Russian Readers Club discussion
What are some of the best translations?
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Brad
(last edited Aug 25, 2016 12:57PM)
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Oct 05, 2007 11:41AM

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@Tom--So many different opinions! I think the only thing that we can count on is that there'll always be lively discussion on which translation is best. I imagine that in a decade or so, there'll be some new translation out there and everyone will say how it's so vastly superior to P+V. Maybe it's just a ploy for the publishers to sell more books! haha





Stephen asked what the problem is with Garnett. I read a bunch of her translations in college, and I personally found her language a little stilted. This was probably just because of the time in which she was writing though. I might be wrong, but I seem to recall her as translating in the early 1900's, maybe even a bit earlier.


I am just chiming in with a translation comment/question to whomever would like to reply...
I read The Idiot and The Brothers Karamazov in Constance Garnett's translations, and am now reading Anna Karenina in the P & V translation. (I also bought three more Russian novels in the P & V translations recently, since I keep hearing that they are the best.)
What surprised me just now is that in one scene of Anna K, P & V use the word "gay" to describe some fun-loving youths... the same word as was used in the Constance Garnett translation of the same text.
I thought Constance Garnett was stuck in Victorianisms, but why would anyone now use the word 'gay' to mean happy? I don't think anyone uses that word in English to sincerely mean happy, cheerful or joyous. Or is it just because I work with teenagers that my mind has been corrupted on the only realistic connotations of this word?
Just wondering on what P & V's philosophy is in this regard of contemporary uses of language and meaning.

regardless, I agree that "gay," at least to my American ear, would sound pretty archaic today.

regardless, I agree that "gay," at ..."
I am jumping in here without introducing myself in an introductory thread, as is customary, but I'm afraid I'm too eager to participate in the discussion to take the time to go into the other thread. I am a 58-year-old attorney in Washington DC. I really enjoyed Dostoyevsky (Crime and Punishment, Brothers K, Notes from Underground) and Tolstoy (Anna K) when I was younger, and now that there are new translations out I am slowly psyching myself up to reread them, as well as tackling War and Peace for the first time - the P/V version has been bought, but remains unopened so far. One problem is that my to-read shelves are very crowded.
What I wanted to say here is that, to me, "gay" would be an appropriate synonym for "happy" in the context of an Anna K translation. I think that I expect an 1800s-era novel to sound like an 1800s-era novel when it is translated. If P and V are using a lot of 20th (or 21st) century words in their translations, I may end up being disappointed in them.

regardless, I agree th..."
Welcome to the group, Bob.That's quite reasonably. I find in Tolstoy's novels a lot of obsolete words, and translators should take it into consideration. I've just started to reread "War and Peace" in English this time. I'm interested in comparing in Russian and English version.

Maybe if I'm going to be that picky I may as well try learning to read in Russian for myself. ;)

Amyjzed, it would be great, if you could read in Russian.:)
I haven't run into any incorrect words or expressions so far, and I hope I won't...

Agreed. I would not expect nor would I desire a translation to update its language to appease modern readers any more than I should wish modern clothes and an updated hairdo to be put on the Mona Lisa. To me, that would be a poor translation.
I also despise Anglicized translations. I prefer that Russian currency, for example, be called rubles and not dollars or pounds; street names should not be translated; Russians should not be saying things like "jolly old chap", "right laddie!" and "aye, mate". It's jarring, and makes me wonder what else in the text is being so vandalised. The worst offender of this sort I have come across was Avrahm Yarmolinsky's translations of Gorky's short stories.
For these reasons I go out of my way if I have to in order to find Garnett's translations. Besides, the English-speaking world, at one time having no other choice but Garnett, still found these Russian novels and stories to be the masterpieces that they are, and Tolstoy, Dostoevsky, et al, to have unique styles and voices, even varying from one work to the next (for example, I like being able to tell Dostoevsky was ON when he wrote The Brothers Karamazov in a way he wasn't quite when he wrote The Possessed). So considering Garnett's translations "ain't broke", I am not seeing any compelling arguments for "fixing" them.

