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View Full Version : Bros. Karamazov: Best translation?



enthusiast
01-04-2006, 02:52 AM
May I trouble some of you to recommend a high quality translation of the Bros. K.
Thanks for your time !
Very gratefully,
enthusiast

MikeK
01-06-2006, 06:00 AM
Not speaking Russian, I can hardly claim to be an expert in this area, but I'll give my opinion. I read the Peaver/Volokhonsky translation and thoroughly enjoyed it. I know that they won a translator's award for The Brothers Karamazov. The other major translation is the Constance Garnett translation. Victor Terras, a Russian-speaking Dostoevsky scholar has compared the two. He thinks that the Peaver/Volokhonsky translation is more accurate and scholarly while the Garnett translation remains more faithful to the "Victorian tone" of the original.

Whichever you read, you must pick up Victor Terras' "A Karamazov Companion". He provides page-by-page notes to help with ambiguities in translation, mistranslations, and social/cultural/literary references.

(And no, I'm not related to Terras and don't get any royalties by pushing his book.)