Preferred Translations

[five-trey]

I started reading a bit more world literature in the past 3 or 4 months and I'm curious as to everyone's preferred translations/translators for their favorite books/authors.


Dostoevsky: I've read two different translations of Fyodor Dostoevsky so far, and the Pevear/Volokhonsky series seems to be the most thorough. Dostoevsky's humor remains and that's something that stood out for me in the Pevear/Volokhonsky version. The other translation I read was David McDuff's.

[blazeofglory]

Translation distorts real literature.

[Mr Endon]

Translation distorts real literature.

Of course it does, but it's a necessary evil.

Plus, even 'real literature' is a distortion of a distortion. Perception distorts reality (or does it create it?), language distorts perception, the use of language in literature distorts whatever it was that we really wanted to express, and translation distorts literature.

To be fair, though, yours is the reason why I avoid reading in translation as much as I possibly can. I've decided to take on the French masters once my French is any good for it.

[Desolation]

Ralph Manheim(Céline), Walter Kaufmann(Nietzsche), and Pevear/Volokhonsky(Dostoevsky and Tolstoy) are my favorite translators, and from what I've read have provided definitive translations.

[kiki1982]

I try to avoid translation where I can, reading in Dutch, French, English and German, but Russian I haven't mastered... Apparently the language Dostoevsky and Tolstoy wrote in is so radically different, it would take a long time anyway.

So, is there apart from English, maybe a language that feels better for originally Russian? I ws thinking maybe German, because they also used to write elaborate sentences and their elite-culture was very much as decadent. If anyone knows... I can't see it in French.

I tried (or had to try) Dostoevsky once in Dutch (mother tongue) and that was absolute sh*t (sorry for the fans).

But, Desolation, you talked about humor in Dostoevsky? (You see, I did not find one thing of humour in that translation of Crime and Punishment, that's how bad that translation was). Can you tell me which passage should be funny and where I should look to see whether it is a good translation if I have look in another language. Don't worry about spoilers, I don't care about them, I usually read the end of a book before I am finished anyway...

[Barbarous]

I have read excellent Dostoevsky translations NOT by P/V, and I do not speak of Constance Garnett. Robert A. Maguire has done great work on his translation of both Petersburg by Bely and Demons by Dostoevsky.

Though Russian is never a tongue I could master, I plan on learning French (in the midst of it at the moment) and German, so I won't need translations for Baudelaire, Proust, Rilke, Goethe, etc...

[Drkshadow03]

Of course it does, but it's a necessary evil.


Pssh, real readers simply learn to speak the language of every book they want to read. ;)

[JBI]

Pssh, real readers simply learn to speak the language of every book they want to read. ;)

who knows - Harry Potter, for instance, reads far better in French. They say also, that Dostoevsky is far better in translation, but I wouldn't know. Of course though, the more removed the culture, probably the harder the translation is.

[islandclimber]

I read an interesting translation of TBK some years back, that was a modified Constance Garnett translation.. Her translations are terrible, but the guy who had revised it did quite a good job and I quite enjoyed it..

I've also heard Dostoevsky is quite improved by translation, at least into the english language..

but I don't mind reading translated prose, and basically unless you are exceptionally fluent in the language you have learned to read in, all you're doing is translating the work yourself in your mind, and quite possibly in a vastly inferior manner to the good translations that may be available :p haha

poetry is another story but we won't get into that, right?? ;)

[mayneverhave]

poetry is another story but we won't get into that, right?? ;)

Especially when one's trying to choose a Eugene Onegin translation :eek2:

[JBI]

Especially when one's trying to choose a Eugene Onegin translation :eek2:

Charles Johnson - I've read a half dozen translations, and that one is the best.

[Barbarous]

What of the Nabokov translation?

[islandclimber]

What of the Nabokov translation?

ohhh, not the Nabokov translation!!! it's so stiff and academic... and it's prose.. but I guess that was his point.. literal translation at the expense of all else...

and it did help every future translator of the work.. I would agree that Johnson's translation is probably the best of the bunch, although I quite like the new one that Stanley Mitchell did for Penguin Books last year...

but to be perfectly honest I prefer Tchaikovsky's opera most of all :D

[March Hare]

Speaking of Nabokov, didn't he translate Brothers Karamazov? Like many here, it seems, I am a Pevear/Volokhonsky fan but would be interested in VN's effort.

