I am very suspicious of P&V having read several scathing takes on their work which I cannot now locate (partly because I'm not now looking).
OP last makes me wonder if the original W&P is even more godawfully long than the translation I read.
I don't know Russian so I can't speak to the accuracy of the translation, but I absolutely hated the P&V War and Peace and couldn't even finish it. Constance Garnett FTW!
Haha. I love how contrarian you all are about things that I have no opinion on and never thought about.
I read and liked this translator interview a few days ago.
I'm interested, though, in the dynamics of translating couples or I guess any sort of co-creation that's not a euphemism for sex. I don't know Polish, but I think John and Bogdana Carpenter's Zbigniew Herbert work is stunning.
IDKR, but that last quote with the "broad box" sounds like exactly what P&V get criticized for by other translators - translating common idioms as if they're idiosyncratic turns of phrase, generally trying to make it feel foreign, not unlike dubbing a Russian-language movie in fake Russian accents.
There's something on their Zhivago in NYRB, I think.
The interview includes a solid defense of not liking new translations!
I loved it solely on the basis that it is a delightful view into marriage done very well indeed.
But it is certainly correct that Garnett et al prioritized smoothness over the punch of the original language.
Does the original language punch all the characters right in their stupid faces? Because otherwise I don't care.
I mean seriously, it's like a 9000 page ode to idiocy. I felt like I was being trolled.
Goodness, Mossy, I'm glad you're here!
9: Yes, I enjoyed it very much. Thanks for sharing, dq!
I haven't read any of their translations. I'm always planning to reread War and Peace, but there's so many books to read!
And the worst part is it was so fucking boring I can't even remember enough details to argue coherently, instead of ranting.
what P&V get criticized for by other translators - translating common idioms as if they're idiosyncratic turns of phrase
A couple of remarks in the interview seem to suggest that some words or phrases have become common idioms in Russian because of these writers but were originally fresh coinages. (and Shakespeare is full of quotes/clichés/book titles etc.)
Mossy, W&P is the only book I've ever given up on. I read all of book one and just couldn't continue. Solidarity.
I've given up on many books, one of which is W&P. Or Anna K. I can't remember which one I actually started and which one I just bought and put on a shelf.
Mossy's opinion here retroactively invalidates all of their opinions on the Tooze threads.
I tried reading the P&V translation of "Demons" and I didn't finish it. I'm prepared to blame them rather than myself. I find them annoying because the marketing around them involves running down every other translation to make them the new standard, one conveniently under copyright.
I couldn't even get through the Wikipedia plot summary for Finnegan's Wake.
ydnew, I have given up on many books but W&P is, to my lasting regret, not among them.
And Walt's failure of subject-verb agreement in 19.1 invalidates all his opinions ever. So there.
Since Finnegan's Wake is circular, by definition nobody can get through the plot summary.
which one I just bought and put on a shelf
Sadly, this describes most of my books.
Note to self: If it starts to look like Trump is gonna win, buy several extra pairs of reading glasses.
IDKR, but that last quote with the "broad box" sounds like exactly what P&V get criticized for by other translators - translating common idioms as if they're idiosyncratic turns of phrase, generally trying to make it feel foreign, not unlike dubbing a Russian-language movie in fake Russian accents.
But on the other hand, it becomes more foreign every year. You can't translate it into contemporary English, or you end up with 19th-century Russians sounding like us, while 19th-century British people in British literature are still archaic.
I'm pretty sure the W&P translation I read wasn't Garnett and I know it wasn't P&V.
I'm not sure if you're aware of it, but the initials P & V when paired like that have now acquired a different meaning.
Yes, they now mean Pevear & Volokhonsky.
Anyway, I read the Rosemary Edmonds translation.
I have a PIV card issued by a branch of the federal government.
Read the P&V interview earlier
AK may be my favorite novel, cause universality, readability, deceptive simplicity, and spiritual irony. The Levin/Kitty parts more than Vronsky. Joyce put it number one. Multiple times.
Read W&P, some short stuff, Ivan Ilyich, How Much Land.
The Japanese had a huge crush on Resurrection during Meiji/Taisho times.
