I can see that a lot of work went into this post (which is great, thank you), but the conclusion is, in my opinion, disastrous. It’s demotivating and also not true.
I agree that there is no such thing as the perfect translation. It’s simply not possible to translate everything word for word as Dostoevsky intended, because the structures of English and Russian are different. I’m a native Russian speaker, and I recently reread Crime and Punishment in English (the Katz translation) for my blog. It was a great translation, but very few things were lost not because of a bad translation but just because of the language differences. A translator can’t invent words that don’t exist, so in a way they create their own piece of art through translation. And as a native Russian speaker, I can promise you that it doesn’t affect your reading experience nearly as much as Lisa wants you to think.
And if you are not a Russian literature scholar, a linguist, or a language enthusiast, if you are just a CASUAL reader, then ANY translation will work for you. There is no need to learn Russian unless you genuinely want to. The plot and the ideas will not be lost in translation.
My own advice is tho to check the first few pages available online in different translations and choose the one that feels most suitable for your (!!!) taste.
Moreover, even if you learn Russian to a C1–C2 level, you still won’t read Dostoevsky as easily as Lisa suggests.
First of all, the language Dostoevsky uses is 19th-century Russian, and many expressions from that time are outdated and no longer used in modern Russian. So even if you speak Russian, you will still need to sit with a dictionary and Google to look up things you’ve never heard of (каторга, серебряник, целковый, шинель, доходный дом etc). Not all Russian speakers know the meaning of some words because they are no longer used!
Second, Dostoevsky is not only about language but also about political and social context. If you don’t understand who the nihilists were and why Russian youth in the 1860s became radicalized, then Crime and Punishment will be harder to fully understand (and again, it has nothing to do with translation!)
To sum up, please read Russian literature without obsessing over “the best” translation, and don’t give up on Russian literature just because you don’t speak Russian. Спасибо!
Thank you for writing your sensible response. This piece reminds me of Gary Saul Morson’s overwrought objections to P&V, “The Pevearsion of Russian Literature.” They got popular (perhaps more so than deserved) and sold tons of books—and that seems to have upset some people. You don’t have to prefer them, but claiming that their translation quirks ruin the experience of reading Dostoevsky seems a bit much. The force of Dostoevsky’s genius has always managed to come through, no matter what translation I’m reading.
Love P&P, but on this topic, I'll have to respectfully offer an opposing opinion.
I love the P&V experience. I don't care for the Garnett experience.
I know bashing P&V is the fashion these days, but this Russian Translation Discourse™ reminds me of NIV -- or even KJV! -- readers bashing the Message Bible back in the early 2000s. I don't think it's controversial to say that different translations appeal to different personalities. In my case, I find Garnett's translations a total slog. I find P&V thrilling.
I'll never learn Russian to the level where I could read the original... but I do feel confident saying that the spirit of Dostoevsky must surely be thrilling and breathless and revelatory and even a little choppy. I get that experience in P&V. Garnett, to me, is clean and sophisticated -- but boring.
So if the goal is to get more people into Dostoevsky, and if P&V are doing so in a way that brings something of the original experience to a certain section of receptive readers, aren't they -- and anyone else who tries to bring the spirit of FD to different reader-personalities -- allies?
Also -- just like with Bible translations -- if translating is treachery, then the best answer is, 'Por q no los dos?' Mixing & matching translations is a better route to a full experience than holding one up as superior above all the rest.
To quote Brodsky, “The reason English-speaking readers can barely tell the difference between Tolstoy and Dostoevsky is that they aren’t reading the prose of either one. They’re reading Constance Garnett.”
Interesting analysis, Liza. I looked at eight translations of Crime and Punishment for my project last year and ended up building a rather large Google Sheet of examples from each chapter. A labour of love!
I read Crime and Punishment in English in high school, and to be honest I don’t remember who the translator was. Then, years later, I found a German translation at a used bookstore. I thought to myself if I’m gonna read a translation anyway I might as well practice my German, right? I feel like I got way more out of it the second time—partly because I was older I’m sure, but also partly because I was forced to slow down. My Russian language knowledge is pretty limited (2 years in college 10 years ago) but I think German and Russian are more similar in the amount of clauses you can reasonably stuff into a sentence. The translator was Benita Girgensohn. The name doesn’t mean anything to me; do you have any knowledge?
I read the Pavear-Volokhonsky translation of the Master and Margharita by Mikhail Bulgakov and enjoyed it tremendously. I feel like they brought a number of readers to the literature and that is a good thing.
