P&V

Like all new translation fads they marketed themselves by denigrating previous established translations particularly Garnett.
And now according to 12 year olds not falling in line with them is "contrarian."

The complain I have heard is that it is too accurate to the Russian, or rather that it sacrifices quality in English in order to have slavish accuracy to the original; e.g., the style in the original if copied woodenly may end up reading poorly in the target language. I don't know if this true or not as I do not know Russian.

Cuck pseud

this isn't my response. I see where you're coming from but I disagree

With any translation it's going to have to be an inferior or different version of the original text. I can't read or speak Russian but with Dosto it seems like it's the only way to get the proper experience

Russian student here. I haven't compared all of the translations out there, but P&V don't fuck around with paraphrasing. What Dostoevsky wrote is what comes out in translation, and the same cannot be said for Garnett. They are all pretty fine, but listen: Russians are not reading Dostoevsky because he is so fucking poetic. Good writing translates well (see: Nabokov), and Dostoevsky is just not a master aestheticist. Which is fine. I prefer P&V because I trust their faithfulness to the words that Dostoevsky put down, and as Dostoevsky is not known for flowy poetic prose, the reader is better off without a translator's false floridity.

>slavish accuracy
10/10 pun, will repeat more than once

P&v literally translates things word for word. Aside from it making the phrasing sound weirdly worded, since Russians obviously talk differently than English speakers, sometimes there are words that mean something else than what their common every day usage means in English. For example the words "strain" and "care" are used reatedly throughout the p&v translation of Brothers Karamazov, and I had to ask people here what strain meant.

So on the one hand, you have a direct word for word translation. The other translations reword and restructure sentences to make them sound more normal to English speakers.

I reazd p&v for both Crime and Punishment and Brothers Karamazov. It's very readable, but it took me about half the books to get used to it each time. And the philosophy chapters are hard to understand. I just ordered the McDuff translation of Demons and I will see how I like it.

There's not a problem with P&V that isn't inherent to reading translations in general. I read both the original Russian and P&V, and I can tell you that P&V is a fine translation.

I will for the sake of example create a purely fictional example. Let's say that the original text of X, says (word for word) "He went there to the room there." Maybe something like that is idiomatic in the original language. But you can't put that into English without changing it, or it sounds ridiculous.

Actual autism.

How's the "new translation"?

is Oliver Ready a meme, Veeky Forums?

You're a meme.

I've heard good things about Monas actually

P&V is clunky as fuck to read. They might as well be using google translate

P&V is the only legit translation. Everyman's Library uses it.

Oliver Ready is excellent. I've read a bit of Dostoevsky from other translators, and never found him as fluid and readable as in Ready's C&P.

McDuff > Garnett (rev) > P&V > Garnett

I've read it after comparing passages to PV and Garnett. I preferred Monas.

This should include Coulson's translation, which is often hailed as the best, and Ready's which is the newest

That's basically how they translate. Volokhonsky does an extremely literal Russian translation, then Pevear cleans it up a tiny bit. He doesn't know Russian well, so his ability to interpret and convey meaning for us is severely limited.

The end result is you get a Google Translated version of Russian.

P&V is a real life meme. They aren't very good translators, but they are very good at marketing themselves and insulting other translators. Most of the people praising them have no idea what would make a good translation anyways because they're just book critics and mostly read NYT bestsellers.

P&V have enormous momentum. If their next translation came out and was utter and complete garbage, it would still be hailed as a hit because the people buying and praising don't know what a good translation would be, they've never read the material before, they don't speak Russian, and they're just buying the Next Big Thing in Russian translation.

>All these pseuds bitching about P&V
wew choke on my dick cucks

Go home Richard.

>the only translations I've ever seen at my book store are P&V
>Have read C&P, Notes and BK all in P&V now

Have I ruined Dostoevsky for myself? I mean I got through all the books without a whole lot of issue but at times I felt like the writing was stilted and it was easy to get lost when getting through the more conversational/philosophical parts

just reread them in different translations like most people do anyways

Re-read at least one in a different translation.

I sought different translations for each of the 3 you mentioned.

Coulson's C&P is basically Garnett's, except that Coulson's has two or three awkward sentences in it.

Who here team #McDuff?

P&V doesn't bother me and I could follow the text pretty easily, but I see how a native english speaker would be annoyed by it.

t. slav

I read all my Dosto translated by Garnett, which I liked. I read M&M translated by P&V and I liked that too. Am I a pseud.

>2016
>reading foreign literature in translation
Also Russian novels are a meme.

Yeah, I was just going to say that in some ways people who know Russian (and especially people who -are- Russian) aren't the best-placed to judge overly-literal translations- because they're actually used to the way the language works and can picture the original.

Im currently reading the P&V version of Crime and Punishment the first time. I picked it up because someone said it preserves the "black wit" of Dostoevsky's writing. while I assume this is marketing gibberish Im curious what someone who has read multiple translations thinks.