[Desolation]

But, Desolation, you talked about humor in Dostoevsky? (You see, I did not find one thing of humour in that translation of Crime and Punishment, that's how bad that translation was). Can you tell me which passage should be funny and where I should look to see whether it is a good translation if I have look in another language. Don't worry about spoilers, I don't care about them, I usually read the end of a book before I am finished anyway...
Well, I find Raskolnikov's eccentricities, rants, and outbursts hilarious, along with his conversations with Porfiry. The one that stands out most to me is the scene on pages 172-174, when Raskolnikov returns to the apartment and yells at the maintenance men, and demands to be taken to the police.

Humor is a highly subjective thing, though. I've heard many people say that Céline's works are very funny, particularly Journey to the End of the Night, but I don't often laugh when reading him.

[mayneverhave]

Speaking of Nabokov, didn't he translate Brothers Karamazov? Like many here, it seems, I am a Pevear/Volokhonsky fan but would be interested in VN's effort.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_works_by_Vladimir_Nabokov#Translations - does not list Dostoevsky's novel as one of his translations, but I can't verify that, though I'm sure I would have heard of a "Nabokov translation".

Speaking of Pevear/Volokhonsky, they also translated The Three Musketeers, which I find amusing.

[kiki1982]

@ Desolation:

I agree with that, what you fin funny I might not find funny, but at least I can now lookfor something that another might find funny. If it isvery boring indeed, then there is no point in anyone finding it so. That is how I perceives Crime and Punishment in a 70s Dutch translation. Just the first sentence makes you go to sleep.

Thank you for the advice.

[islandclimber]

like Mayneverhave said, Nabokov didn't translate TBK.. Although it might have been quite interesting if he had, considering his dislike for Dostoevsky.. ;)

[five-trey]

But, Desolation, you talked about humor in Dostoevsky? (You see, I did not find one thing of humour in that translation of Crime and Punishment, that's how bad that translation was). Can you tell me which passage should be funny and where I should look to see whether it is a good translation if I have look in another language. Don't worry about spoilers, I don't care about them, I usually read the end of a book before I am finished anyway...

The book I was actually referring to was The Brothers Karamazov. I thought the first 100 pages were just layered with tongue in cheek humor. One example is the opening description of Fyodor Pavlovich. The matter of fact tone with which Dostoevsky treats his buffoonery is just hilarious:

“…one can imagine what sort of father and mentor such a man would be. As a father he did precisely what was expected of him; that is, he totally and utterly abandoned his child by Adelaida Ivanovna, not out of malice towards him… but simply because he totally forgot about him.” [10]

I love the qualifier; "he didn't abandon him because he's a bad man... he just forgot he had a son." It gives me this sense of apocryphal sympathy for Fyodor Pavlovich that just further mocks him. The irony of Russian society expecting a father figure to fail in raising his kids is the kicker though.


“He told him straight off that he wanted to take responsibility for the child‘s upbringing… when he first began speaking about Mitya with Fyodor Pavlovich, the latter looked for a while as if he had no idea what child it was all about, and was even surprised… to learn that he had a little son somewhere in the house.” [11]

The image I get out of it is hilarious. I imagined Dmitri crawling around the house in plain sight while Fyodor Pavlovich is oblivious, carrying on his orgies and such. There's also the fact that Pyotr Alexandrovich came to TAKE Dmitri with this feeling of superiority, as if he was going to have trouble doing it, and Fyodor Pavlovich's dumbfounded reaction contrasts that so heavily.


Pyotr Alexandrovich at the Superior's dinner was also a funny scene. Dostoevsky is incredibly explicit with his sarcasm, calling him a "genuinely decent and delicate man." Then, he talks of Pyotr Alexandrovich feeling so compassionate that he resolves to stop "court action" against the church. Just when Dostoevsky's direct presentation ends, Pyotr Alexandrovich's calls the Father "your noble reverence;" a ridiculous thing to label a church figure in Orthodox Christianity.

[kiki1982]

That is very interesting, Desolation, because I find that funny too (the brothers Kharamazov). Can you tell me though where that socalled funny piece of Crime and Punishment is? In which chapter, I mean? Because I couldn't find it.

I have the impression that this translation is absolute sh*t.

Dostoevsky has now been redeemed. I think I'll have to read The Brothers Kharamazov some time, because it seems interesting. After I have finished, rated and found good Puschkin's shortstories which I am going to read when I am going to Poland in a week.

