A very curious review about translation of Russian classic novels from non-native point of view. A must read. Structures of languages are sometimes incompatible: English depends on word order, while inflected languages depend instead on word endings, with a more flexible arrangement of words that can’t quite be conveyed in English. This is especially a problem with poetry as well as with distinguished classic novels. As far as I know, Constance Garnett translated dozens of Russian works in the late 19th century and early 20th, and among them Tolstoy, Turgenev, Gogol, and Chekhov. It is said that she wrote very quickly and if she didn’t understand a paragraph, she skipped it and went on (I have absolutely no idea, whether its true or not). The fact that her translation of War and Peace was praised by Virginia Woolf, Joseph Conrad, and D. H. Lawrence said quite a lot.
Posted on: Mon, 08 Sep 2014 21:24:19 +0000
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