There are signs advertising PIV all over campus.
21: I didn't know if you were a man, woman, or other, and so I used "their" like all right-thinking progressive people. Basically I have already reached a level of enlightenment you can never hope to match.
I have a bit of a personal interest in this, but if people are looking for a translation of Anna Karenina, I recommend the recent one with an introduction by Gary Saul Morson.
Gary Saul Morson once made an embarrassment of himself at a conference at the Steinford Humanities Centre.
He got drunk and had unprotected sex with Nosflow, just like that whore Rene Girard.
After that he's never going to tell us the real story.
AK is just a novel, IMO a great one, without the philosophy of history digressions in W&P.
There are hilariously catty footnotes about other translators' errors and general wrong-headedness in Peter Green's footnotes to his (nice, I thought) edition of Juvenal's Satires.
Thinking about books tried and unfinished: How many people alive today have read The Fairy Queen? Jerome's lengthy rants? It's a truism that internet reading makes for flighty readers and short superficial texts, but what if there's something there?
That is, if enough people are put off from trying something slow that's not immediately rewarding, then there is a mountain of works which would have had a small community that appreciated them decades ago but now are completely unread. Consider this the beginning of a counterfactual alternate technological history to explain why Tolstoy deserves better.
41: Well before the internet was a mass-phenomenon, Charles Schultz was making comics about Charlie Brown not being able to get through the first paragraph of War and Peace. And I'm pretty sure it's been a long time since many people read The Faerie Queen.
" Anna went into the carriage." ... different meanings ...
I am not a native speaker, can somebody please explain this part to me?
43: I am a native speaker and I didn't get this either!
a) I think that the translators meant that "got" is OK in British english for normal speakers, suggesting that the editor is a twit.
b) to check, I googled the phrase and found this excellent example:
Just went into carriage and shouted 'It is inappropriate for you to be viewing porn on the train!'
14 phones put away. Beat my record by 6.
43: Same here. Perhaps I'm being obtuse, but the copy editor's suggestions sound reasonable and will improve the reader's experience by not distracting them. If that's the best P&V can come up with, they were being needlessly difficult.
Did whichever of the two who didn't know Russian as of 2006 or so, when I read about them, ever learn Russian?
43-4 Went could also mean went to the bathroom.
46: I took it to mean that it was a wildly inappropriate level of micro-managing from the copyeditor that was infringing on the actual work of translation. I have seen (and done!) very different varieties of copyediting, ranging from "please catch all outright errors" to "please help me improve my writing style." If you were anticipating the former and got the latter I could see being reeaaallllly ticked.
I've been thinking of rereading The Faeroe Queen since seeing a reference in an essay of Wallace Stevens' a few months ago.
Faerie, just to show my phone who's boss.
I would read a translation of Tolstoy that shorted all the names to things like Bob or Jim. As it is, I go five pages and think, "I have no fucking idea who this person is, but I bet he's going to get drunk and want to fight someone."
I had that problem with Crime and Punishment.
49: Sure, but if those are the best they can think of, perhaps they should have left those examples out? I see roger the cabin boy's point, but I wouldn't have considered that in the context, and neither did a few others. It makes it sound like they have trouble understanding their audiences' ear.
53: It took a while for me to grok that there are cultures where affectionate nicknames take longer to say than regular names.
There was a guy named Jim that we always called Jimbob. Which, technically is the same.
47: he says he can read Russian, but can't speak it.
52 - hang out in enough drifter bars and that Russian novel can be your life
It's like a lady getting out of a carriage -- sometimes you see it, sometimes you don't.
Went could also mean went to the bathroom.
Not with "into" it doesn't. You'd have to use "in" for that meaning.
Fuckin' prepositions. How do they work?
I think the whole point isn't that it works perfectly but that it works well enough that P&V can expect the copy editor to understand that he or she is being called an asshole.
I heard that Russians have forty different words for "asshole".
41: My worst English lecturer wrote her thesis on The Faerie Queen, I suspect strongly with the strategy that her examiners wouldn't read it to check her.
