For twelve years, Augenbraum was Executive Director of the National Book Foundation, presenter of the National Book Awards. He has translated, among other works, Alvar Núñez Cabeza de Vaca’sChronicle of the Narváez Expedition and the Filipino novelist José Rizal’s Noli Me Tangere and El Filibusterismo. In 2012, the University of Texas Press published his co-translation (with Ilan Stavans) of The Plain in Flames by Juan Rulfo; in 2013, Penguin Classics published his edition of the Collected Poems of Marcel Proust. He is currently carrying out a research project on the business of translation in the United States under a grant from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation. In 2015, Concordia College in Moorhead, Minnesota, awarded him the degree of Doctor of Humane Letters, honoris causa.