But to translate the novel word for word in this way might be impossible!

I don't know French or Russian, but in Spanish, -ito or -ita is added at the end of a word to modify it and mean little something. So the French or Russian word could be a modification of the word for wife.


Really Tolstoy refers both to her "diminutive stature" and, as Leonard have said, he "have used the expression to adoration". Tolstoy doesn't speak on behalf of Bolkonsky, he conveys his own feelings about her.
As for the word "gay", in Russian "gay" and "homosexual" aren't synonyms, so there isn't any problem.

Then there was: ask the linguist.
I am the one, native Russian too.
Tolstoy, Dostoevskiy, Goncharov, Chekhov are world classics for their 1) thoughts and 2)language. It is amazing how beautifully simple and sincere is their language, without comlications. It's beautiful, rich, and yet, not overwhelmed with "showing off", sophistications. Many writers think that the more their language has "too sophisticated" words, the smarter they will look and the more prestigious they will be ranked among their colleagues or readers.
This is a misperception. I recently read some modern Russian journalists' thoughts, written with some pretenciousness. I was tired of reading that. I thought:"Why they just don't look at the classics". Those are never tiresome - always simple, yet rich (vocabulary). The thoughts are so deep that every time you open the book and reread, you find new and new things for yourself that you missed in previous reading(s).
Dickens was valued by Russian writers (I just read in journal "Sovremennik" (St.Petersburg, 1847), but criticized too. If I am not mistaken, there was mentioned a bit heavyish style/language, while not being measured to the depth of thought.

Zoia, I agree with your view on Russian literature! I constantly compare books by modern authors with classics and receive evidence that the latter is matchless.

Thank you, Natalie. It always feels nice to come across/meet people who share similar views. I wish my spouse could be in that category! :)

Dickens was the same generation as Goncharov and Dostoevsky, and he is not any harder to read at all. Chekhov, of course, was much younger (he was 10 when Dickens died), and his language is to be compared with O.Henry's and London's, not Dickens or Melville's.
Finally, you are making a mistake typical for Russian speakers. You mechanically generalize the instruments of Russian language, highly flectional, onto English, which is nearly isolating. Richness and colorfulness of expression in Russian (as, to somewhat lesser degree, in German) is achieved through elaborated grammatical constructs (as witnessed by typical half-page sentences of Russian or German classics) and inventive use of word synthesis (prefixes, suffixes etc), while in English the main instrument is its immense vocabulary. Either Shakespeare, or Dickens, or Joyce - their vocabulary, counting only unique stems, includes 15-20 000 roots. This is much larger than of any Russian writer (Tolstoy used 16 000 *words*, not stems). The beauty of English literature therefore, unlike Russina literature, is defined by "complications" and "sophisticated words" - although it makes it much more difficult to fully enjoy, say, Melville or Styron for a foreigner.
I also quite disagree that 'the great Russians' are popular in the West for their prose (I suppose that is what you meant under 'their language'). Not only most of that is lost in translation, it is also impossible for English speakers to appreciate due to linguistic differences. Thoughts, feelings, emotions, that is what makes Russian classics attractive for the international readership. To give you an example, Moby Dick in Russian reads as an interesting novel - but it reads entirely differently compared to the original. And other Melville's books, equally greatly written but without a captivating plot, like Bartleby, are virtually unknown in Russia.

The trouble is that Ginsberg translated the censored copy of M&M. She's a good translator, but a lot is missing from that version.

