Elaine
05-24-2005, 06:03 PM
I'd love to add my voice to that of Caroline who is so kind and so right in giving this amazing story justice! But being a native speaker and having read the original, I have some bad news: Mr. Hogarth, the translator, while doing an excellent, exemplary job of converting Dostoevsky's style to English, managed to get really loads of things very badly wrong. In fact, on average every 10th-15th sentence of his translation contains some grave misunderstanding. <br><br>For example, the following bit from Chapter 2, quote:<br>"Unfortunately, Thedora, who, with her sweeping and polishing, makes a perfect sanctuary of my room, is not over-pleased at the arrangement."<br>In the original, this sentence says that Thedora is _overjoyed_ about it -- nowhere near "unfortunately"! Little misreadings like this one are abundant and do spoil the experience a lot... :-((