I'm pickin' up good translations...

This is not really a thread, but a place for people to note or recommend good translations. I often find that when there is some non anglophone author out of copyright whom I've never read I'm confronted by a number of translations, and don't know which one to pick, so I thought Thingers might either also be in need of guidance or might like to recommend particularly good translations they've read. I don't imagine there will be frequent postings, but it's here if anyone want it.

This thread is a good idea, and it may generate more traffic than you expect. I've always been interested in the subject and will be sharing the research I've done on a number of 19th century authors in translation. I'm also interested in what others may say about what makes a good translation in general.

(If the thread grows to the point where there is a need for an index by author, I don't mind editing this message on an ongoing basis to create one.)

My first and most enthusiastic recommendation would be the translations of Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky of any Russian authors, of Fyodor Dostoevsky in particular, and especially of Crime and Punishment. Several years ago I read a 19th century translation of C&P by an anonymous translator, and hated it. Later I read the P&V translation and was literally on the edge of my seat and breathless--just as Dostoevsky himself was breathless with passion as he dictated the novel to his secretary.

There are free translations of Dostoevsky's work by Constance Garnett. Her work is serviceable, but she captures nothing of the individual authors' styles--they all sound alike. And supposedly when she came across a Russian word she didn't know, she just left it out.

In the Author Theme Reads group last year we featured Émile Zola and had some discussion on translations. The problem with basically all of the 19th and early 20th century English translations of Zola's works is that they are bowdlerized. Some of Zola's novels have frank (but not explicit) descriptions of sexual activity and such things as childbirth. More frequently he uses sexual and anatomical similes, such as comparing a spray of flowers to a woman having an orgasm. Early translators such as Ernest Alfred Vizetelly softened or omitted all of this, and they may have softened some of his political opinions as well. So unless you want your literature watered down, I would recommend against any translation of Zola published before at least the 1950s. (Unfortunately that means all the free or cheap editions.)

I haven't done any comparison between modern translators. Most of his works have appeared in English in only one modern edition (Penguin or Oxford), so you often don't have a choice any way. I've enjoyed the recent Oxford editions translated by Brian Nelson.

I looked into the translations of Honoré de Balzac, expecting to find a situation similar to that of Zola. Most of Balzac's works are innocuous, politically and sexually, but there are some which were considered daring even by the French. The Girl with the Golden Eyes, for example, is a novella about sexual obsession. I read a 2006 translation by Charlotte Mandell, then compared it with the translation of a century earlier by Ellen Marriage (under the pseudonym James Waring). Even the most explicit passages of this rather shocking work were sentence-for-sentence equivalent in the two translations, the differences being only in some word choices. Much to my surprise, I decided I actually liked the earlier translation better because the slightly more archaic language gave me more a feel for the period without in the last sacrificing readability. Mandell too often used expressions that jerked the reader into the 21st century.

In the first decade of the 20th century, Ellen Marriage translated and published the complete works of Balzac. For those works considered too racy to be published under a woman's name, she used the name James Waring. I found somewhere online a document where her publisher defends the uncompromising and explicit translations of Balzac's works at a time when other authors' works were being censored. So if you want faithful and complete translations, but prefer that the language more closely resemble that of the era in which it was written, I think Ellen Marriage's translations are ideal.

Most of the editions you will find of A Journey to the Centre of the Earth by Jules Verne aren't translations at all, but a complete retelling of the story based on an 1871 English edition which made major changes, omitted passages, and completely changed the names and nationalities of the characters. The best translation is the one by Rev. F. A. Malleson in 1877. It is faithful to the original. If the narrator of the version you are reading is German named "Axel," it is authentic. If he is an Englishman named "Harry," you have the retelling and not a work by Jules Verne.

(Now I'll shut up for a while and let someone else post here.)

>3 StevenTX:

Ditto Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky! They really capture the spirit of the works and the different storytelling styles, not just translating the words. I do not care for Constance Garnett whatsoever, and it's nice that Pevear and Volokhonsky have finally appeared to reduce Garnett's ubiquitousness. I also liked Sidney Monas's translation of Crime and Punishment.

For Fathers and Sons, I recommend the translation by Michael Katz.

>2 StevenTX:-6, StevenTX, very interesting posts, thanks. And, #1, Oandthegang, great thread idea.

Re #6, I love Verne, and I didn't know this! Are any of the current editions from Oxford, Penguin, etc., the Malleson translation? Are Verne's other works affected?

Re #3, I actually like Constance Garnett's version of Tolstoy's War and Peace. I've not read the Pevear/Volokhonsky translation yet, but it's on the TBR list. I've never been able to finish Crime and Punishment--too much punishment, not enough crime, as Steve Leveen quipped--but I might give their translation a go.

One that has been mentioned in several threads lately is Tiina Nunnally's translation of Kristin Lavransdatter. The previously published English translation is virtually unreadable.

I've also enjoyed Edith Grossman's translation of Don Quixote, though I think there are other well-respected translations as well.

I like Robert Fagles's translation of both The Odyssey and The Iliad, though, again, I'm sure there are other translations that deserve to be on a "best" list.

I've been searching for about a decade for a translation of The Canterbury Tales that would make me want to slog all the way through it. I thought Burton Raffel's contribution would be the one; alas, no.

I'm currently reading and comparing various translations of The Iliad. Call me old-fashioned, but Richmond Lattimore's rendering remains my favorite so far.