>McDuff > Garnett (rev) > P&V > Garnett

I thought McDuff (Karamazov) suffered at times from the same awkwardness that P&V does. I would definitely put revised Garnett above him.
What I wonder at is that nobody in this thread has mentioned Ignat Avsey yet. He devoted his translation efforts to Dostoyevsky exclusively and wasn't beholden to the letter in bringing out the spirit.
(Speaking of which, Andrew MacAndrew's translation of Karamazov is loose but excellent as well.)

Reading Avsey's The Idiot right now. His prose is borderline flawless and he maintains Dostoyevsky's message well but holy shit is it British.
Planning on reading MacAndrew's Bros K. I don't think I want to read Avsey's bros K if I'm honest. I get tired of his regional dialect

socl-puppeteer?

why do you say that about Figes?

See
theguardian.com/books/2010/apr/23/historian-orlando-figes-amazon-reviews-rivals
Shit's hilarious. My favourite part is
>When challenged about the reviews, Figes's lawyer initially denied Figes was the author and threatened legal action. In a later statement, Figes blamed them on his wife, the barrister Stephanie Palmer.

Dafuq how do people think they won't get called on this shit

Copied from some blog talking about TBK comparing P&V to Avsey

The unfinished couplet is about a soldier. The original Russian doesn’t give a translator much to go on: Google Translate renders it “Soldiers will pack carry / And I for him . . . ”

P & V make a decent attempt, managing to work in a mild profanity:

The soldier boy will pack his kit
And drag me with him through . . .

But we must concede the superiority of the Avsey version, which, unlike P & V’s, makes me laugh:

The soldier will march to seek his luck
And leave me dying for a . . .

This couplet serves as a good quick test for Karamazov. It's in Part Three, Book VIII, Chapter 8 'Delirium.'.

>P & V make a decent attempt
>The soldier boy will pack his kit
>And drag me with him through . . .
That's awful though; it doesn't even scan.

But we must concede the superiority of the Avsey version
>The soldier will march to seek his luck
>And leave me dying for a . . .
That's better,
HOWEVER
>superiority
Look in wonder upon one Andrew MacAndrew:
>Soldier will be rough and blunt
>Always chasing after --------.

MacAndrew is perhaps a bit funnier because it delivers the joke quicker but it strays farthest from the original. I think Avsey is the perfect middle ground.

As for prof. Pervert and his mail order bride, I don't even understand which profanity that "kit" is supposed to suggest: Bit? Shit? Dick?...

Yeah. Avsey really remakes the books into a truly English novel. I have all his Dosto translations. Dude is an excellent translator. I've read Dosto's short stories translated by magashark and they were still decent.

Don't be obtuse.

Funny, last time I checked Veeky Forums a few years ago every single thread on Russian lit recommended the P&V translations as a matter of course. I think they're bad because they're less enjoyable to read than nearly all other translations. I have no idea how 'true to the original' any of them are because I don't read Russian.

I have read virtually every Russian golden-age classic though, and I only like the P&V translation of Crime and Punishment.

Thanks for the response. I own the p&v c&p so I'll read it. It might be clunky but whatever

McDuff didn't translate Demons. There must be a mistake.

Macandrew sorry

I'm sorry, call me an idiot but I can't figure it out. Is it dick? Because it doesn't rhyme. Lowly ESL here.

Can some Russian or other give us a 100% literal translation of the original?

Not that user, but it has to be 'drag me with him through the shit'. 'Dick' would only half-rhyme and make no sense without making the line much longer ('drag me with him through a hedge with his dick'?)

...asking because each one has a very different meaning. I'd guess P+V's would be the most true to the original, but it seems odd for the 'unprintable' bawdy rhyme to not be something sexual.

It is 'shit' (ha), but without the article. P&V (presumably) would've included it if they'd thought of it, especially since it would actually make the couplet flow, which they failed to do. Also, using the article in this context would have what's called an anaphoric force, referring back to previously-established shit (which is not the case)

P&V (and McDuff) are actually closer to the literal meaning than are, say, MacAndrew and Avsey, since the original isn't sexual in nature. I don't think this is necessarily a point in the formers' favor though. For one, P&V did such a poor job coming up with something that flows like a couplet would. Also, it actually kind of seems here like McDuff was following P&V's example here. It's something that made me question his work. I hope it's just that he was overly literal in his work, as were P&V, and not an instance of copying or following them.

Interesting. So the original is something like

>The soldier boy will pack his kit
>And drag me with him through

? It's interesting because the meanings of the 'translations' are so different: P+V's is about the soldier taking the woman with him, Avsey's is about him leaving her behind, and MacAndrew's doesn't mention him going anywhere.

Ok, so what does the Russian actually say? I think it's important because it might show a lot about each translator's philosophy.

I mention Avsey in every fucking P&V thread.