Acclaimed literary translator Edith Grossman has died aged 87. The American translator is known for her English translations of Don Quixote by Miguel de Cervantes and Love in the Time of Cholera by Gabriel García Márquez. She died of pancreatic cancer at her home in Manhattan on Monday, the New York Times reported.
Grossman was among the first to insist that her name appear on the covers of the works she translated. In a speech she gave at the 2003 PEN Tribute to Gabriel García Márquez, she spoke about the role of the translator. “Fidelity is surely our highest aim, but a translation is not made with tracing paper. It is an act of critical interpretation,” she said. “No two languages, with all their accretions of tradition and culture, ever dovetail perfectly. They can be linked by translation, as a photograph can link movement and stasis, but it is disingenuous to assume that either translation or photography, or acting for that matter, are representational in any narrow sense of the term.”