#8 - I checked some previews on Amazon. Oxford has a new translation by William Butcher. I wouldn't hesitate to read it, considering the overall quality and faithfulness of Oxford's editions. Penguin's edition is older and doesn't have a preview, so I don't know which translation it is. I haven't looked into other Verne translations yet, but this might be the place to put in a plug for Delphi Classics. If you have an e-book reader, I'm sure you've seen their editions of "The Complete Works of..." many 19th century authors. I've found that they are very good at finding the best available public domain translations and editions of the works they publish. Where there is doubt about which is the best translation or edition, they include both. I've purchased their Complete Works of Jules Verne, and will trust that they've ferreted out the best public domain translations.

I've read three translations of War and Peace, Constance Garnett, Rosemary Edmonds, and Pevear & Volokhonsky (actually only part of it--when I realized I could say almost word for word what was coming up in the next chapter, I decided enough is enough). And I've read many of Tolstoy's other works translated by Louise and Aylmer Maude. I don't think translation is as big an issue for Tolstoy as it is for Dostoevsky. The former is more about content and ideas, the latter about style and emotion. The Maudes were personally acquainted with Tolstoy, and I'm confident that their translations are true to the author's intent. Less so with Garnett, though I would feel better about reading her translation of Tolstoy than her translation of Dostoevsky. Pevear & Volokhonsky, in their introduction to their War and Peace, point to minor and frankly trivial differences between their interpretation and the Maudes'. So I would say that, while the best overall translation of War and Peace is probably that of Pevear & Volokhonsky, the Louise and Aymer Maude translation is perfectly acceptable (and cheap or free!), the Garnett translation to be avoided.

At last I have found translations of both Dante's The Divine Comedy and Who Knows?'s Beowulf that have made me want "to slog all the way through" them. The former translated by Clive James and the latter by Seamus Heaney.

The Divine Comedy might take a little longer.

#9 - Thanks for the info on the translations of Kristin Lavransdatter and Don Quixote. I own the Nunnally translation of the former. I read John Rutherford's translation of Don Quixote. If and when I re-read it, I'd like to try a different translation. Edith Grossman is a familiar name from her fine translations of Mario Vargas Lllosa and other authors.

Ditto to the Fagles translations of The Iliad and The Odyssey. My first reaction was "this is too easy," but then these were works passed on by oral tradition. It is entirely appropriate that they are rendered in common speech. Fagles's translations are direct and powerful.

#10 - Why read Chaucer in "translation" at all? I read it in the original in an Everyman's Library edition with liberal footnotes and "translations" in the margin. Before long I was ignoring them. It helps to pronounce the words aloud.

>12 Thrin: Oh, the Heaney translation of Beowulf is a gem. Have you read Heaney's The Burial at Thebes? It's more an adaptation than a line-by-line translation, but it's lovely--such crisp prose, as you would expect.

I'm intrigued by the idea of rabble-rouser Clive James tackling Dante.

>13 StevenTX: I've done that with other texts than interest me more than does Chaucer's work. Maybe I'll give it a go with his works, too. It certainly can be fun once you find a rhythm!

Does one semester of German in high school count? ;)

>11 StevenTX: Thanks for checking on the Verne translations. Yes, I trust Oxford, so I'll have to put the new translation on my TBR list. (Although Journey to the Center of the Earth is my least favorite of his novels)

Thanks, also, for the tip re: Delphi Classics. I just checked their website. It's nice to know they're legit--it's hit or miss with works in the public domain. The Verne contents are epic.

The local university's library has several of Tolstoy's works in the Maude translations. More for the TBR pile ...

Wow! This is all terribly exciting, and I shall step more bravely into the translated classics. I did have Heaney's Beowulf but I bought it on the strength of hearing him read it on the radio (BBC), and in the end decided I'd rather listen to him. I do recommend the recording if you can get hold of it It is wonderful (not that I've read the original to compare!). Dostoevsky is currently under consideration for the monthly read group, so if he's selected I will definitely be taking tips from this thread.

I agree that a lot of very old work becomes clearer when one can hear it. At its most extreme I have a weakness for listening to Anglo-Saxon; even though I don't speak it one can follow a certain amount of what's going on, and it sounds so lovely.

Ditto for Richard Pevear and Larissa Volkhonsky, for Tina Nunnelly, and for the discussion of recent translations vs. bowdlerized translations of Zola.

I also am a big fan of the recent translations of Thomas Mann by John Woods, and have discussed his approach over on Author Theme Reads -- basically he says the earlier translator, at least of Joseph and His Brothers, used ponderous, biblical-style language, when Mann actually wrote in a direct, straightforward way.

Thanks for all the other recommendations. I will come back to this thread with some other recommendations when I have more time; thanks for setting it up, oandthegang!

Stanley Kunitz has translated Selected Poems by Anna Akhmatova and I think it outshines the other translations.

Re: Verne, I have the B&N leatherbounds edition with his "Seven Novels" and the translation in it is the proper one. The introduction mentions an early British version where they rewrote a lot of it, and that this original one is the faithful one, but it frustratingly mentions no names at all.

Having read both the 1930s translations and the Tina Nunnelly translations of the Kristin Lavransdattar trilogy, definitely recommending the Nunnelly versions (good notes too). Also going along with those recommending Pevear and Volkhonsky over the older Constance Garnett translation of Anna Karenina (wasn't getting the right touchstone). I haven't yet read any of their other translations, but suspect they trump Rosemary Edmonds as well.

On a less exalted note, some of the Wallander/Mankell books are not served well by their translators, while others with different translators seem to come out quite well.

The nationality of the translator also affects the translation into English. I recently read a book translated from Spanish by a Scot, and while I had no problem with the translation, there were some definite echoes of Glasgow that had a distinctly odd ring to them for a novel set in Buenos Aires. They didn't detract from the book, but they did stand out.

