How did you come to translate Gabriel García Márquez?
Lee Goerner, who was García Márquez’s editor at Knopf in the 1980s, was looking for a translator for García Márquez’s new book, at that point tentatively titled Love in the Time of Plague, and the word went out for a submission of sample chapters. I sent in 20 pages or so. I’m not sure how many other translators submitted samples,but mine was chosen. Q: What do you find to be most challenging and most rewarding about translating García Márquez’s books? A: The challenges and the rewards are the same: to recreate for an English-speaking reader the artful language that a good writer uses, and García Márquez is more than a good writer. This requires a deep familiarity with English and its levels of discourse. You have to decide what level of English to use. You have to decide whether you’re going to use, for example, “teacher, master, instructor, or professor.” In the General in his Labyrinth, Bolívar used a very elevated language when with ladies but an often vulgar one with his soldiers.
