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Natasha Wimmer

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Natasha Wimmer (born 1973[1]) is an American translator best known for her translations of Chilean novelist Roberto Bolaño's 2666 and The Savage Detectives from Spanish into English.[2]

Biography

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Natasha Wimmer grew up in Iowa.[3] She learned Spanish in Spain, where she spent four years growing up. She studied Spanish literature at Harvard University.[2]

She lives in Brooklyn, New York, with her husband and children.[4]

Career

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Her first job after graduating was at Farrar, Straus & Giroux from 1996 to 1999 as an assistant and then managing editor.[1] While working there, Wimmer produced her first translation, the Dirty Havana Trilogy by Cuban novelist Pedro Juan Gutiérrez.[2]

Wimmer then worked at Publishers Weekly, before leaving to work on Roberto Bolaño's books full-time.[1] On her work in publishing and translation, Wimmer has said: "I had decided in college that I would never be a fiction writer, but I knew I wanted to be as close to books as I could. Publishing was one way, and translating turned out to be a better way for me."[1]

She has also translated Nobel Prize-winning author Mario Vargas Llosa's The Language of Passion, The Way to Paradise, and Letters to a Young Novelist; and Marcos Giralt Torrente's Father and Son, among other works.

Wimmer has written for publications such as The Nation, The New York Times, and The Believer.[4] She teaches translation at Princeton University.[4]

Awards

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Wimmer received a National Endowment for the Arts Translation Grant in 2007 and the PEN Translation Prize in 2009.[4] She won the National Book Critics Circle Award for Fiction in 2008[4] for her translation of 2666[3] and an Award in Literature from the American Academy of Arts and Letters in 2010.[4]

Spanish writer Gabriela Ybarra's The Dinner Guest, in Wimmer's translation, was nominated for the 2018 International Booker Prize.

Translations

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  • You Dreamed of Empires (Tu sueño imperios han sido)
  • Sudden Death (Muerte súbita)
  • Now I Surrender to You and That Is All (Ahora me rindo y eso es todo)
  • Space Invaders
  • Voyager: Constellations of Memory
  • The Twilight Zone (La dimensión desconocida)
  • The Secret of Fame (El secreto de la fama)
  • So Many Books (Los demasiados libros)

Of other authors

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Notes

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  1. ^ a b c d "Natasha Wimmer: Translator helps turn a Latin American novelist into a U.S. sensation", by Craig Morgan Teicher, Publishers Weekly, 1/12/2009. Archived: https://web.archive.org/web/20090218135620/https://www.publishersweekly.com/article/CA6628066.html?industryid=47148
  2. ^ a b c "A translator's task – to disappear", Matthew Shaer, Christian Science Monitor, January 16, 2009 edition
  3. ^ a b "Natasha Wimmer". www.ndbooks.com. Retrieved 2023-06-10.
  4. ^ a b c d e f "Natasha Wimmer". Spanish and Portuguese. Retrieved 2023-06-10.