A translator from Spanish whom I would recommend is Edith Grossman, mentioned above in relation to Don Quixote, but she has also translated some South American works. (just saw steven's mention of her in >13 StevenTX:)

Sheila Fischman is a remarkable translator and winner of many prizes, who has translated many works by Canadian authors written in French into English.

I'd also add a vote for Edith Grossman's translation of Don Quixote. She has also translated books I've read by Mario Vargas Llosa, Gabriel García Márquez, and Álvaro Mutis. I also enjoyed her own book, Why Translation Matters.

Margaret Jull Costa is another award winning translator of Spanish and Portuguese literature, who is best known for All the Names, Death With Interruptions and The Elephant's Journey by José Saramago, The Book of Disquiet by Fernando Pessoa, A Heart So White by Javier Marías (which earned her and the author the 1997 International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award), The Accordionist's Son by Bernardo Atxaga, and classic works of Portuguese literature by Eça de Queiroz and others.

#10 diana.n. my advice is to take the plunge, gird up your loins and tackle Chaucer in more or less the original language as in The Riverside Chaucer There is nothing like it as his English becomes a joy to read. I have never seen a modern translation that comes near to doing the poetry any justice.

This is an excellent idea for a thread.

>22 baswood: Thanks for the suggestion. I've put the Riverside edition on my TBR list.

>23 alco261: Your ditty was cute fun. Why'd you delete it. ;)

>24 LibraryPerilous: I made a quick post based on the thread title and didn't realize the tenor of the discussion until I came back to read eveything later in the day. I thought the post was inappropriate and not in keeping with the level of discussion so I removed it.

>20 SassyLassy: sassylassy Although a huge fan of the Swedish film and television Wallander dramatizations, I have found Mankell an almost unbearably dull read, so you may be right about the translations. I'll need to check the translators of the few I've read to see if I've just made unlucky selections.

Two translators whose work seems very good to me, although I have only read their translations of contemporary authors, are William Weaver and Stephen Sartarelli both of whom do Italian/English translation. I encountered Sartarelli through his translations of the Andrea Camilleri Inspector Montalbano novels, in which he is dealing with both Sicilian dialect and Italian and he needs to let the reader know which a character is using, and why, as in the course of a single conversation they may move between the two. The translation is into American English, so strong Sicilian speech comes across like "The Sopranos". There are very good notes at the end of the novels explaining certain words or expressions as well as political or other references.

Weaver has done Calvino and Eco among others.

I mention them in case they have done translations of any older Italian works.

For me this thread has the good additional benefit of introducing works and authors with which I am totally unfamiliar, such as the Portuguese literature.

> baswood, For some reason I imagine The Riverside Chaucer as a rather gorgeous book with wonderful illustrations, but on your recommendation it will be my selection regardless.

Which edition of Pepys would people recommend?

I'm fairly new to reading translated works so unfortunately don't have any recommendations of my own. I was wondering if anyone knew which are the best translations of Kafka though. I'm particularly interested in reading The Trial and I'm finding it quite daunting choosing a version. Anyone have any recommendations?

14 diana.n
Thanks for the Heaney Burial at Thebes recommendation. I look forward to reading it soon.

Having read one translation of Antal Szerb by Len Rix, I can heartily recommend him for translations from the Hungarian, at least of Szerb.

>27 valkyrdeath: I had trouble getting in to The Trial when I tried to read it many years ago. Perhaps the translation was part of the problem.

I was curious, so I poked around the internet: Breon Mitchell's translation from a restored version of the text gets high marks for remaining faithful to Kafka's loose style. The Muirs are respected but their version is considered a bit too literal.

http://www.amazon.com/The-Trial-Translation-Based-Restored/dp/0805209999

>28 Thrin: You're welcome. I hope you enjoy it!

Edited: grammar

>30 LibraryPerilous: Thanks for that recommendation! I've read up on it and it does sound like a good translation. I think I'll try and get hold of the Breon Mitchell version.

From the University of Rochester ( http://www.rochester.edu/College/translation/threepercent/index.php?id=9922 ):

2014 Best Translated Book Award Fiction Longlist

Horses of God by Mahi Binebine, translated from the French by Lulu Norman (Morocco; Tin House)

Blinding by Mircea Cărtărescu, translated from the Romanian by Sean Cotter (Romania; Archipelago Books)

Textile by Orly Castel-Bloom, translated from the Hebrew by Dalya Bilu (Israel; Feminist Press)

Sleet by Stig Dagerman, translated from the Swedish by Steven Hartman (Sweden; David R. Godine)

The Story of a New Name by Elena Ferrante, translated from the Italian by Ann Goldstein (Italy; Europa Editions)

Tirza by Arnon Grunberg, translated from the Dutch by Sam Garrett (Netherlands; Open Letter Books)

Her Not All Her by Elfriede Jelinek, translated from the German by Damion Searls (Austria; Sylph Editions)

My Struggle: Book Two by Karl Ove Knausgaard, translated from the Norwegian by Don Bartlett (Norway; Archipelago Books)

Seiobo There Below by László Krasznahorkai, translated from the Hungarian by Ottilie Mulzet (Hungary; New Directions)

Autobiography of a Corpse by Sigizmund Krzhizhanovsky, translated from the Russian by Joanne Turnbull (Ukraine; NYRB)

The Missing Year of Juan Salvatierra by Pedro Mairal, translated from the Spanish by Nick Caistor (Argentina; New Vessel Press)

The Infatuations by Javier Marías, translated from the Spanish by Margaret Jull Costa (Spain; Random House)