I admit that I would find "I do like balls" to be a funny sentence in a way that I couldn't be amused by "I do like cotillions." But honestly, I don't think it is possible to write something in English that passes for normal prose and avoid things like that. You need to use a more reasonable standard than me.
if those are the best they can think of, perhaps they should have left those examples out?
I think a reader would have to be working extra hard to misunderstand, "Did you come recently?" or "I do like balls," in context. In the latter case, I'm not sure how you would write around it, since a ball is a ball and that's what she's talking about. Were they supposed to change it to "sock hop"?
Not that I'm knocking The Faerie Queen, necessarily. I tried it when I was...8? 6? and trying anything I could reach. I bounced right off it. In fact all I can actually remember is the contents page:
etc., etc., etc.
Chapter CMLVII
In which the Red Cross Knight treats his dragon-fire burn wounds with mud.
Chapter CMLVIII
In which the Red Cross Knight resists the blandishments of water-nymphs.
Speaking of writing, an update for all you cynics- both of my missing chapter authors popped up at the end of last week with completed drafts. Or maybe this belongs in the deadlines thread. Now the chapter I'm writing is the only one that isn't finished.
Now the chapter I'm writing is the only one that isn't finished.
It's probably angry with you for using the passive voice.
Literally one of the most common words in English totally sounds like butt
I would pay $5 for an audiobook of the Faerie Queen read by Paul Giamatti.
At last, a kickstarter we can get behind.
I tried it when I was...8? 6? and trying anything I could reach.
That could be a little young for the Faerie Queene.
The Faeroe Queen
A lesser known Icelandic saga.
I have no thoughts on the quality of these people's translations of books I'm honestly never likely to read, but was their editor proposing to market the Russian classics to Beavis and Butt Head?
Their copyeditor is closely related to my libel lawyer
"Got" into the carriage is unquestionably right for practically any possible context - if it's a horse-drawn carriage, "went" would be deeply strange. Similarly, if it's a railway carriage, "went" would be bizarre if she was boarding a train.
You could just about square it if she was travelling in Lenin's compartment, and went into the next carriage to get away from the smoking and arguing (or to tell them to stop looking at porn).
66 maybe they are commenters or lurkers here.
76.1 is correct.
That should have all been in quotes.
80: I meant as in "I really don't like this horse any more, it's too high".
72: the islands' tourism industry has suffered from competition from the Shetlands, using the highly successful slogan "Faroes' Foul and Foula's Fair".
I think The Faeroe Queen would work great as a paranormal knitting romance.
83, 85: I guess we need copy editors.
72,86: Presumably written in Dogger-el
I'm upper, upper class high society
God's gift to ballroom notoriety
And I always fill my ballroom
The event is never small
All the social papers say I've got the biggest cotillions of all
I've got big cotillions
I've got big cotillions
And they're such big cotillions
Dirty big cotillions
And he's got big cotillions,
And she's got big cotillions,
But we've got the biggest cotillions of them all!
And my cotillions are always bouncing
My ballroom always full
And everybody comes and comes again
If your name is on the guest list
No one can take you higher
Everybody says I've got great cotillions of fire!
I've got big cotillions
I've got big cotillions
And they're such big cotillions
Dirty big cotillions
And he's got big cotillions,
And she's got big cotillions,
But we've got the biggest cotillions of them all!
Some cotillions are held for charity
And some for fancy dress
But when they're held for pleasure,
They're the cotillions that I like best.
And my cotillions are always bouncing,
To the left and to the right.
It's my belief that my big cotillions should be held every night.
I've got big cotillions
I've got big cotillions
And they're such big cotillions
Dirty big cotillions
And he's got big cotillions,
And she's got big cotillions,
But we've got the biggest cotillions of them all!
Related to 89, I was fascinated to discover (elsewhere) the story of HMS Black Joke - this was a Brazilian slaver that was taken and renamed by the Royal Navy's West Africa Squadron in the early 19th century and used to hunt slavers. I'd heard of it before and always assumed that the name was something to do with the "black joke" of using a slave ship (with a mainly black crew) to hunt other slave ships, or the idea that it would be something that enslaved black people would be happy to see arriving.
