Translations of Miguel de Cervantes

Among the many translations of El ingenioso hidalgo don Quijote de la Mancha and Segunda parte del ingenioso caballero don Quijote de la Mancha are the early The History of the Valorous and Wittie Knight-Errant Don Quixote of the Mancha (1612–20), translated by Thomas Shelton; and The History and Adventures of the Renowned Don Quixote (1755, reissued 1997), translated by Tobias Smollett. A modern version best adapted to 17th-century English is presented in Don Quixote: The Ormsby Translation Revised, Backgrounds and Sources, Criticism (1981), edited by Joseph R. Jones and Kenneth Douglas. Don Quijote: A New Translation, Backgrounds and Contexts, Criticism (1999), translated by Burton Raffel and edited by Diana de Armas Wilson, is at times disconcertingly modern but well-paced and accurate.

For Primera parte de la Galatea there are two older translations: Galatea: A Pastoral Romance (1867), translated by Gordon Willoughby James Gyll, and Galatea (1903), translated by H. Oelsner and A.B. Welford.

The classic translation of Novelas exemplares is Exemplarie Novells (1640), translated by Don Diego Puede-Ser (James Mabbe). A fine modern translation is Exemplary Stories (1972, reprinted in 1984), translated by C.A. Jones.

A good modern translation, without annotations, of Los trabaios de Persiles y Sigismunda, historia setentrional is The Trials of Persiles and Sigismunda: A Northern Story (1989), translated by Celia Richmond Weller and Clark A. Colahan.

As for theatre, an older translation of La Numancia is Numantia: A Tragedy (1870), translated by Gordon Willoughby James Gyll. For Ocho comedias, y ocho entremeses nuevos, there is S. Griswold Morley’s translation, The Interludes of Cervantes (1948), and the excellent Interludes (1964), translated by Edwin Honig.

Cervantes’s satirical poem, Viage del Parnaso, has no 20th-century translations. Two 19th-century translations are: Voyage to Parnassus (1870), translated by Gordon Willoughby James Gyll, and Journey to Parnassus (1883), translated by James Gibson. Some of his burlesque sonnets have been translated in Adrienne Martín’s Cervantes and the Burlesque Sonnet (1991).