Really? Realists of any language have a reputation for being easier to translate than romantics or symbolists. Interesting how you didn't pick Pushkin Gogol, Bely, Bulgakov or Sologub, none of whom have particularly straightforward styles but are some of the best writers who ever lived. Gogol, for example, is best enjoyed only in the original Russian. Nothing of the alliteration, humor or irony can really be translated effectively. Lermontov, who wrote one of the most astoundingly poetic works of prose, only comes off as a simple story in translation, precisely because of the intricacies of the language used.
I have to disagree, strongly, that Russian literature is beautiful because it is devoid of what you call artistic complications, like Dickens or Shakespeare. Frankly, your argument is mostly a commentary on a very specific genre of literature (realism). Really, you could say the same thing about Flaubert... or Eliot....
Any language is made beautiful in the hands of a skilled artist. And any language can be used to convey a huge variety of styles. Aesthetic judgments on the nature of a language are inherently subjective. I mean.. no one... can possibly say the prose in "What is to be Done" is anything but unreadable, perhaps only made better by translation. The same thing can be said of something awful like "On the Road" in English.
The only truth you can derive about the beauty of language is that it is made beautiful by the artist, and appreciated by the reader. Both the beauty and the appreciation are intensely mitigated by individual taste, culture and experience.

I find both perfectly readable, and interesting in their own ways. And, to make it straight, I am not a big fan of Kerouac ('On the Road' is his only book I like) and am not a supporter of Chernyshevsky's philosophy at all. Yet I read WItBD without being bored, even though it was a required reading in our high schools, and I enjoyed OtR, not the least for its naive, colloquial prose. It read as a narration by a regular guy, not particularly versed in weaving words, and it sat well with me as a reader.
What I do find unreadable is Faulkner - now you can throw stones at me.


This word in Russian never means 'scandal', and never did. It normally means 'temptation', with the corresponding verb, 'soblaznit', meaning 'to tempt'. An additional somewhat older meaning exists, 'to seduce'. I've just searched BK for this word, and it is used mostly in the former sense, and a few times in the latter, but, of course, never as 'scandalize'.
If McDuff does say so, he has no business translating Russian books.

Ivan,
Thank you. It was interesting.
1) The Russian spread of derivatives of any root/entry of the dictionary is larger than it is in English. There are much more derivative clusters.
I just came back from teaching my Russian class.
2) Emilia Pardo Bazan read German philosophers in French translation. It was easier to grasp their thought in the French presentation - not because she did not know German enough. Don't you find it funny? (Funny like "chistoso" in Spanish or "smeshno, zabavno" in Russian). Well, I do.
3) I love "Moby Dick".
4) Dickens was referred as a hard, boring reading (do not get it personally please!!!) by Nekrasov and his colleagues (just in one article I read recently from that magazine) - writers, the members of a literary circle, or literary magazine "Sovremennik" (St. Petersburg, mig 19th century). The magazine was started by Pushkin, then Nekrasov bought it and revived.
Thanks once more, for your sharing. We learn from each other as we share. If you have different opinion from me, and do not learn anything from me, that's fine with me.
In Russian culture women are submissive to men, generally. I would never argue with a man, a smart man - I would respect his point of view and value the piece of knowledge that I did not possess may be before.
My brother asked me once "How many words are there in the Eng language?" I went to the library and asked librarians and they did not know what to say. So I went to a book shelf with a biggest dictionary. It is 400,000 (approximately). I think it was Oxford dictionary - do not remember what edition. Of course, language is language. We all understand that. It cannot possibly have exact numbers.
Well, I have been with English from my childhood, but I cannot claim I know it as well as I know my native Russian.
My passion is to compare languages. I love to read in the three - it is very exciting.
I learn Italian now for my soon coming trip. A lot of surprises, in spite of my knowledge of Spanish and French (Spanish Interm-High Interm, French- Beg-High Beg).
I wish you luck!
Sincerely,
Zoia

Thank you Scott,
I agree with you.
Pushkin, Lermontov, and Gogol are my favorite writers, by the way. One cannot read enough of those.
Thank you for your comment on my comment.
Sincerely,
Zoia Sproesser


http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/200...