the authors he talks about nor was I familiar with the linguistic aspects of the novel. However, it has influenced me to read more Latin American and Brazilian authors since the texts he has translated seem really interesting.
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