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Donald A. Yates ( April 11, 1930 - October 17, 2017) was an American professor and literary translator from Spanish to English. He was the first translator and editor of Jorge Luis Borges.

Life and career[edit]

Donald Alfred Yates was born on April 11, 1930 in Ayer, Massachusetts, United States, and he moved with his family to Ann Arbor, Michigan, in 1936. He began studying Spanish at Ann Arbor High School in 1945. Spanish was his major when he took the A.B. degree at the University of Michigan in 1951. After two years in the U.S. Army, he returned to Ann Arbor to complete the M.A. in Spanish in 1954 and the Ph.D. in Spanish in 1961, both at the University of Michigan. His doctoral dissertation, which dealt with the Argentine detective story, was written under the direction of Argentine Professor Enrique Anderson Imbert. From 1957 to 1983 he taught Spanish American literature at Michigan State University. In 1983 he retired from teaching and moved to Napa Valley, California.

In 1954, in one of Anderson Imbert's courses, Yates began reading the stories of Jorge Luis Borges. He wrote to him and received full authorization to translate any of his writings. Together with another Michigan graduate student, James E. Irby, who was then writing his dissertation on Borges, he prepared the manuscript of a book that after many rejections was accepted and published by New Directions in 1962 with the title: Labyrinths, Selected Stories & Other Writings by Jorge Luis Borges. It was the first collection of Borges's work to appear in English. Shortly after the appearance of Labyrinths, he went to Argentina for the first time, where he met Borges, and began a friendship with him that lasted for years.

From 1962 onward, Yates visited Argentina several times. In the 60´s, he spent in Buenos Aires two and a half years as a Fulbright Visiting Lecturer in American Literature (1964-65, 1967-68, 1970). He taught at the University of Buenos Aires, John F. Kennedy University, and the University of La Plata. He lectured on subjects related to American literature throughout Argentina and also in Peru, Chile, and Uruguay, usually under the auspices of the Fulbright Program. He translated the work of several Argentine authors whose writing he had known during his stays in Buenos Aires: the novels Thunder of the Roses by Manuel Peyrou, Rosa at Ten O'Clock by Marco Denevi, and Diary of the War of the Pig by Adolfo Bioy Casares, and short fiction by Enrique Anderson Imbert and by Rodolfo Walsh, among others. He also reviewed translations of Spanish American literature for publications such as Saturday Review, New York Times Book Review, The Washington Post, San Francisco Chronicle, and for literary magazines.

In 2000, he received a translation grant from the National Endowment for the Arts to bring into English the complete works of Argentine writer Edgar Brau. In 2006, Michigan State University Press published Casablanca and Other Stories, which includes a novella and nine narratives. This book was one of the three finalists for the 2007 PEN Translation Prize.

In December 2008, he made his last trip to Argentina. On that occasion, the Government of the Autonomous City of Buenos Aires awarded him the title of “Visitante Ilustre”, and the Argentine Academy of Letters held a special session to honor him for a half-century of translating into English the work of Argentine authors.

He died of aplastic anemia at his home in St. Helena, California, on October 17, 2017.


Selected Publications (Books)[edit]

Editor[edit]

  • Antología del cuento policial hispanoamericano (Ediciones de Andrea, México, 1964).
  • El túnel, by Ernesto Sábato (Macmillan, 1965).

Translator and Editor[edit]

  • Labyrinths: Selected Stories & Other Writings, by Jorge Luis Borges (New Directions, 1962).
  • Latin Blood: The Best Crime Stories of South America (Herder & Herder, 1972).
  • Everything and Nothing, by Jorge Luis Borges (New Directions, 1999).

Translator[edit]

  • Rosa at Ten O´Clock, by Marco Denevi (Holt, Rinehart & Winston, 1964).
  • Thunder of the Roses, by Manuel Peyrou (Herder & Herder, 1972).
  • Diary of the War of the Pig, by Adolfo Bioy Casares (Herder & Herder, 1972).
  • Casablanca and Other Stories, by Edgar Brau (MSU Press, 2006).
  • Argentine Suite, by Edgar Brau (Metzengerstein, 2014).

Textbooks[edit]

  • Imaginación y Fantasía (Holt, Rinehart & Winston, 1960).
  • Rosaura a las diez (Scribners, 1964).
  • Ceremonia secreta y otros cuentos (Macmillan, 1964).
  • Tres cuentistas hispanoamericanos (Macmillan, 1969).
  • Cuentos de la metrópoli: quince narraciones porteñas (Appleton-Century-Crofts, 1971).
  • Espejos: doce relatos hispanoamericanos de nuestro tiempo (Holt, Rinehart & Winston, 1980).

References[edit]

External links[edit]

Multimedia[edit]

Donald A. Yates - On Labyrinths on YouTube

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