[five-trey]

I think you have me and Desolation confused. haha


Hmmm, as far as Crime and Punishment, I read David McDuff's translation. At this point, I think its subpar compared to the Pevear/Volokhonsky translations of The Idiot (which is also hilarious) and The Brothers Karamazov.

There was SOME humor in it though.

For example, in Porfiry Petrovich's interrogation of Raskolnikov, he talks of his superior "experience" and his age when he is described as being 35 years old. Then he tells Raskolnikov that he has failed to account for human nature, which will ultimately betray him; however, when Mikolka confesses and ruins Porfiry's plan, HE has failed to account for the unpredictability and contradictions of human nature.

I also thought Katerina Ivanovna forcing her emaciated children to sing and dance as street performers was hilarious. Black humor, I guess...

The dinner party for Marmeladov's death was supposed to be funny, but I really didn't get that impression.

[kiki1982]

haha.:lol:

That was this morning and I have been sick the whole night, so reading wasn't my best occupation, I guess.:eek2:

But anyway, thanks for the info.

[KryStaLitsa]

Pssh, real readers simply learn to speak the language of every book they want to read. ;)

thank you!!!that's exactly what i wanted to say!!!every book has its own language,every writer have their own "flavour"!! translations simply ruin that all!personally i prefer reading the exact words that pop into the writer's mind...they've got the power to release many secrets..!;)
anyway,i've read in both english and greek language the wuthering heights,romeo and juliet,the harry potter and twilight series and i realised that translations are just one big disappointment!!!:bawling:

[five-trey]

A translation can be a measure of a work's potential. If we can read Dostoevsky's Crime and Punishment in translation by various people (and most of the time, these translations sound nothing alike) and STILL agree that it's a great work of literature, that just attests to Dostoevsky's writing. The fact that it maintains that type of individual reception through a second mouth is incredible.


But of course, many will say all of that is rubbish.

[kiki1982]

I agree wth that, Five-trey, but some translators do make a shambles of it.

I don't know why, but I thnk it has to do with their perception.
My husband teaches English to professionals, and he once had a course with translators (English-another language, and sometimes the other way round). After the exam, there is nothing more to do so he shows them Kenneth Brannagh's adaptation of Much Ado About Nothing. After the play, which he had shown before to non-translators of a lower level and they found it fine and understood what had been hapening and what was funny and so on (so they understood enough to be able to find it good), his translators said they hadn't understood a thing. Yet their English wasn't bad, as they translated conventions and meetings in the European Parliament. Their English was much more elaborate than any student my husband had had before.

My husband said, regarding that, that translators work on a different level: they work word by word, they do not work (like people who read in a different language) senence by sentence, with feelings (it will probably mean that, because I feel it) and that kind of other stuff apart from words alone.

That is why I think, that some translators make a shambles of other people's works, because they have translated the words,but not the feelings behind them. Since I have read a lot of English and French (particularly Hugo) that I couldn't really understand word by word, I have realised that feelings matter a whole lot in understanding the atmosphere of a book/sentence/chapter. Even if a reader does not understand that particular word, he will understand its context and thus understand the particular word he does not know.

Now translators look up the words they don't know (if there are any), but they also use certain words, and why is that? Sometimes I have the impression that they translate, but do not take notice of the feeling or connotation behind that particular word and then get it wrong.

Saramago's work La Caverna (The Cave (?) in English) was tanslated into Dutch as Het Schijnbestaan. I think you could say that the title meant something like The Seeming-existence or so. But what the translator did not realise when she put the ridiculous title on it (whatever for, because here she did not work word by word), was that the original title The Cave (as that is what the word 'caverna' means in Portuguese) calls up references to the cave of Plato, and that is what the book was about. Why put another title on it that seems to convey the principle a little but not totally?

I can safely say if I read translations of Dumas, particularly Dutch, that I Just... Dumas seems awfully annoying. Very strange. Not to speak about the translation of Crime and Punishment I have. They just talk in such a strange manner... It might have something to do with Russian in itself, but then get around it, for God's sake, do not do it word by word. I dread to think what translators then make of things like Arabic,which is a very flowery language for the most ridiculous normal things...

But I tihnk it also depends on the language. There was someone on the forum here (if you recognise yourself, then tell us because I have forgotten who you are), that some books work better in the one language than in the other. So maybe Dutch is a lost case.

Sorry for my rant on translators... I have two friends who are translators so I can't really tell them what I think about people who they think are fantastic... :p

[Madame X]

Saramago's work La Caverna (The Cave (?) in English) was tanslated into Dutch as Het Schijnbestaan.

