A New York–born translator, Rabassa played a key role in introducing the works of the Latin American Boom—both in Spanish and Portuguese—to English‑speaking readers. His most celebrated achievement is his translation of Gabriel García Márquez’s One Hundred Years of Solitude. García Márquez famously said that Rabassa’s version was better than the original.
Rabassa believed that literary translation “is an art, not a craft.” He also considered translation to be a form of reading—so much so that he translated many works while reading them for the first time.
What do you think of this bold approach?
