Reading literature in translation can sometimes be awkward; sometimes you feel like you are just not experiencing what the author had in mind.
The books I bought you include a number of translations and editions, primarily the Aylmer and Louise Maude translation of 1918 and the more recent Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky (or P & V, as they have come to be called) translation. (One of you has my teaching copy of P&V -- I hope my pencil marks and marginalia don't get in the way too much. Feel free to read with an eraser!)
In the early 20th century, the Maudes knew Tolstoy and made translating his fiction and philosophical writings their life's work; Pevear and Volokhonsky are a husband and wife team, a late 20th and early 21st century publishing phenomenon. She is a native Russian speaker, and he knows virtually no Russian, so she gives a rough literal translation and he "Englishizes" it. The results are sometimes quite lovely, and sometimes atrocious. Prof. Saul Morson of Northwestern University has called their work "Potemkin translations -- apparently definitive but actually flat and fake on close inspection." (He has a terrific essay about them called "The Pevearsion of Russian Literature." We can read it if you get interested! See the review of it posted via the button above.)
When P & V's translation of Boris Pasternak's Doctor Zhivago came out last year, I ordered it for my class, but in the end I could only understand what they meant by retranslating their words into Russian in my head. I ended up apologizing to my class and using the old, first translation of DZ into English, which was much more comprehensible.
But I've had no trouble with their Anna Karenina. I will admit that I have probably never read the Maudes' translation, but I'm guessing that it's not too bad. We can compare as we go. (I actually have the Norton edition of the novel, translated by George Gibian, and will be reading that this month, and comparing it to the Russian; I teach this edition or the P & V edition.)
We will all interpret the novel in our own manner anyway; I'm here to help you when you run into cultural or linguistic barriers. But when you contemplate your translation, just imagine how many film versions there are of this famous novel -- there are at least three or four in English alone. So think about Tolstoy's words and try not to let the translators (or any actors or directors you encounter) get in your way. Or even better -- think about what "translation" really means, not only from one language to another, but also from one culture (Russian aristocratic) to another (American? Ohio? rural/village?), one time period (19th century) to another (21st century), and one medium (the novel) to another (film). We may be distant -- in language, culture, time and space -- from Tolstoy and Anna, but we can still learn from them.
The books I bought you include a number of translations and editions, primarily the Aylmer and Louise Maude translation of 1918 and the more recent Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky (or P & V, as they have come to be called) translation. (One of you has my teaching copy of P&V -- I hope my pencil marks and marginalia don't get in the way too much. Feel free to read with an eraser!)
In the early 20th century, the Maudes knew Tolstoy and made translating his fiction and philosophical writings their life's work; Pevear and Volokhonsky are a husband and wife team, a late 20th and early 21st century publishing phenomenon. She is a native Russian speaker, and he knows virtually no Russian, so she gives a rough literal translation and he "Englishizes" it. The results are sometimes quite lovely, and sometimes atrocious. Prof. Saul Morson of Northwestern University has called their work "Potemkin translations -- apparently definitive but actually flat and fake on close inspection." (He has a terrific essay about them called "The Pevearsion of Russian Literature." We can read it if you get interested! See the review of it posted via the button above.)
When P & V's translation of Boris Pasternak's Doctor Zhivago came out last year, I ordered it for my class, but in the end I could only understand what they meant by retranslating their words into Russian in my head. I ended up apologizing to my class and using the old, first translation of DZ into English, which was much more comprehensible.
But I've had no trouble with their Anna Karenina. I will admit that I have probably never read the Maudes' translation, but I'm guessing that it's not too bad. We can compare as we go. (I actually have the Norton edition of the novel, translated by George Gibian, and will be reading that this month, and comparing it to the Russian; I teach this edition or the P & V edition.)
We will all interpret the novel in our own manner anyway; I'm here to help you when you run into cultural or linguistic barriers. But when you contemplate your translation, just imagine how many film versions there are of this famous novel -- there are at least three or four in English alone. So think about Tolstoy's words and try not to let the translators (or any actors or directors you encounter) get in your way. Or even better -- think about what "translation" really means, not only from one language to another, but also from one culture (Russian aristocratic) to another (American? Ohio? rural/village?), one time period (19th century) to another (21st century), and one medium (the novel) to another (film). We may be distant -- in language, culture, time and space -- from Tolstoy and Anna, but we can still learn from them.