Is Garnett's translation really that bad?

[marakatsu]

I'm very particular when it comes to translation, but as it is, I am constrained by the necessicity of economy, and the cheapest translation of Anna available in my hometown is Garnett's. First of all, I hated her treatment of Dostoevsky. Her translation of The Brother's Karamazov is devoid of the primal, and intense quality, which I expected to find in a Dostoevsky book. I wonder if the same problem run through her translation of Anna

[Dori]

I wouldn't say so.

[pansoti]

My boyfriend bought me the Barnes and Noble edition of The Idiot, Anna Karenina, and War and Peace. They were all translated by Garnett, and they were all unreadable.

I only managed to gnaw through The Idiot, and 2/3 of War and Peace because I was in China for a month and had a lot of time on my hands. But when my boyfriend discussed the main theme of The Idiot with me, I realized I picked up on virtually nothing (he read the book in Russian). It wasn't until I found an old copy of Anna Karenina, translated by Malcolm Cowley, that I realized just what i was missing. Suddenly I understood why Tolstoy is one of the greatest novelist, if not the greatest. If it wasn't that it's like such a sin to burn books, I would burn the Garnett translations because I don't want to pass them along to anyone else and they certainly don't deserve a spot on my bookshelf. I plan on rereading The Idiot and War and Peace after I'm done with Anna Karenina.

[Homers_child]

Oh crap. I just finished with the Garnett version. I didn't think it was too terribly bad but I wouldn't know.