Translating the Classics

OPEN TO THE PUBLIC | Translating the Classics: Cervantes, Shakespeare & Spanglish; the Bible, Borges, & Bishop; Latin, Ladino, & Yiddish

Ilan Stavans is Lewis-Sebring Professor of Humanities, Latin American, and Latino Culture at Amherst College, publisher of Restless Books, host of the NPR podcast In Contrast, and columnist for the New York Times en Español. He has translated Pablo Neruda, Jorge Luis Borges, and Juan Rulfo into English, Emily Dickinson and Elizabeth Bishop into Spanish, Isaac Bashevis Singer from Yiddish, Yehuda Halevi from Hebrew, and Shakespeare, Don Quixote, and The Little Prince into Spanglish. His books include, most recently, Quixote: The Novel and the World (Norton), Borges, the Jew (SUNY), the book-long poem The Wall (Pitts Poetry series). He is the editor of The Norton Anthology of Latino Literature, The Oxford Book of Jewish Stories, The FSG Book of Twentieth-Century Latin American Poetry, and The Shocken Book of Sephardic Literature. The recipient of numerous awards and honors, Stavans’ work has been translated into twenty languages and adapted into theater, TV, radio, and film.