A True Novel by Minae Mizumura, translated from the Japanese by Juliet Winters (Japan; Other Press)

In the Night of Time by Antonio Muñoz Molina, translated from the Spanish by Edith Grossman (Spain; Houghton Mifflin Harcourt)

The African Shore by Rodrigo Rey Rosa, translated from the Spanish by Jeffrey Gray (Guatemala; Yale University Press)

Through the Night by Stig Sæterbakken, translated from the Norwegian by Seán Kinsella (Norway; Dalkey Archive)

Commentary by Marcelle Sauvageot, translated from the French by Christine Schwartz Hartley & Anna Moschovakis (France; Ugly Duckling Presse)

Leg Over Leg: Vol. 1 by Ahmad Faris al-Shidyaq, translated from the Arabic by Humphrey Davies (Lebanon; New York University Press)

The Whispering Muse by Sjón, translated from the Icelandic by Victoria Cribb (Iceland; FSG)

The Forbidden Kingdom by Jan Jacob Slauerhoff, translated from the Dutch by Paul Vincent (Netherlands; Pushkin Press)

The Devil's Workshop by Jáchym Topol, translated from the Czech by Alex Zucker (Czech Republic; Portobello Books)

The End of Love by Marcos Giralt Torrente, translated from the Spanish by Katherine Silver (Spain; McSweeney's)

Red Grass by Boris Vian, translated from the French by Paul Knobloch (France; Tam Tam Books)

City of Angels, or, The Overcoat of Dr. Freud by Christa Wolf, translated from the German by Damion Searls (Germany; FSG)

Sandalwood Death by Mo Yan, translated from the Chinese by Howard Goldblatt (China; University of Oklahoma Press)

As I commented on another thread, I was not wowed by the two books on this list I've read: Autobiography of a Corpse and The Missing Year of Juan Salvatierra. I am definitely looking forward to Seiobo There Below because I loved the author's War & War. I have several books on my TBR from my Open Letter and Archipelago subscriptions, and I'm looking forward to exploring several more. Thanks for posting this list here, Lois.

I did manage to get the touchstones done on the list on my thread, if that's helpful. If I have time I'll come back here and do these. At first glance, only the Sjon got my attention. I enjoyed his first, but I still have his second in the TBR pile.

Crime And Punishment

David MacDuff 1991 revised 2003 (text used is that contained in vol 6 of F. M. Dostoyevsky, Polnoye sobranie scochineniy v tridtsati tomakh (Leningrad 1973) and use has also been made of the draft material and notes made in Vol 7.) Penguin Classics

At the beginning of July, during a spell of exceptionally hot weather, towards evening, a certain young man came down on to the street from the little room he rented from some tenants in S - Lane and slowly, almost hesitantly, set off towards K - n Bridge.

He had succeeded in avoiding an encounter with his landlady on the stairs. His room was situated right under the roof of a tall, five-storey tenement, and sooner resembled a closet than a place of habitation. His landlady, from whom he rented this room with dinner and a maid, lived on the floor below in a separate apartment, and each time he wanted to go down to the street he had to pass his landlady's kitchen, the door of which was nearly always wide-open on to the stairs. And each time, as he passed it, the young man had a morbid sensation of fear, of which he was ashamed and which caused him to frown. He was heavily in debt to his landlady, and was afraid of running into her.

Not that he was particularly timid or cowed - quite the opposite, indeed: but for some time now he had been in a tense, irritable state of mind that verged upon hypochondria. ... ... As a matter of fact, no landlady on earth had the power to make him afraid, no matter what she might be plotting against him. But to have to stop on the stairs and listen to all the mediocre rubbish that had nothing whatsoever to do with him, all those pestering demands for payment, those threats and complaints, and be compelled in response to shift his ground, make excuses, tell lies - no, it was better to slink down the stairs like a cat and steal away unseen by anyone.

As he emerged on to the street on this occasion, however, his terror of meeting his creditoress shocked even him.

Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky 1992 (translation made from the Russian text of the Soviet Academy of Sciences edition, volumes six and seven (Leningrad 1973) Vintage Classics

At the beginning of July, during an extremely hot spell, towards evening, a young man left the closet he rented from tenants in S -y Lane, walked out to the street, and slowly, as if indecisively, headed for the K - n Bridge.

He had safely avoided meeting his landlady on the stairs. His closet was located just under the roof of a tall, five-storied house, and was more like a cupboard than a room. As for the landlady, from whom he rented this closet with dinner and maid-service included, she lived one flight below, in separate rooms, and every time he went out he could not fail to pass by the landlady's kitchen, the door of which almost always stood wide open to the stairs. And each time he passed by, the young man felt some painful and cowardly sensation, which made him wince with shame. He was over his head in debt to the landlady and was afraid of meeting her.

It was not that he was so cowardly and downtrodden, even quite the contrary; but for some time he had been in an irritable and tense state, resembling hypochondria. ... ... As a matter of fact, he was not afraid of any landlady, whatever she might be plotting against him. But to stop on the stairs, to listen to all sorts of nonsense about this commonplace rubbish, which he could not care less about, all this badgering for payment, these threats and complaints, and to have to dodge all the while, make excuses, lie - oh, no, better to steal catlike down the stairs somehow and slip away unseen by anyone.

This time, however, as he walked out to the street, even he was struck by his fear of meeting his creditor.

Oliver Ready 2014 (also based on Vol 6 Leningrad 1973 as above) Penguin Classics

In early July, in exceptional heat, towards evening, a young man left the garret he was renting in S - y Lane, stepped outside, and slowly, as if in two minds, set off toward K - n Bridge.

