National Medal of Arts winner

President and Mrs. Bush honored 84-year-old Gregory Rabassa, distinguished professor of Hispanic languages and literatures at Queens College, with a National Medal of Arts for artistic excellence. Renowned as one of the world's leading translators of Latin American literature, he is perhaps best known for his translations of Gabriel Garcia Marquez's One Hundred Years of Solitude and Julio Cortazar's Hopscotch.
Rabassa, who has taught at Queens College since 1968, joined nine other notable artists and organizations who were also awarded the National Endowment for the Arts honor at a White House ceremony on Thursday, November 9. According to Dana Gioia, chairman of the National Endowment for the Arts, these individuals and organizations have &#8220all made enduring contributions to the artistic life of our nation.”
Rabassa's gift for languages may be traced to his multi-lingual parents - his father was from Cuba and his mother was of Scottish and English ancestry. Prof. Rabassa knows French, Latin, Portuguese, Italian, Spanish, German, and some Russian and ancient Greek and worked as cryptographer for the Office of Strategic Services, predecessor of the CIA, during WWII.