Edith Grossman and Don Quixote
Edith Grossman, who regularly translates such notables as Gabriel Garcia Marquez, is also responsible for a recent English translation of Cervantes' Don Quixote which hit the shelves some time last year. I couldn't resist the handsome dust jacket, so I picked up a copy when I last sat down to sip a cup of cocoa in one of those cafes that are felicitously located inside a bookstore. My impressions are based on having read the introductory material and the first few chapters, but... I liked it.

The translation feels very fresh. Grossman artfully handles the different registers associated with the different characters, preserving, for example, the baroqueness of Don Quixote's speech without resorting to archaic lexicon in the English language. Without affectations, the play of reality and artifice so central to the book is, I think, convincingly rendered.

The translation is richly footnoted. The reader quickly discovers that the main character borrows his name from a piece of the armor, or the puns underlying several of the satirically named characters. Anyone who appreciates a wavering explanatory excursus over a comitted poorly approximated rendition will welcome her translation. I also applaud her choice to leave many terms untranslated (with regards to things like currency or titles), enlisting the footnotes to help with the explanation. I must admit I find her choice to retain the courtesy title Señor in the formal address to be less inspired. The title is used extensively in the book, and its use grows somewhat grating in the context of a large English text. (It brings to mind those sketches, which, aspiring to comic effect, rely on the gag of the ubiquitous Spanish-speaking waiter with a propensity to interrupt his otherwise fluent English with words like Señor, Qué or Sí. But I suppose it is really my own fault that I've seen too many Monty Python episodes, and I can't say I have a better suggestion.)

The Mexican writer Carlos Fuentes published a rewiew of the book on the New York Times, which I found insightful for what he has to say about Grossman's translation and about Cervantes' book.