Edith Grossman, Who Elevated the Art of Translation, Dies at 87
The New York Times You are my voice in English, Gabriel Garca Mrquez told her. She insisted that her name appear on the covers of books she translated, including with that of Cervantes.
Edith Grossman, whose acclaimed translations of Love in the Time of Cholera by Gabriel Garca Mrquez and Don Quixote by Miguel de Cervantes raised the profile of the often-overlooked role of the translator, died on Monday at her home in Manhattan. She was 87.
The cause was pancreatic cancer, her son Kory Grossman said.
An earthy, tough New Yorker who was known as Edie, Dr. Grossman dedicated herself to translating Latin American and Spanish authors at a time when literary translation was not considered a serious academic discipline or career.
Translators had long been seen as the humble Cinderella of publishing, she said in an interview for this obituary in 2021. But as she wrote in her groundbreaking book Why Translation Matters (2010), she saw the role not as the weary journeyman of the publishing world, but as a living bridge between two realms of discourse, two realms of experience, and two sets of readers.
