Appreciation for Literary Translators

Later this month, we’re premiering Crash Course Latin American Literature! It’s a special series that wouldn’t exist without a small but mighty group of people: literary translators. 

Without them, English-speaking readers would never get to journey to Macondo, the fictional village at the heart of Gabriel García Márquez’s One Hundred Years of Solitude. They wouldn’t get to wander through the twisting passageways of the Trueba family home in Isabel Allende’s The House of the Spirits, or experience Samanta Schweblin’s fever dreams, or get spooked by Juan Rulfo’s ghost town. Edith Grossman, García Márquez’s long-time English translator, described her colleagues as “a living bridge between two realms of discourse, two realms of experience, and two sets of readers.”

That’s why you’ll see their names onscreen whenever we quote their work. And you’ll see another translator’s name in the end credits: our subject matter expert, Denise Kripper, whose thoughtful guidance was our own living bridge as we built this series together. 

So join us in giving translators their flowers, and tune in to the first episode of Latin American Literature on October 23rd! Until then, check out a sneak peek of our reading list over at Bookshop.