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Edith Marion Grossman (née Dorph; March 22, 1936 – September 4, 2023) was an American literary translator. Known for her work translating Latin American and Spanish literature to English, she 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 was a recipient of the PEN/Ralph Manheim Medal for Translation and the 2022 Thornton Wilder Prize for Translation.
Grossman was known to her friends as "Edie". She married Norman Grossman in 1965; the couple had two sons, but divorced in 1984. Edith Grossman died from pancreatic cancer at her home in Manhattan on September 4, 2023, at the age of 87.
Grossman was notable for advocating that her name appear on the covers of the books she translated, alongside the author. Translators had traditionally been uncredited, which Grossman facetiously said implied that "a magic wand" had been waved to change the language of the text. In a 2019 interview, she said that "It's bloody well about time that the translator not be treated as a poor relation, that the translator is treated as an equal partner in the enterprise... Reviewers used to write as though translation had appeared through kind of a divine miracle. An immaculate conception!"
Both Lathrop and Daniel Eisenberg criticized her for a poor choice of Spanish edition as source, leading to inaccuracies; Eisenberg added that "she is the most textually ignorant of the modern translators".
Grossman received the PEN/Ralph Manheim Medal for Translation in 2006. In 2008, she received the Arts and Letters Award in Literature awarded 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 King Felipe VI of Spain.
The American Academy of Arts and Letters awarded her its Thornton Wilder Prize for translation in 2022.
In 1990 Gabriel García Márquez said that he preferred reading his own novels in their English translations by Grossman and Gregory Rabassa..
Miguel de Cervantes:
Gabriel García Márquez:
Mario Vargas Llosa:
Álvaro Mutis:
Other translations:
Essay:
Translation work
In a speech delivered at the 2003 PEN Tribute to Gabriel García Márquez, 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 some authors and critics, including Carlos Fuentes and Harold Bloom, who called her "the Glenn Gould of translators, because she, too, articulates every note." However, some Cervantes scholars have been more critical of her translation. Tom Lathrop, himself a translator of Don Quixote, critiqued her translation in the journal of the Cervantes Society of America, saying
Selected translations
Over a period of more than 40 years, Grossman translated around 60 books from Spanish, including:
External links
Categories: 1936 Births, 2023 Deaths, 20th-century American Women Writers, 21st-century American Women Writers, 20th-century American Translators, American Women Anthropologists, Columbia University Faculty, Deaths From Pancreatic Cancer In New York, Literary Translators, New York University Alumni, New York University Faculty, Philadelphia High School For Girls Alumni, Spanish–english Translators, Translators Of Gabriel García Márquez, Translators Of Mario Vargas Llosa, Translators Of Miguel De Cervantes, University Of Pennsylvania Alumni, Writers From Manhattan, Writers From Philadelphia
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