P&V is good for their religious terminology and liturgical language, but in leading a book club on Brothers Karamazov their choppy clauses have gotten a bit tiresome this time around. Oddly enough, it never bothered me in reading, but once I started typing out quotations from their edition, I’ve just about wore out the comma in my keyboard!
I'll read Garnett until your translations are complete. Trying to learn new language is hard enough. Trying to learn a new new alphabet is more than I can conceive.
The word choice of the original author does not encompass all the concepts in the word's semantic field. To believe it does is a fallacy (common in biblical exegesis) that leads a translator into a fruitless search for a comparable word in the target language that has, miraculously, the same web of cognates and conceptual links.
Thank you for this valuable information! Dostoyevsky is one of my favorite authors, and it's good to know which translations do what before I buy them!
I tip my hat to the detailed excellence of your analysis. "So while English readers walk away from White Nights with the image of bliss, Russian readers walk away with the weight of humanity’s foibles on their shoulders. Perhaps that’s why I love Russian literature so much: it not only grapples with the gravity of the human experience but also comments on the universality of human nature—the hallmark of a great literary work." I disagree a bit with the concept that White Nights and Dostoyevsky get to the 'universality' of human nature. Having traveled to Russia and having gotten to know well the Russian 'spirit', as well as from films such as Dr. Zhivago, I think the Russian 'soul' or psyche is 'sad' whereas here in the West, especially America, we view life not as a burden but as a wonderful gift. So I would say that human nature in Russia is dramatically different than here in America. I speculate that literally hundreds of years of some form of tyranny in Russia, the Tsars before the communists, has left Russians with a sadder view of human existence than we enjoy.
Russian literature have similarities with us Asians. We value the transience of life, the happy part, the sad part while dealing with our psychology. As for the west, I don't think they just see the "happy part" or gift of life, they also look up at the sad part of life. Russian literature also values life not just the west. So I agree with P&P that it's a universal thing because we are all humans.
I can see that a lot of work went into this post (which is great, thank you), but the conclusion is, in my opinion, disastrous. It’s demotivating and also not true.
I agree that there is no such thing as the perfect translation. It’s simply not possible to translate everything word for word as Dostoevsky intended, because the structures of English and Russian are different. I’m a native Russian speaker, and I recently reread Crime and Punishment in English (the Katz translation) for my blog. It was a great translation, but very few things were lost not because of a bad translation but just because of the language differences. A translator can’t invent words that don’t exist, so in a way they create their own piece of art through translation. And as a native Russian speaker, I can promise you that it doesn’t affect your reading experience nearly as much as Lisa wants you to think.
And if you are not a Russian literature scholar, a linguist, or a language enthusiast, if you are just a CASUAL reader, then ANY translation will work for you. There is no need to learn Russian unless you genuinely want to. The plot and the ideas will not be lost in translation.
My own advice is tho to check the first few pages available online in different translations and choose the one that feels most suitable for your (!!!) taste.
Moreover, even if you learn Russian to a C1–C2 level, you still won’t read Dostoevsky as easily as Lisa suggests.
First of all, the language Dostoevsky uses is 19th-century Russian, and many expressions from that time are outdated and no longer used in modern Russian. So even if you speak Russian, you will still need to sit with a dictionary and Google to look up things you’ve never heard of (каторга, серебряник, целковый, шинель, доходный дом etc). Not all Russian speakers know the meaning of some words because they are no longer used!
Second, Dostoevsky is not only about language but also about political and social context. If you don’t understand who the nihilists were and why Russian youth in the 1860s became radicalized, then Crime and Punishment will be harder to fully understand (and again, it has nothing to do with translation!)
To sum up, please read Russian literature without obsessing over “the best” translation, and don’t give up on Russian literature just because you don’t speak Russian. Спасибо!
Thank you for writing your sensible response. This piece reminds me of Gary Saul Morson’s overwrought objections to P&V, “The Pevearsion of Russian Literature.” They got popular (perhaps more so than deserved) and sold tons of books—and that seems to have upset some people. You don’t have to prefer them, but claiming that their translation quirks ruin the experience of reading Dostoevsky seems a bit much. The force of Dostoevsky’s genius has always managed to come through, no matter what translation I’m reading.
Love P&P, but on this topic, I'll have to respectfully offer an opposing opinion.
I love the P&V experience. I don't care for the Garnett experience.
