One of the many fundamental issues addressed in One Hundred Years of Solitude is that of translation, and of translation's links with the writing of this particular novel as well as with the novel as a genre. Few critics have failed to observe, of course, that the action in One Hundred Years of Solitude is inextricably linked to the process of decoding Melquíades's prophetic manuscript, and that such a decoding involves a translation; but the interpretation of this aspect of the novel has tended to revolve around theories of reading and more general questions about the nature of writing, so that little attention has been paid to the implications of the act of translation itself. Yet, a consideration of what translation implies in the context of One Hundred Years of Solitude can provide us not only with insights into this contemporary Latin American classic but also into the role of translation in literary history and in the constitution of the novel as a genre.