He'd successfully avoided meeting his landlady on the stairs. His garret was right beneath the eaves of a tall, five-storey building and resembled a cupboard more than it did a room. His landlady - a tenant herself, who also provided him with dinner and a maid - occupied separate rooms on the floor below, and every time he went down he had no choice but to pass her kitchen, the door of which was nearly always wide open. And every time he passed it, the young man experienced a sickening, craven sensation that made him wince with shame. He owed his landlady a small fortune and he was scared of meeting her.

Not that he was really so very craven or browbeaten - far from it; but for some time now he'd been in an irritable, tense state of mind not unlike hypochondria. .... .... He couldn't really be scared of a mere landlady, whatever she might be plotting. But to stop on the stairs, to listen to her prattle on about everyday trivia that meant nothing to him, and pester him about payments, threaten and whine, while he had to squirm, apologize and lie - no, better to slink past like a cat and slip out unnoticed.

Still, as he stepped out into the street, even he was astonished by the terror that had overcome him just now at the thought of meeting his creditor.

The Pevear and Volokhonsky translation was the winner of the 1991 PEN/Book-of-the-Month Club Prize For Best Translation, and, according to the back cover, was called 'The best translation currently available' by the Washington Post, yet to me of the three versions of the opening few paragraphs of Crime And Punishment theirs seems the most awkward. Given that we are to understand that the young man was renting an extremely small space, which was much like a cupboard, their decision to use the word 'closet' seems curious, particularly when they must then say that the closet was like a cupboard.

Ready says in his translator's note that he finds that earlier translations tend "towards a polish, and therefore tameness, absent in Dostoevsky's text (effects gained in large part by judicious trimming or padding); or else they have clung so closely to the Russian that the spell cast by the original is periodically broken by jarring literalism, and the author's peculiarities of style, smoothed over in other translations, are made odder still." It seems from his note that in order to return to something feeling like the book would have felt at the time of its first publication, and to replicate the variations of different characters' speech patterns and the distinction between the modern and the archaic in the original his version may be a more liberal translation. Indeed, I note that Nastasya says "sick as a parrot, aren't you", whereas in McDuff she says "I think you're quite ill, aren't you".

McDuff seems to read well, but then on the other hand while, Ready and P&L have opted for "wince with shame" in McDuff's version the young man's morbid sensation of fear causes him to frown.

I was unable to decide on which edition to use as my introduction to Dostoyevsky, so have come home with all three. I suspect I will go with the Ready, and cross refer from time to time with the others. Will post in how I get on, but the result may be as much how much I like Ready as how much I like Dostoyevsky. Interesting to note that Penguin have changed their spelling of Dostoyevsky between the two versions. They have also signaled a change in approach by moving away from the usual Penguin Classics cover with a black background for the title below a painting (or in the case of McDuff a black and white photograph) and have used two 1964 pencil drawings by Mihail Chemiakin, one Raskolnikov's Dream and the other Sonechka for an edgier contemporary (even if they are fifty years old!) look. The Penguin Classics branding only appears at the bottom of the back cover.

duplicate copy removed

I discovered this site this morning, which allows for a comparison of a few paragraphs of various available translations. I didn't check how many authors they have, but they have a good handful of Dostoevsky available.

It's good to read those opening paragraphs in three different translations, my immediate reaction would be to avoid the Macduff the language seems a bit too modern and he could be interpreting more than was actually in the original. Thanks for posting Oandthegang

>37 .Monkey.: Thanks for the link PolymathicMonkey. Would have saved me lots of typing this morning. I quite like the look of the Garnett translation, but I see that StevenTX has warned away from her, and strongly in favour of P&L. Dear, oh dear....

>39 Oandthegang: As someone who learned to love 19th century Russian authors through reading Garnett translations, I don't quite get the vehemence with which I've seen her work dismissed elsewhere. I appreciated that StevenTX took time to explain his recommendations and research, and I certainly will be reading the other translations he suggested as time permits.

I think that if you are drawn to a particular rendering already, you are seeing something in a translation that you do like. That will make it more likely that the work itself touches you. A 'good' translation can be the difference between liking and disliking a book; so can reading a translation that, however academic or well-rendered, doesn't touch you as the reader.

While I normally eschew the New Yorker, here is an interesting article about Garnett and P&V:
http://www.newyorker.com/archive/2005/11/07/051107fa_fact_remnick?currentPage=al...

Over the years, I've become a Pevear and Volokhonsky fan. Since I'm not a Dostoyevsky reader, I can't really comment on that. But I've been impressed not only by their translations of Tolstoy but also of books by other authors, such as Dead Souls and Doctor Zhivago. They also tend to have illuminating introductions by Pevear, and plentiful and helpful notes. In one of the books I read, Pevear explains their ideas of how to translate, and I commented on that elsewhere on LT some time ago, so I'm going to try to find that post and post a link to it.

Here is my post from another thread about the P-V theory of translation, with examples.

I don't know, from the snippets I've seen of their translations, they just don't strike me right. I like how they didn't alter the word Tolstoy used repeatedly, I don't think translators should be "editors," but I'm not sure how much of the rest of their translation is trying to be so direct, to me it just doesn't sound like it is. But then I have only just made the slightest dent in starting to learn Russian, so I'm unable to say whether that's at all true. I think it'd be interesting to see a literal word-for-word translation of the originals compared to the proper translations of the text.

I've got (but must confess to having so far only dipped in to) the P&L War and Peace. I've read the introduction and am quite struck with the lyrical nature of such of the translation as I have read, although of course I have no ability to judge for myself its relationship to Tolstoy's original. That is why I was somewhat surprised by the flatness of their Crime and Punishment opening, as well as the curious choice of words.