I guess she figured ‘de grot’ didn’t sound quite as impressive. :D

The subtle humor of W.F. Hermans also dilutes through translation even to such a linguistically proximate language as English. Perhaps it's a Germanic thing because I find that a lot of French works translate really well into English (admittedly a more French-laden tongue)...Hugo included.

[kiki1982]

I guess she figured ‘de grot’ didn’t sound quite as impressive. :D

The subtle humor of W.F. Hermans also dilutes through translation even to such a linguistically proximate language as English. Perhaps it's a Germanic thing because I find that a lot of French works translate really well into English (admittedly a more French-laden tongue)...Hugo included.

Ah, yes, that has occured to me too. Getting the right tone in Dutch is quite a difficult thing.

[islandclimber]

thank you!!!that's exactly what i wanted to say!!!every book has its own language,every writer have their own "flavour"!! translations simply ruin that all!personally i prefer reading the exact words that pop into the writer's mind...they've got the power to release many secrets..!;)
anyway,i've read in both english and greek language the wuthering heights,romeo and juliet,the harry potter and twilight series and i realised that translations are just one big disappointment!!!:bawling:

I think you missed the twinkle in drkshadow's eye when he said that... ;)

of course it is preferable to read a book in it's original language, but it is absurd to suggest translations completely ruin literature. If we were just to stick with classics, say in French, Russian, English, Spanish, German, Chinese, Italian, Ancient Greek, Latin... It's the rare person that has the time to learn these languages at all, let alone to the degree of fluency required for it to be preferable to read an original over a translation.. I would argue that knowing a language just well enough to read a book from it, you are just going to be translating yourself in your own head to your mother tongue and most likely doing a much poorer job than many of the translations out there.. now if you are quite fluent in the language then this is not so, but how many people have the time or the ability to become quite fluent in half a dozen languages or more? should those of us who are English pass over Dostoevsky, Tolstoy, Dante, Hugo, Hesse, Borges, Cervantes, etc. etc. just because we can't speak the language.. I think not.. There are many very good translations available, and I think that's a great thing, in fact the more works translated the better..

[promtbr]

I read A LOT of novels in translation. Some standout recommendations:

Spanish and Portuguese:
Gregory Rabassa (of 100 Years of Solitude fame)
Edith Grossman
Margaret Jull Costa
All of the above do amazing renderings of text

French:
Richard Howard
Grace Frick
Justin OBrien

German:
Ralph Mannheim
Sophie Wilkins

Russian:
I too am a Pevear/Volokhonsky fan...
I can NOT read Garnett

[kiki1982]

of course it is preferable to read a book in it's original language, but it is absurd to suggest translations completely ruin literature. If we were just to stick with classics, say in French, Russian, English, Spanish, German, Chinese, Italian, Ancient Greek, Latin... It's the rare person that has the time to learn these languages at all, let alone to the degree of fluency required for it to be preferable to read an original over a translation.. I would argue that knowing a language just well enough to read a book from it, you are just going to be translating yourself in your own head to your mother tongue and most likely doing a much poorer job than many of the translations out there.. now if you are quite fluent in the language then this is not so, but how many people have the time or the ability to become quite fluent in half a dozen languages or more? should those of us who are English pass over Dostoevsky, Tolstoy, Dante, Hugo, Hesse, Borges, Cervantes, etc. etc. just because we can't speak the language.. I think not.. There are many very good translations available, and I think that's a great thing, in fact the more works translated the better..

6 languages is nothing. It depends which ones you know well and which ones you have notions of.

I speak French and watched the tv-show SOS mi vida in Spanish (with subtitiles). In the end I could more or less understand what they were saying and what was missing in the subtitles (just below the period of a year: the whole series had 251 episodes and was broadcast every weekday), sometimes I used to watch it the next morning again. As a result, together with my French knowledge, I was able to do a test in the bookshop. I picked up a Spanish copy of Isabel Allende's Zorro and could read the first chapter without many problems. Cervantes requires a little more knowledge of the linguistic structure of Spanish, but that comes with practice.
I am pretty confident that I could read some Topolino (a Mickey Mouse magazine) in Italian if I did my best and scraped my knowledge of Italian together again.

It is like English: you start with easy things (modern, sometimes even comic strips) and you move on gradually going older until you can understand Shakespeare or Chaucer. Of course, if one wants to start with Austen/Shakespeare, it's not going to work. Too difficult. If one wants to start reading French with Hugo, I don't think it's going to prove a good beginning.