Apparently it wasn't either of those - it's considerably more startling. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_Joke
So, like HMS Eskimo Nell or something.
It took a while for me to grok that there are cultures where affectionate nicknames take longer to say than regular names.
The most well-known culture of this type is "cat owners."
The best response has to be that of T.E. Lawrence to the unfortunate proofreader of The Seven Pillars of Wisdom.
[Publisher] I attach a list of queries raised by F. who is reading the proofs. He finds these very clean, but full of inconsistencies in the spelling of proper names, a point which reviewers often take up. Will you annotate it in the margin, so that I can get the proofs straightened?
Slip [i.e., section] 1. Jeddah and Jidda used impartially throughout. Intentional?
[Lawrence:] Rather!
Slip 16. Bir Waheida, was Bir Waheidi.
[Lawrence:] Why not? All one place.
Slip 20. Nuri, Emir of the Ruwalla, belongs to the "chief family of the Rualla.' On Slip 23 'Rualla horse,' and Slip 38, 'killed one Rueli.' In all later slips 'Rualla.'
[Lawrence:] Should have also used Ruwala and Ruala.
Slip 28. The Bisaita is also spelled Biseita.
[Lawrence:] Good.
Slip 47. Jedha, the she-camel, was Jedhah on Slip 40.
[Lawrence:] She was a splendid beast.
Slip 53. 'Meleager, the immoral poet.' I have put 'immortal poet,' but the author may mean immoral after all.
[Lawrence:] Immorality I know. Immortality I cannot judge. As you please: Meleager will not sue us for libel.
Slip 65. Author is addressed 'Ya Auruns,' but on Slip 56 was 'Aurans.'
[Lawrence:] Also Lurens and Runs: not to mention 'Shaw.' More to follow, if time permits.
Slip 78. Sherif Abd el Mayin of Slip 68 becomes el Main, el Mayein, el Muein, el Mayin, and el Muyein.
[Lawrence:] Good egg. I call this really ingenious.
It took a while for me to grok that there are cultures where affectionate nicknames take longer to say than regular names.
Russian, for one. Maria --> Masha, Mashenka, Marusya.
Nadyezhda --> Nadia, Nadka, Nadenka, Nadyusha, Nadyushka
Oksana --> Sanochka, Oksanochka, Ksyusha, Ksyushenka
The story of the Black Joke is excellent:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HMS_Black_Joke_(1827)
Including the bit where a 14 year old Midshipman successfully takes control during a battle.
I know, right? Cries out to be made into a film.
53: It took a while for me to grok that there are cultures where affectionate nicknames take longer to say than regular names.
That surprises me since your native culture is one of them.
[Lawrence:] Immorality I know. Immortality I cannot judge. As you please: Meleager will not sue us for libel.
That is fantastic
If only Giles Coren had been a bit wittier maybe he wouldn't have got in such trouble.
The Faeroe Queen
Anyone else see the episode of Mind of a Chef where the Faeroe islander was netting puffins while clinging to a cliffside?
I was assuming that, like many mass market classics, this would end up largely being read by student readers, who, yes, can be a tad immature. If you know about the possibility of these issues, you would be wasting much more collective educational time by not fixing them. I'm not surprised that a copy editor at a major publisher of such works would be concerned about that, but I am surprised that the translators would be so butthurt (huhuhuhhuhuh I said butt) about it. If my assumption is incorrect (I suppose I could read TFArticle but that would be cheating), never mind.
100: This is true! Unfortunately, the difference between what I said and what I meant is not actually interesting, unless you'd like to expound upon it.
106. I am now pretty puzzled.
I thought that say Anna Karenina, Madame Bovary, Tristram Shandy had all been widely read. Is that wrong?
107.2: I think that would depend on your definition of "widely read". Except Anna Karenina -- that was an Oprah selection, so many many people have at least started it in the U.S.
107: Probably not! I'm arguing from the classiest and most noble of all positions, ignorance.
If anyone's interested, twitter polls about reading these
https://twitter.com/lw208xx
110: That will definitively answer the question!