Chekhov’s Mistess

More on translation

I was in one of my favorite indy bookstores not long ago and overheard a salesperson giving advice on translations of War & Peace. He was – with passion – explaining how translations ‘of the day’ are better because they capture the language of the era in which the book was written. I nearly donned my cape to swoop in and save the unsuspecting lady, but held back for the good of all concerned.

Cut to to what Andrew brought up in the comments to my post about Pevear & Volokhonsky’s upcoming War & Peace translation. He said “the Russians were more ‘modern’ than everyone else, and so their raw, direct language could hardly be understood by the Europeans and British still dwelling psychologically in the previous cultural era.”

This is the very point that Ms. Volokhonsky has brought up discussing her translations, and the very point I hear when people discuss their work. I’m on record as having the very sentiment Mr. Indy Bookseller so passionately distilled to his customer, but I also know that it’s wrong. To read a particular translation because it was written for an audience of a particular era has little value if the cost of that is moving away from the author’s intent – something like “Disneyfying” Alice in Wonderland.

I think a great fear serious readers have is that a modern translation will try to make the work “easy” or vulgar to meet the appetite of so-called modern readers. If you don’t speak the language (and who can speak every language that we can find great literature in), it’s a leap of faith. That’s why I have a little project cooked up to compare some translations back-to-back. I can’t get too specific because I’m bad at keeping blog promises – but if anyone wants more info and take part in some fairly close readings of translations, then drop a comment.

comments

Well, in Germany the mostread translations of F.D. are by Elisabeth Kaerrick, who used the name E. K. Rahsin for that. Her translations are somehow responsible for the disgust the reading of F.D. in school created…

Just now, in these times, the komplete F.D. is translated anew by Svetlana Geier. And that seems to be the best translation until now, very close to the author. We are lucky in Germany. For that.

    – Connie (05/19  at  03:20 AM)

Yes, please!  I’d love to hear more.  (I could even help out with looking at Spanish originals, if needed.)

    – amcorrea (05/20  at  02:41 PM)

When Nabokov translated Eugen Onegin into English he ransacked eighteenth-century English poetry for inspiration. Compendious notes in his wonderful translation consitute a pocket history of the Augustan and early Romantic ages of English poetry. He would disagree with your theory.

    – Dean (05/20  at  07:56 PM)

Dean, please explain to me what “theory” of mine you think Nabokov would disagree with! The only thing I can think that you (he, since you so boldly put yourself into Nabokov’s mind) could object to as a theory (or indeed, the closest thing to a theory here) is when I said “To read a particular translation because it was written for an audience of a particular era has little value if the cost of that is moving away from the author’s intent – something like ‘Disneyfying’ Alice in Wonderland.”

You know as well as I do that Nabokov’s entire exercise with Onegin was to provide a literal translation as a work of “matter-of-fact reference” and that his was a search of truth of the author’s words rather than the normalization and (what I might guess he would call) vulgarization of these great works by the canonical translators (I’m guessing, since you imply you’ve read Eugene Onegin, you’ve also read Strong Opinions). In fact, Nabokov had intended to translate Anna Karenina and his critical writings on other Russian translations show that he was very much against the very thing I’m critical of here.

To be fair, I think you think I don’t like the “language of the day,” as I was critical of the salesman saying that was best. I’ve said here that I’m all for the language of the day, but not the language or sensibilities of Britain (or anywhere else) of the day, if I’m reading a Russian text, I want to read something that approximates as closely as possible the language that the author used in his or her day (thus my fear of ‘easy’ translations that are made to be palatable) - it’s known that the canonical translations have that weakness and that some modern translations attempt to get closer to the original. So, while my intent was to think out loud about modern translations, I think you construed that as preferring translations into modern language, when in fact, the modernity I’m searching for is, in many cases, that of the original author.

    – Bud Parr (05/21  at  08:44 AM)

I can’t say I’ve read Pushkin but I would have thought that he comarativvely dwells in that prior cultural era of which I spoke. To make this all the more apparent, didn’t he write in verse? The modern era which Dostoevsky described as emerging from Gogol’s short story The Overcoat does not, I would have thought encompass Pushkin, however great an artist he was.

Also Nabokov, perhaps from a mischievous sense of humour, spouted some utter drivel in his time.

    – Andrew K (05/21  at  02:41 PM)

As I said: to be or not to be has structure not Italian. But I think a good translator whenever she works improves our reading life, though foreign understanding deteriorated her veracity to her translated subject.

    – Brian Hadd (05/21  at  03:43 PM)

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• Posted by: Bud Parr
• Date: May 18, 2007
• Filed Under:
  Wise Men Fish Here: Literature

• Comments:6
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