The art of reading in a foreign language is being able to understand the feeling in the word/sentence you are reading, it is not about understanding the word itself. As such, knowledge of another language can help you an awful lot to understand those words which have the same root or same linguistic look. Like that, you don't have to absolutely be able to learn every language you want to read.

Other than that, it takes practice. When I went to university for German, we had to read straight away medieval German. Severely different. It was already difficult to understand medieval things in my on language at that. But, slowly but surely, you get used to the way of saying things and you start to understand without thinking what the actual sentence means. That does not mean that one has to learn what every word in that sentence means, though. If that were the case, no-one would get through any of those works at all.

Other languages like Russian, though, require a little more study to get to grips with all the cases and things like that. But once you have mastered that, there is no reason why you wouldn't try a work of some sort, but do stay in the easy series. Children's literature, comics, and things like that.

[triplesick]

[...]the degree of fluency required for it to be preferable to read an original over a translation.. I would argue that knowing a language just well enough to read a book from it, you are just going to be translating yourself in your own head to your mother tongue and most likely doing a much poorer job than many of the translations out there

nail on the head:) The way I used to think about translation was that it was more like archeology than literature. Not being a native speaker of a language, any book written in that language is effectively a dead dinosaur. The translator's job is to present the facts, and provide some assistance in piecing them together when necessary, so that, at best, the reader might think, "I bet that was really beautiful in Russian," in the way we look and dinosaur bones and think, "I bet that was terrifying when it was alive." You can't go back in time, become a native speaker, and read the book properly in its native language. Learning the language as an adult, you won't be able to grasp the subtleties. Flaubert spent days searching for a perfect word, but your Spanish-English dictionary tells you "boat" is the same as "ship."

Then, among the comments in the NYtimes page linked below, David Bishop (THE David Bishop?) said something obscene but true, which is that you can get most of a book out of a good plot summary. How often does le mot juste effect our ultimate understanding of a work? I remember, from Anna Karenina, a beautiful simile: "the pulling of a tooth," as translated by Pevear/Volokhonsky. Though frankly, it could just has well have been "his own tooth being pulled" or something. Only people like Nabokov remember books in terms of their actual words; the rest of us remember images and situations and feelings and ideas. To the degree that a translation can communicate these latter four correctly, I would call it a good translation.

http://readingroom.blogs.nytimes.com/2007/11/01/defending-pevear-and-volokhonsky/

[islandclimber]

6 languages is nothing. It depends which ones you know well and which ones you have notions of.

I speak French and watched the tv-show SOS mi vida in Spanish (with subtitiles). In the end I could more or less understand what they were saying and what was missing in the subtitles (just below the period of a year: the whole series had 251 episodes and was broadcast every weekday), sometimes I used to watch it the next morning again. As a result, together with my French knowledge, I was able to do a test in the bookshop. I picked up a Spanish copy of Isabel Allende's Zorro and could read the first chapter without many problems. Cervantes requires a little more knowledge of the linguistic structure of Spanish, but that comes with practice.
I am pretty confident that I could read some Topolino (a Mickey Mouse magazine) in Italian if I did my best and scraped my knowledge of Italian together again.

It is like English: you start with easy things (modern, sometimes even comic strips) and you move on gradually going older until you can understand Shakespeare or Chaucer. Of course, if one wants to start with Austen/Shakespeare, it's not going to work. Too difficult. If one wants to start reading French with Hugo, I don't think it's going to prove a good beginning.

The art of reading in a foreign language is being able to understand the feeling in the word/sentence you are reading, it is not about understanding the word itself. As such, knowledge of another language can help you an awful lot to understand those words which have the same root or same linguistic look. Like that, you don't have to absolutely be able to learn every language you want to read.

Other than that, it takes practice. When I went to university for German, we had to read straight away medieval German. Severely different. It was already difficult to understand medieval things in my on language at that. But, slowly but surely, you get used to the way of saying things and you start to understand without thinking what the actual sentence means. That does not mean that one has to learn what every word in that sentence means, though. If that were the case, no-one would get through any of those works at all.

Other languages like Russian, though, require a little more study to get to grips with all the cases and things like that. But once you have mastered that, there is no reason why you wouldn't try a work of some sort, but do stay in the easy series. Children's literature, comics, and things like that.

but you miss my point..

