Gregory Rebassa was born in New York in 1922. He served as a cryptographer during the Second World War, and subsequently earned a PhD at Columbia University and pursued an academic career.
Rebassa is especially well-known for his literary translations from Spanish and Portuguese into English, especially of important Latin American novelists. His translations of works by Gabriel García Márquez are particularly renowned. Márquez even said that the English translation was better than the Spanish original, which is quite something! Thanks to Rebassa, works like ‘One Hundred Years of Solitude’ are as beloved of English-speaking readers as they are in Spanish-speaking countries.
Rebassa won numerous prizes for his translations, which he often did without having read the book in advance, saying that he ‘wrote’ the book in English as if the writer had been writing in English in the first instance, leading to a distinctively unique style for each author.
Gregory Rebassa died in 2016.
Photo Source: By tv.cuny.edu, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=190621775
