From the Bookshelf of EVERYONE Has Read This but Me - The Catch-Up Book Club…

Crime and Punishment

Fyodor Dostoevsky

Start date: March 1, 2021

Finish date: March 31, 2021

Discussion: CLASSICS READS

Why we're reading this: March 2021 - Classics Group Read
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CLASSICS READS

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What Members Thought

Jun 01, 2021 Lyn rated it it was ok

Someone who has read the original Russian novel please enlighten me.... is it so stilted, confusing and awkward in Russian? It's a shame I don't know Russian because the translation is sorely lacking. At least I assume it's the translation that is the issue. I read the one by Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky. The volume is covered in praises for this "new" translation (copyright 1992. Very new.) but if this is "the best translation currently available" I implore someone with a love of lite Someone who has read the original Russian novel please enlighten me.... is it so stilted, confusing and awkward in Russian? It's a shame I don't know Russian because the translation is sorely lacking. At least I assume it's the translation that is the issue. I read the one by Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky. The volume is covered in praises for this "new" translation (copyright 1992. Very new.) but if this is "the best translation currently available" I implore someone with a love of literature to try again.

In English the text is stilted and awkward. The dialogues are just plain weird sometimes. It's like as if the translators only knew English academically and had no real life experience with it. It may be conveying the same substance and it may, in the end, get across its meaning, the entire book feels like a slog as you mentally adjust strange syntax or interpret strange use of interjections.

It's not that the translation is THAT bad that you're struggling; but it's just awkward enough to require that extra bit of brain work which detracts from the experience of the novel.

That said, my guess is that the original text is probably riddled with things that make sense in Russian but not in English. Korean was my first language so I fully get the concept of things that are difficult to translate. Like the Korean "uuuoooh". It's an extremely weird interjection for English speakers especially aloud since its pitch looks like a bell curve. But it's used extremely frequently on tv and frequently in conversation.

I get the sense that something like that is going on here but it makes me wonder whether they couldn't have found different ways to render it in English. Fidelity to the text is important, sure, but so is readability. The Chicago Tribune say of this translation, "reaches as close to Dostoevsky's Russian as is possible in English" and the San Francisco Chronicle says, "this fresh new translation ... provides a more exact, idiotmatic and contemporary rendition of the novel ... " Both statements make me think the translators were a bit too literal. Maybe it's precise but it's not a pleasure to read. ...more

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