I know Spanish passably so as to be able to read poetry in Spanish, but whether you like it or not, as a native english speaker, what you are doing is reading the spanish words, and translating into english in your head... unless of course you are so fluent in Spanish you basically know it as a first language as well..

poetry in translation is sketchy as literal translations are usually terrible, and loose translations, well they have other issues..

but prose, i would way rather read a good translation, then read it in the original with a mediocre grasp of the language... even if I didn't struggle to read it in the original, unless I am quite fluent, all I am doing is translating it in my head... that was the point of what I was saying.. and besides translators there are not many people who are really fluent in several languages.. lots of people know several languages passably, but not fluently...

and I cannot shut my mind off while I read, which would be the only way for me to read a text in language I know somewhat and not mind the fact I am translating it very poorly in my own head...

[islandclimber]

nail on the head:) The way I used to think about translation was that it was more like archeology than literature. Not being a native speaker of a language, any book written in that language is effectively a dead dinosaur. The translator's job is to present the facts, and provide some assistance in piecing them together when necessary, so that, at best, the reader might think, "I bet that was really beautiful in Russian," in the way we look and dinosaur bones and think, "I bet that was terrifying when it was alive." You can't go back in time, become a native speaker, and read the book properly in its native language. Learning the language as an adult, you won't be able to grasp the subtleties. Flaubert spent days searching for a perfect word, but your Spanish-English dictionary tells you "boat" is the same as "ship."

Then, among the comments in the NYtimes page linked below, David Bishop (THE David Bishop?) said something obscene but true, which is that you can get most of a book out of a good plot summary. How often does le mot juste effect our ultimate understanding of a work? I remember, from Anna Karenina, a beautiful simile: "the pulling of a tooth," as translated by Pevear/Volokhonsky. Though frankly, it could just has well have been "his own tooth being pulled" or something. Only people like Nabokov remember books in terms of their actual words; the rest of us remember images and situations and feelings and ideas. To the degree that a translation can communicate these latter four correctly, I would call it a good translation.

http://readingroom.blogs.nytimes.com/2007/11/01/defending-pevear-and-volokhonsky/

agreed :) although I do think a translation of a book can be beautiful as well...

and of course for the most part when reading we remember images, situations, feelings, ideas, meanings, etc... not the actual words, besides the occasional striking phrase, but I do not enjoy reading poor translations, regardless of what they can communicate.. if it turns the writing into rubbish, it is still a poor translation... a good translation for me, is one that not just communicates the ideas of a work, but communicates it in an aesthetically pleasing way... much as the original must have been hopefully :p

[kiki1982]

but you miss my point..

I know Spanish passably so as to be able to read poetry in Spanish, but whether you like it or not, as a native english speaker, what you are doing is reading the spanish words, and translating into english in your head... unless of course you are so fluent in Spanish you basically know it as a first language as well..

poetry in translation is sketchy as literal translations are usually terrible, and loose translations, well they have other issues..

but prose, i would way rather read a good translation, then read it in the original with a mediocre grasp of the language... even if I didn't struggle to read it in the original, unless I am quite fluent, all I am doing is translating it in my head... that was the point of what I was saying.. and besides translators there are not many people who are really fluent in several languages.. lots of people know several languages passably, but not fluently...

and I cannot shut my mind off while I read, which would be the only way for me to read a text in language I know somewhat and not mind the fact I am translating it very poorly in my own head...

That is not the point of reading in a foreign language. As you practice (which has nothing to do with being fluent, because how fluent does one have to be to read Asterix in French? A lot less fluent than for Tintin), gradually the stage of translating is gone and you understand as you read. That is not at all connected with how fluent you are (you will never get fluent anyway if you keep translating to yourself). If you cannot understand a book/article or poem in a foreign language there are too many words in it you don't know or sentence constructions you don't know, then you take something easier. But, if you never go more difficult anymore, you will never reach a higher level.

I had that with French. I had tried Hugo's Hunchback at 18, but having read 30 pages I had not understood a word. So I gave up. As I went to uni I did not touch a French book as I was studying Dutch and German, but after 5 years I decided to take up Dumas, which is a lot easier than Hugo at that. After another of his, I decided to be daunty and try Hugo again, and wonder o wonder I could read it reasonably. Now, Les Misérables is very long, and at the end I could see that my understanding had improved greatly. In the beginning I sometimes usd to lose his reasoning, at the end nearly never. So with The Hunchback it will go even better. And now I can do Hugo, I am confident I can do most.