I have further comments, but have been interrupted, so will return later.

You've driven me to my old, short in height Penguin Classics edition of Crime and Punishment and it has yet another translator, David Magarshack.

His rendition:

David Magarshack 1966 Penguin Classics based on the 1866 edition

On a very hot evening at the beginning of July a young man left his room at the top of a house in Carpenter Lane, went out into the street, and, as though unable to make up his mind, walked slowly in the direction of Kokushkin Bridge.

He was lucky to avoid a meeting with his landlady on the stairs. His little room under the very roof of a tall five-storey building was more like a cupboard than a living room. His landlady, who also provided him with meals and looked after him, lived in a flat on the floor below. Every time he went out, he had to walk past her kitchen, the door of which was practically always open; and every time he walked past that door, the young man experienced a sickening sensation of terror which made him feel ashamed and pull a wry face. He was up to the neck in debt to his landlady and was afraid of meeting her.

It was not as though he were a coward by nature or easily intimidated. Quite the contrary. But for some time past he had been in an irritable and overstrung state which was like hypochondria.... As a matter of fact, he was not in the least afraid of his landlady, whatever plots she might be hatching against him. But rather than be forced to stop on the stairs and listen to all the dreary nonsense which did not concern him at all, to all those insistent demands for payment, to all those threats and complaints, and have to think up some plausible excuse and tell lies --- no! A thousand times better to slip downstairs as quietly as a mouse and escape without being seen by anybody.

This time however, as he reached the street, his fear of meeting his landlady surprised even himself.

Here the heat is the first thing the author mentions, immediately setting the atmosphere. He also tells us exactly where we are, Carpenter Lane. There is no maid, which makes sense given the level of poverty in which the young man was living, and the cat in the second last sentence seems to have been replaced by a mouse. I do like the sense of rising panic in the third paragraph. I'm not sure that shame and a "wry" face go together; I prefer the "wince" used by two of the other translators.

Reading over the other translations, I don't know which I would prefer. After reading the P&V translation of Anna Karenina, and comparing it to my earlier translation by Constance Garnett, I became an instant P&V fan, although like diana.n, it was the Garnett translations that made me first love Russian novels. In this instance the P&V might be a bit too brusque. I did love their notes.

On the subject of closet vs cupboard, I think I would use "cupboard" for something that had shelves (a place to put the cups and other things), possibly a synonym for press, and closet for a very small room that didn't. It's hard to imagine being "closeted" in a cupboard!.

I was unable to decide on which edition to use as my introduction to Dostoyevsky, so have come home with all three. Too funny!

Aaarrgghhhh!!!

Am beginning to suspect that it is not possible to read something in translation without suspecting one is reading not, say, Dostoyevsky, but a tale told by Dostoyevsky.

Contrary to all advice I've started with the Ready translation, and was happily whizzing through it. I got as far as Part One Chapter Five, and then picked up the P/L translation and went back over the same sections for comparison. The P/L translation seemed to have more information in it, to fill out the characters, but now it is getting a bit slow again, so I may follow the pattern of using Ready to hook me in to the story and then going back to P/L as a second reading. The cat has promised to give me his notes on the MacDuff as I really cannot be reading three translations at the same time and lead any sort of normal life.

>44 SassyLassy: I like the Magarshack version of putting the hot evening at the beginning of the sentence, but there's a lot of difference between slinking catlike and slipping out quiet as a mouse.

>45 Oandthegang: I wholly agree about the cat/mouse, and also the landlady does have a girl who works for her, it's nothing to do with Raskolnivkov or how much money he has, she is part of the living situation.

>46 .Monkey.: The cat or mouse images give completely different pictures of the as yet unnamed young man which was why I mentioned it. I was wondering why three translators would pick a cat and the fourth a mouse, when it gives such a different image.

You are right, there is a maid who is introduced later in this translation, but in the section quoted, there is no maid, which contrasts once again with the other translations. Later we learn that the maid has all but abandoned looking after his living space.

>45 Oandthegang: Are you finding marked shifts in tone as you shift translations, or does the transition go relatively smoothly? I tried that with The Master and Margarita, but didn't have much success.

My dictionary isn't full enough to have the original word, but put in an online translator alone, "прислугой" gives "workers," and "обедом и прислугой" gives "dinner and service." The implication being that said "service" is something provided by some sort of worker. P&V uses "dinner and maid-service," McDuff uses "dinner and a maid," Monas uses "dinner and service," Coulson uses "dinners and service," Garnett says "garret, dinners, and attendance," Ready says "dinner and a maid," and, Magarshack totally alters it with "meals and looked after him."

And Dostoevsky uses cat, not mouse. "проскользнуть" = slip/creep, "как-нибудь" = somehow, "кошк" = cat (so кошкой is presumably something like cat-like), "по" = along, "лестнице" = stairs, "и" = and, "улизнуть" = slip/steal away. He's slipping & stealing away like a cat, not quietly like a mouse.

>47 SassyLassy: Yes, they are quite different. In the Ready translation the section in which Raskolnikov receives the letter from his mother about his sister's impending marriage seems much more powerful and the report of her letter to her former employer being read all around the village is quite funny, but that it all felt somewhat subdued in P/V. Of course I was reading the material for the second time. I was very struck by the difference in description of Razumikhin. I don't know if he's going to be significant, but the Ready description of him was quite abrupt, whereas the P/V translation him made him much more interesting. It was that difference which made me go back over the P/V translation to catch up to the point I'd reached in Ready. The P/V version of Raskolnikov's dream is much more chilling. This may be to some extent because in Ready the mob sound suspiciously London East End, and Raskolnikov's parents are thought of as Mummy and Daddy, a change of tone which somehow distracts from the awful relentless events in the dream.

