Stephen answers “Which translation is the best (readable)...”

A Goodreads user asked this question about Confessions:

Which translation is the best (readable) translation of confessions?

Stephen I spent a fair amount of time researching this as well, and still am none to sure which would be the "definitive" one to read... in the end, I plumped…moreI spent a fair amount of time researching this as well, and still am none to sure which would be the "definitive" one to read... in the end, I plumped for the Penguin edition, translated by Cohen. I read it described as a "domesticating translation", which is "the strategy of making text closely conform to the culture of the language being translated to, which may involve the loss of information from the source text" (Wikipedia). It is argued that something of the original flavour is lost - some have claimed that irony Rousseau intended is lost - but is perhaps more readable; Penguin's remit was to appeal to the reading public, rather than be overly academic; I think.

There is an anonymous translation, from around 1890, which is apparently closer the Rousseau's original style. It's available in the Everyman’s Library edition.

Then there is a 1995 translation by Christopher Kelly, whose text has "not been deformed by the interpretive bias of the translators and editors’ leads to a strongly literalist approach, even at the cost of ‘some awkwardnesses'".

Then Oxford World’s Classics has published an edition translated by Angela Scholar - "a text that manages to be both close and readable"

Anyway, don't know if that helps anyone. Normally I would have read the 1890s anonymous translation, but I didn't really like it much a dozen pages in. I've read about 50 pages of Cohen's translation, and am enjoying it very much.

Here's what I found online, and based the above on:

http://www.mhra.org.uk/pdf/mlr-100-s-...

https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=p... (less)

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