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

Gregory Rabassa has been my favorite translator before I read this book and now he is my favoritest. I have read his translations with the utmost admiration. Now reading this memoir, I understood what made them beautiful. He is a literalist, it seems. Being a translator, I agree with most of what he says. He takes minimum liberty with the texts. He yields to the source text. His discussion of translating the titles is truly interesting. Indeed, he is my role model.

Like the leaves on trees, words age, yellow, and drop off after a time (16)
This bears out my thesis that a good translation is essentially a good reading. (49)
I read the complete novel (Hopscotch by Julio Cortazar) only as I translated it (51)
We translators will not be shot at cock's crow, but neither shall we walk about free of our own doubts that we may have somehow done something treasonable in our work. (189)