I was reading on the Compare Translations site a comment from some translator that it would be wrong to attempt to translate one dialect into another, as to do so would be totally artificial, and cited the current convention of having 'Brooklynese' stand in for Sicilian. As it increasingly appears that a substantial amount of what we read in translation is only an approximation it seems nitpicking to single out dialects for their inauthenticity. if the original author has written in various different types of speech which would have had particular connotations for the original audience it seems legitimate for a translator to find a way to make that distinction in the new language. Thinking about this I thought what a pity we don't have more translations into different forms of English. What if Crime And Punishment had been translated by a Scot using Scottish equivalents to the Russian accents?

I remember when the New Testament was translated into Scots some years ago one reviewer commented how much more muscular the Scots Jesus seemed.

I liked the story about P/V's frustration with Penguin who were ridiculously obsessed with rooting out potential double entendres. I wonder how they are coping now that Ed Balls is a prominent British politician.

>49 Oandthegang: It would be wrong to attempt to translate one dialect into another, as to do so would be totally artificial,

That's fascinating, because I've had a lot of trouble with dialect and slang in some translations. In a translation I read of Joseph Roth's The Tale of the 1002nd Night, I wrote the following in my review: "there is a low-life character who doesn't speak good German, and Hoffman renders his speech in contemporary and late 20th century street slang -- it was jarring to me. I'm sure there's a way of showing that someone is speaking that way without jumping over 100 years into the future."

On the other hand, I was impressed by the approach the translator of L'assommoir by Zola took to a similar problem. As I wrote in that review:

"One other aspect of this novel, which created quite a stir when it was written, is that a great deal of it is written in working class French slang, some of it said to be arcane. This has has apparently been a challenge to translators; the translator of the Oxford World's Classics edition I read, Margaret Mauldon, has used working class British slang presumably from the same period. Most of this is understandable from the context. There are also lots of sexual double entendres, which also seems to have shocked the literary establishment."

Suggestions for a good translation of Dante's Divine Comedy?

Thucydides History Of The Peloponnesian War

I'm not remotely qualified to comment, but in case anyone is thinking of essaying this I thought I'd add here that Mary Beard's review of Donald Kagan's Thucydides: The Reinvention of History and Simon Hornblower's A Commentary on Thucydides, Volume III does not have good things to say about Richard Crawley's translation. Her chapter "Which Thucydides Can You Trust?" which appears in Confronting The Classics was previously published in a slightly different version in the NRB 30 September 2010. I had enough trouble with Doestoyevsky. I'm leaving Thucydides well alone.

>52 Oandthegang: I'm about two-thirds through the Crawley translation revised and annotated by Donald Lateiner. I chose this edition after reading somewhere (but I can't recall where) that more recent translations sacrifice accuracy for readability. Actually I'm not finding it difficult to read at all, save that all the unfamiliar place names require repeated references to the maps.

Interesting.

Beard said that the Crawley translation has generally been used because of its readability, (and being conveniently out of copyright) and that it is the version usually quoted.

She says "First, 'good' translations of his History (those that are fluent and easy to read) give a very bad idea of the linguistic character of the original Greek. The 'better' they are, the less likely they are to reflect the flavour of what Thucydides wrote - rather like Finnegans Wake rewritten in the clear idiom of Jane Austen. Second, many of our favourite 'quotations' from Thucydides, those slogans that are taken to reveal his distincive approach to history, bear a tenuous relationship to his original text."

If Beard is right, perhaps the peice you read should have said that recent translations sacrifice readability for accuracy.

She discusses Crawley's 'The strong do what they can, the weak suffer what they must.' It seems that the verb relating to the strong has a number of translations, and could mean 'do', or 'exact', or even 'extort'. The section relating to the weak says only 'the weak comply', without any element of compulsion. Thus the sentence is open to a number of interpretations with very different implications. She also contrasts the Crawley 'Words had to change their ordinary meaning and to take that whch was now given them' with Hornblower's translation, which she says is correct and in tune with the style of the original: 'And they exchanged their usual verbal evaluations of actions for new ones, in the light of what they thought justified'.

Clearly Crawley is the better read, and perhaps the revised and annotated version you have deals with a lot of the inaccuracies in the translation.

Have you considered Hornblower's three volume "monumental, line-by-line commentary" on the History?

My knowledge of the classical world is limited to my memories of reading adaptations for children of tales of gods and heroes, and very dull high school Latin stuff about battles. I'm finding Beard's book, being a collection of reviews of other books about ancient Greece and Rome and their cultural legacy, a useful sampler. The reviews are each about ten pages long and range quite widely around issues connected to the books she reviews.

I think whatever I read about translations was chiefly referring to the Rex Warner translation as the one that sacrificed accuracy for readability, but that was years ago, and I don't remember if it discussed other translations.

Have you considered Hornblower's three volume "monumental, line-by-line commentary" on the History?

Even if it didn't cost over $200, that's more time than I would want to invest in Thucydides. My plan is to read (re-read in many cases) as many of the Greek and Roman classics as I can, in rough chronological order, rather than make a detailed study of any one of them. With limited resources that means picking the best translation that I can get at a reasonable price, not necessarily the best possible.

Of course, what is "best" is still subject to debate. If I were translating a work of history, I think I would focus chiefly on getting the facts right, and be much less concerned about style and language than if I were translating poetry.

