Translation Wars

I had a bit of of slowdown in the re-reading of War and Peace with the decision to switch translations, but have made it through the end of Part III, or the Russian defeat at Austerlitz. It was very difficult to find the Maude translation, but I'm happy to have made the switch. Just as their (her?) translation of Resurrection is my favorite, I am finding a lot to enjoy about their W&P. In simplest terms, it's more readable. As much as I wanted to enjoy the Peavar and Volokhonsky, I found many passages quite uncomfortable to read, with some very awkward syntax occasionally making sentences difficult to follow.

It turns out that I was not the only reader struggling to find the ideal translation. Over at Language Hat (definitely worth a visit), there is an interesting post and discussion about the translation of War and Peace that addresses a few of my concerns. The New York Times Reading Room blog is also abuzz with Tolstoy talk, featuring a surprisingly heated discussion, including comments from Richard Peavar, about the best translation of the book. The Reading Room site is also worth a visit, but don't read about W&P there until you've finished the book.

Professor Dmitry Buzadzhi, from the Moscow State Linguistic University, seems especially unimpressed with the Peavar and Volokhonsky translation:

As we all know, Pevear, who does not speak much Russian, collaborates with his wife, Larissa Volokhonsky, who prepares a word-for-word English crib, which Pevear himself can hardly understand at first [Robert Wechsler. Performing Without a Stage: The Art of Literary Translation, 1998. p.201-202]. This practice seems suspicious from the very beginning but could be justified if it produced excellent results. But the actual (not self-proclaimed) quality of the translations proves the opposite. Pevear and his wife do not “make up one translator who has the luck to be a native speaker of two languages” as Pevear claims in his essay, but rather remain two not entirely professional translators, neither of whom has quite mastered the other language and who seem to be multiplying each other’s mistakes.

For me, with no knowledge of the fidelity of the translation as a guide, the largest issue is one that is being hashed out on these sites: the flow of the text. Richard Pevear is adamant that Tolstoy is not a writer concerned with "smoothness," but I find it hard to believe that Tolstoy's prose was as awkward as some of the passages in the V&P translation. Maybe the Maudes made Tolstoy sound more like an Englishman than a Russian, but there is a readable liveliness to the translation that I am really enjoying, despite having to start over.

I guess that makes sense. Peavar, Anthony Briggs (another recent translator), and even Tolstoy himself thought highly of the Maudes work, Tolstoy saying, "Better translators … could not be invented."

Good enough for me.