English: I had watched a lot of tv (BBC) and some older comedy, so I had a great vocab, but I hadn't touched an English book for ages (about 7 years). So I decided to read Brontë 3 years ago. Not really a problem, but then I tried Hardy which was sometimes quite a lot more interesting and then came Austen. Now, that was interesting at first. But now I have mastered it, I have taken up Shakepeare which goes quite alright. I admit, I was fluent in English, but not in Austen's English, and certainly not in Shakespearian.

I recently decided to read German again in order to boost my vocabulary, rapidity and feel forthe language (how would they call/say that in German?). Hoffmann's Mademoiselle de Scudéri did not prove easy at first, but as I moved on it got easier and I reached the comprehension-without-thinking-stage again after 8 years of no practice.

If one cannot understand, one should certainly not translate, because preferably translators will do it better than the average layman. However, in the 19th century it was with translating that people learned languages! (Reading Goethe at a starting level, poor people) But it does not mean that one needs to be fluent in a language to be able to read in it, it only requires a little research once in a while. If one does encounter a word, one looks it up in a dictionary of the language itsef, not in a translating dictionary. Like that one will actually get the historic meaning of that word and the feeling with it if it has any connotation whatsoever.

Reading works two-ways: it brings you to a higher level and it uses your knowledge. If you do not have that knowledge you will acquire it. But every language is different, and some need more information to start in the first place than others.

There are people in the world who can read and understand better than speak or write... It has all to do with passive and active knowledge: it is not because you can understand the grammar construction and the words (passive) that you can also use them (active). The way in which Latin is taught, because it is a non-living language, is a good example.

But of course, if we are talking about classics as Cervantes, then you better do not tart with them. But that is not to say you will never be able to do him...

[Madame X]

I recently decided to read German again in order to boost my vocabulary, rapidity and feel forthe language (how would they call/say that in German?).

You mean ‘Sprachgefühl’?

Wikipedia agrees: Durch intensive und bewusste Beschäftigung mit der Sprache kann das Sprachgefühl aber auch in späteren Jahren modifiziert und intensiviert werden.

Basically, the more (and particularly the more methodically) you employ the target language, duh, the better you get at it even later in life. Deutsche gründlichkeit for ya. :D

[mal4mac]

I'm not sure I'm qualified enough to have "preferred translations", but one I have enjoyed recently is:

C & P by Dosteovsky, translated by Jessie Coulson (Oxford). In choosing this I read through the first few pages of as many translations as possible (inlucing P&V!) and found this the most readable. One thing I liked in particular was that Coulson was not afraid to bring added detail into the text for the sake of clarity, for instance on p.3 she mentions "Zimmerman's famous hat shop" whereas P&V just say "Zimmerman's" and expect you to know what it is, or look at notes to find out. I guess P&V are being literal here, which is is useful for scholars, but surely Coulson's approach is better for the general reader? Like P&V and Garnett, Coulson is highly rated by critics, e.g., Harold Bloom.

Any experts out there who have specific reasons for not liking Coulson, or my general approach to choosing translations?

[Annamariah]

As a translator-to-be I have to defend translations :D I've read books in English since I was twelve years old and I can read in Swedish too as long as the language and plot is not too complicated, but I do read a lot of translations as well. Some of them are poor, some of them excellent, most of them are somewhere in between.

About translating in your head, I understand what Kiki means about "comprehension without translation", though I still think that a certain level of translation still occurs, even if it's unconscious. Even though I can think in English and don't usually consciously translate things as I read them, I later often realise I'm thinking about the book I read and doing it in Finnish. Not just that I'm thinking about certain events in Finnish in a bigger scale, but I remember quotes from the book in Finnish even though I've read it in English.

I also sometimes do translate certain parts into Finnish in my head as I read, but that's not because I have problems understanding the original, it's more about the challenge of turning a beautiful sentence into an equally beautiful and fluent translation as well as possible. I'd call it training for the future :D

Reading books in foreign languages is a great way to learn languages and certainly each book is the most "real" in its original language. But still I do believe that unless you are completely bilingual, you only "get" the book completely in your mother tongue. If I like some book a lot, I often read both the original and the translation. That way I get to enjoy the pros of both versions and the cons don't matter that much ;)

[Tukkanen]

C&P (and Dostoevsky on the whole) to my mind is one of the most translatable ones. But what about Bulgakov or …mmm… Gogol, where the knowing of cultural and historical implication is necessarily? The ability to read in book’s native language is not enough. And in the case of Gogol it is not bad to know some words in Ukrainian. A good translator tends to convey atmosphere of a book. I am reading “The Picture of Dorian Gray” now as a part of my studying English and the book seems very boring to me although it is not I think. It is because I do not fully feel this language I think.