I know bashing P&V is the fashion these days, but this Russian Translation Discourse™ reminds me of NIV -- or even KJV! -- readers bashing the Message Bible back in the early 2000s. I don't think it's controversial to say that different translations appeal to different personalities. In my case, I find Garnett's translations a total slog. I find P&V thrilling.
I'll never learn Russian to the level where I could read the original... but I do feel confident saying that the spirit of Dostoevsky must surely be thrilling and breathless and revelatory and even a little choppy. I get that experience in P&V. Garnett, to me, is clean and sophisticated -- but boring.
So if the goal is to get more people into Dostoevsky, and if P&V are doing so in a way that brings something of the original experience to a certain section of receptive readers, aren't they -- and anyone else who tries to bring the spirit of FD to different reader-personalities -- allies?
Also -- just like with Bible translations -- if translating is treachery, then the best answer is, 'Por q no los dos?' Mixing & matching translations is a better route to a full experience than holding one up as superior above all the rest.
To quote Brodsky, “The reason English-speaking readers can barely tell the difference between Tolstoy and Dostoevsky is that they aren’t reading the prose of either one. They’re reading Constance Garnett.”
Interesting analysis, Liza. I looked at eight translations of Crime and Punishment for my project last year and ended up building a rather large Google Sheet of examples from each chapter. A labour of love!
https://camscampbellreads.substack.com/p/translations-in-this-project
I read Crime and Punishment in English in high school, and to be honest I don’t remember who the translator was. Then, years later, I found a German translation at a used bookstore. I thought to myself if I’m gonna read a translation anyway I might as well practice my German, right? I feel like I got way more out of it the second time—partly because I was older I’m sure, but also partly because I was forced to slow down. My Russian language knowledge is pretty limited (2 years in college 10 years ago) but I think German and Russian are more similar in the amount of clauses you can reasonably stuff into a sentence. The translator was Benita Girgensohn. The name doesn’t mean anything to me; do you have any knowledge?
See my post below
I read the Pavear-Volokhonsky translation of the Master and Margharita by Mikhail Bulgakov and enjoyed it tremendously. I feel like they brought a number of readers to the literature and that is a good thing.
P&V is good for their religious terminology and liturgical language, but in leading a book club on Brothers Karamazov their choppy clauses have gotten a bit tiresome this time around. Oddly enough, it never bothered me in reading, but once I started typing out quotations from their edition, I’ve just about wore out the comma in my keyboard!
I'll read Garnett until your translations are complete. Trying to learn new language is hard enough. Trying to learn a new new alphabet is more than I can conceive.
God bless you. I have been on a crusade to talk everyone out of
reading P&V’s slop.
Any thoughts on Ignat Avsey (his translation of Karamazov for example)?
Thoughts on the Katz translation, specifically "Brothers Karamazov"?
I recently compared how different translators dealt with Anna Karenina jumping under the train. There were some pretty wild differences.
The word choice of the original author does not encompass all the concepts in the word's semantic field. To believe it does is a fallacy (common in biblical exegesis) that leads a translator into a fruitless search for a comparable word in the target language that has, miraculously, the same web of cognates and conceptual links.
Thank you for this valuable information! Dostoyevsky is one of my favorite authors, and it's good to know which translations do what before I buy them!
I tip my hat to the detailed excellence of your analysis. "So while English readers walk away from White Nights with the image of bliss, Russian readers walk away with the weight of humanity’s foibles on their shoulders. Perhaps that’s why I love Russian literature so much: it not only grapples with the gravity of the human experience but also comments on the universality of human nature—the hallmark of a great literary work." I disagree a bit with the concept that White Nights and Dostoyevsky get to the 'universality' of human nature. Having traveled to Russia and having gotten to know well the Russian 'spirit', as well as from films such as Dr. Zhivago, I think the Russian 'soul' or psyche is 'sad' whereas here in the West, especially America, we view life not as a burden but as a wonderful gift. So I would say that human nature in Russia is dramatically different than here in America. I speculate that literally hundreds of years of some form of tyranny in Russia, the Tsars before the communists, has left Russians with a sadder view of human existence than we enjoy.
Russian literature have similarities with us Asians. We value the transience of life, the happy part, the sad part while dealing with our psychology. As for the west, I don't think they just see the "happy part" or gift of life, they also look up at the sad part of life. Russian literature also values life not just the west. So I agree with P&P that it's a universal thing because we are all humans.
I'm never playing my adaptation of Скажи ещё спасибо, что живой in front of you. ♥️