Emma's Reviews > If This Be Treason: Translation and its Dyscontents

I'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.