[kiki1982]

You mean ‘Sprachgefühl’?

Wikipedia agrees: Durch intensive und bewusste Beschäftigung mit der Sprache kann das Sprachgefühl aber auch in späteren Jahren modifiziert und intensiviert werden.

Basically, the more (and particularly the more methodically) you employ the target language, duh, the better you get at it even later in life. Deutsche gründlichkeit for ya. :D

That's it! After that year of German reading, it got quite amusing when there was something you didn't know the real word for in German, or a concept. So, then the question was not 'where is it in the reverse dicionary', but 'how the hell would people in Germany try to bring this into words', or 'how would this Dutch word be in German' and most of the time, it was even right too, or nearly! It is amazing how fast that Sprachgefühl can come along.

I do have to say that I nearly never remember quotes in my mothertongue. The idea, but not the exact words. But I guess it is because it could never be as funny, as to the point, as wide... as in my mothertongue.

Madame X will understand me if I say that I don't even want to remember 'It is a truth universally acknowledged that a man in possession of a good fortune must be in want of a wife.' It just does not work in Dutch.

[kiki1982]

C&P (and Dostoevsky on the whole) to my mind is one of the most translatable ones. But what about Bulgakov or …mmm… Gogol, where the knowing of cultural and historical implication is necessarily? The ability to read in book’s native language is not enough. And in the case of Gogol it is not bad to know some words in Ukrainian. A good translator tends to convey atmosphere of a book. I am reading “The Picture of Dorian Gray” now as a part of my studying English and the book seems very boring to me although it is not I think. It is because I do not fully feel this language I think.

That cultural thing was also what I wanted to get at so thank you for bringing it up.

Other than that, some people do find The Picture of Dorian Gray quite boring. I think Wilde's plays must have been better. I find he tends to use difficult words ('myriad', 'ensconce') just for the hack of it, but I think that is a late 19th century-early 20th century thing to be honest. Anyway, the book had been named in the worst classics-thread by few actually, so you needn't be worried. For its quite straightfoward plot I found it quite long and drawn out, too much detail, more like a play with instructions for the scenery and actors in prose than a true prose-work. But then it was Wilde's first and last prose-work, so we can't blame him for trying.

[islandclimber]

That cultural thing was also what I wanted to get at so thank you for bringing it up.

Other than that, some people do find The Picture of Dorian Gray quite boring. I think Wilde's plays must have been better. I find he tends to use difficult words ('myriad', 'ensconce') just for the hack of it, but I think that is a late 19th century-early 20th century thing to be honest. Anyway, the book had been named in the worst classics-thread by few actually, so you needn't be worried. For its quite straightfoward plot I found it quite long and drawn out, too much detail, more like a play with instructions for the scenery and actors in prose than a true prose-work. But then it was Wilde's first and last prose-work, so we can't blame him for trying.

difficult words??? 'myriad', 'ensconce'?? honestly, Wilde may have used difficult words if one is lacking in their grasp of the English language... But what one must think Joyce's "Ulysses" if thinking Wilde used difficult words is a scintillating thought... :p

but I wouldn't say 'Dorian Gray' is at all long and drawn out, in fact it is more of a novella than anything else, and in my opinion the size is quite appropriate... I actually prefer this work to most of his plays, and think it is quite a masterpiece of prose writing... Maybe it suffers when English isn't your first language though :p

[kiki1982]

I read a lot of English before The Picture, even 19th century things. f course English is not my mothertongue, so there is always a first time, but I do not think that I lack in my grasp of English at all. Other than that, those words are not really essential to the story so one will still get the book.

I find it too long because it dwells too much on certain things on which a prose author would not dwell. I think it would have been better as a play. But that is just a matter of my own opinion.

[Dark Lady]

Kiki, I think I know what you mean about Dorian Gray (and my native tongue is English). I did like the novel but having also read The Importance of Being Earnest and having spoken to a friend who has read a bit more Wilde than me I have a feeling he was in his element writing drama rather than prose.

Since the topic of this thread is translations I actually have a question that I didn't want to start a whole new thread for. Can anybody recommend a good English translation of Madame Bovary? I've been meaning to read it for a while but I want to appreciate it as much as possible without learning French first (I do want to learn French but I'd like to read the book in the near future).