<B>A <I>Los Angeles Times</I> Favorite Book of the Year for 2005.</B><br/><br/>Gregory Rabassa's influence as a translator is tremendous. His translations of Gabriel Garcia Marquez's <I>One Hundred Years of Solitude</I> and Julio Cortazar's <I>Hopscotch</I> have helped make these some of the the most widely read and respected works in world literature. (Garcia Marquez was known to say that the English translation of <I>One Hundred Years</I> was better than the Spanish original.) In <I>If This Be Treason: Translation and Its Dyscontents</I>, Rabassa offers a cool- headed and humorous defense of translation, laying out his views on the translator's art. Anecdotal and always illuminating, Rabassa traces his career from a boyhood on a New Hampshire farm, his school days "collecting" languages, the two and a half years he spent overseas during WWII, and his South American travels, until one day "I signed a contract to do my first translation of a long work [Cortazar's <I>Hopscotch</I>] for a commercial publisher." Additionally, Rabassa offers us his "rap sheet," a consideration of the various authors and the over 40 works he has translated. This long-awaited memoir is a joy to read, an instrumental guide to translating, and a look at the life of one of its great practitioners.