In 2008 I printed off a copy of 50 Outstanding Translations from the Last 50 Years as determined by the Translators Association. Copies are posted all over the internet, here is one: http://www.societyofauthors.org/50-outstanding-translations

And here is the list:

1. Raymond Queneau – Exercises in Style (Barbara Wright, 1958)

2. Primo Levi – If This is a Man (Stuart Woolf, 1959)

3. Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa – The Leopard (Archibald Colquhoun, 1961)

4. Günter Grass – The Tin Drum (Ralph Manheim, 1962)

5. Jorge Luis Borges – Labyrinths (Donald Yates, James Irby, 1962)

6. Leonardo Sciascia – Day of the Owl (Archibald Colquhoun, 1963)

7. Alexander Solzhenitsyn – One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich (Ralph Parker, 1963)

8. Yukio Mishima – Death in Midsummer (Seidensticker, Keene, Morris, Sargent, 1965)

9. Heinrich Böll – The Clown (Leila Vennewitz, 1965)

10. Octavio Paz – Labyrinth of Solitude (Lysander Kemp, 1967)

11. Mikhail Bulgakov – The Master and Margarita (Michael Glenny, 1969)

12. Gabriel Garcia Marquez – 100 Years of Solitude (Gregory Rabassa, 1970)

13. Walter Benjamin – Illuminations (Harry Zohn, 1970)

14. Paul Celan – Poems (Michael Hamburger and Christopher Middleton, 1972)

15. Bertolt Brecht – Poems (John Willett, Ralph Manheim, Erich Fried, et al 1976)

16. Michel Foucault – Discipline and Punish (Alan Sheridan, 1977)

17. Emmanuel Le Roy Ladurie - Montaillou (Barbara Bray, 1978)

18. Italo Calvino – If on a Winter’s Night a Traveller (William Weaver, 1981)

19. Roland Barthes – Camera Lucida (Richard Howard, 1981)

20. Christa Wolf – A Model Childhood (Ursule Molinaro, Hedwig Rappolt, 1982)

21. Umberto Eco – The Name of the Rose (William Weaver, 1983)

22. Mario Vargas Llosa – Aunt Julia and the Scriptwriter (Helen R. Lane, 1983)

23. Milan Kundera – The Unbearable Lightness of Being (Michael Henry Heim, 1984)

24. Marguerite Duras – The Lover (Barbara Bray, 1985)

25. Josef Skvorecky – The Engineer of Human Souls (Paul Wilson, 1985)

26. Per Olov Enquist – The March of the Musicians (Joan Tate, 1985)

27. Patrick Süskind – Perfume (John E. Woods, 1986)

28. Isabel Allende – The House of the Spirits (Magda Bodin, 1986)

29. Georges Perec – Life A User’s Manual (David Bellos, 1987)

30. Thomas Bernhard – Cutting Timber (Ewald Osers, 1988)

31. Czeslaw Milosz – Poems (Czeslaw Milosz, Robert Hass, 1988)

32. José Saramago – Year of the Death of Ricardo Reis (Giovanni Pontiero, 1992)

33. Marcel Proust – In Search of Lost Time (Terence Kilmartin, 1992)

34. Roberto Calasso – The Marriage of Cadmus and Harmony (Tim Parks, 1993)

35. Naguib Mahfouz – Cairo Trilogy (William M. Hutchins, Lorne M. Kenny, Olive E. Kenny, Angele Botros Samaan, 1991-3)

36. Laura Esquivel – Like Water for Chocolate (Carol Christensen and Thomas Christensen, 1993)

37. Bao Ninh – The Sorrow of War (Frank Palmos, Phan Thanh Hao, 1994)

38. Victor Klemperer – I Shall Bear Witness (Martin Chalmers, 1998)

39. Beowulf (Seamus Heaney, 1999)

40. Josef Brodsky – Collected Poems (Anthony Hecht et al, 2000)

41. Xingjian Gao – Soul Mountain (Mabel Lee, 2001)

42. Tahar Ben Jelloun – This Blinding Absence of Light (Linda Coverdale, 2002)

43. W.G. Sebald – Austerlitz (Anthea Bell, 2002)

44. Orhan Pamuk – Snow (Maureen Freely, 2004)

45. Amos Oz – A Tale of Love and Darkness (Nicholas de Lange, 2004)

46. Per Petterson – Out Stealing Horses (Ann Born, 2005)

47. Irène Némirovsky – Suite Française (Sandra Smith, 2006)

48. Vassily Grossman – Life and Fate (Robert Chandler, 2006)

49. Alaa Al Aswany – The Yacoubian Building (Humphrey Davies, 2007)

50. Leo Tolstoy – War and Peace (Richard Pevear, Larissa Volokhonsky, 2007)

Compiled by Shaun Whiteside (Chair, TA) and the Committee of the TA (Don Bartlett, Alexandra Büchler, Martin Chalmers, Nicholas de Lange, Sarah Death, Marueen Freely, Daniel Hahn and Christine Shuttleworth).

Enquiries to the Translators Association Secretary, Sarah Burton.

From the list I posted in #56, the Italian-English translations of The Leopard, The Name of the Rose, and If on a Winter's Night a Traveller have all stood out for me.

Interesting list. I've read quite a few of these (although some with other translators, e.g., The Master and Margarita, and have several others on the TBR. I guess it's a sign of a good translation when I loved the book and didn't think about the translation! I was especially interested to see The Sorrow of War on the list because I thought that was a pretty obscure book.

On another note, I've been reading a lot of Antal Szerb, all translated from the Hungarian by Len Rix, who I think has done a terrific job.

Thank you Nickelini for posting this. A good resource.