Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky Translations no Good?

[Clopin]

I read a lot of Russian novels and stories, mostly dating from the nineteenth century and many of these are advertized as being translated by Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky. Jackets speak of the glowing reviews these two elicit with their supposedly masterful translations (of course I've never seen a jacket speak ill of a translation), and the breadth of their work seems to secure them against any criticism.

That said I've begun to wonder. I picked up an edition of stories by Gogol recently, the penguin classics edition of 'The Inspector General, Diary of a Madman and Other Tales' translated by Ronald Wilks; it read very well and I found the stories to be hilarious and very well timed. Now a few days ago I purchased a hardcover edition of Gogols short stories in the everyman classics library translated by this Pevear and Volokhinsky duo and they just... fell flat. The first few stories I had never read before were almost a struggle to get through, and when I reached the stories I had read very recently I checked the differences in translation and found them to be simply... not funny, nothing of the buffoonery or humour that I had identified with Gogol seemed to remain, everything was stated in some flat monotone and even the words used were less funny.

I don't have the copies handy or else I would provide specifics but I was wondering if anyone else had noticed this as to Pevear and Volokhonksy translations? I see a lot of very positive reviews of their work but I also see some striking criticism which seems to pretty well collaborate with my own interpretation so far.

[Clopin]

I found some articles about the duo as well which lead me to believe I'm right not to regard them very highly.

http://www.firstthings.com/blogs/helen-rittelmeyer/2013/01/01/the-pevearvolokhonsky-hype-machine-and-how-it-could-have-been-stopped-or-at-least-slowed-down/

http://www.scribd.com/doc/40906160/The-Pevearsion-of-Russian-Literature

[KingNikolai1]

It depends on each work. Their translations are highly regarded for their faithfulness, if you read Constance Garnett's translations she makes the style of Tolstoy and Dostoevsky similar. Pevear and Volokhonsky were among the few translators that evoked some semblance of the authors' styles. Yes, they can sound a bit obscure or clunky at times, but I enjoy them. In my courses, the professors normally use the P & V translations because of their accuracy and faithfulness, as opposed to the omissions and Victorianizing by Garnett. Not all of their translations are the best, but in general they come out on top. For instance my Gogol course next semester uses their translation of his Collected Tales and a different translation for Dead Souls. The head of the Slavic Department at my university is an international scholar of Chekhov, he uses their translations and has met the couple. They are good for studying Russian literature in English, but they don't always flow nicely.

[SilvanDitties]

Just read what sounds best to you, the more well-received translation be damned.

[MorpheusSandman]

The biggest problem selecting between translations is that when one is not a native speaker of the language being translated they really have no idea how "faithful" VS "liberal" any translation is, how close it gets to the literal meanings or the implied meanings or the style. P/V are mostly praised for their literalness, for not taking liberties with the text like a Garnett that supposedly made Russian novels read like Victorian English novels (I don't know that to be true, not having read her translations, but that's what's often said). However, it's a well-known and often very true saying of translations that faithful translations aren't beautiful and beautiful translations aren't faithful. There are always unbridgeable gaps between languages and something must always be lost. My feeling reading P/V is that they're at their best when literal meaning is at the forefront and one isn't reading for poetic beauty, humor, or subtext. They seem to render narrative and dialogue quite accurately, if occasionally clunkily. I tend to find their "sins" more palatable than those that make 19th Century Russians sound like 21st Century Americans (or Brits, whatever the case may be).

[Clopin]

But surely if the text flows well, and is amusing to read in Russian then an English translation which is stilted and plodding could be considered to be equally unfaithful to the original despite adhering more rigorously to similarities in the actual words used.

[KingNikolai1]

Tell that to Vladimir Nabokov who made a world-renowned translation of Eugene Onegin. Pushkin's 'novel-in-verse,' pretty much a poem, became pure prose after Nabokov meticulously completed his translation. Poetry translations are probably the best example, one can stay faithful to the flow, mood, and atmosphere or to the text and content. Take the Odyssey, from extreme to extreme you have: Pope to Fagles, Chapman or Fitzgerald to Lattimore, then the prose from Butcher and Lang to a Loeb version.

[MorpheusSandman]

Clopin, that's precisely what I was trying to say, that translators are forced to choose between remaining faithful to the literal meanings of the original words, or faithful to things like rhythm, sub-text, their own idiom, etc. and it's rare that they can have it both ways. The question often becomes how much of one are you willing to sacrifice to render the other, and I don't think there's a one-size fits all answer. Sometimes I think the literal meaning is the most important element, while at other times maybe the subtext, rhythm, or idiom is more important. Unfortunately, translators don't know what element was most important at any given time to the author, so they simply have to make choices on what feels right to them. KingNikolai mentions some good examples of extremes in Homer.

There are other complexities to consider as well: is a translator supposed to render in their language what the original work sounded like to an audience in its own time, or what it sounds like to a modern audience? When we read classic works in English we experience them very differently than how the original audience did, partly because the language has changed but also partly because the aesthetics of the art-form (novels, but poetry especially) change. So, if a modern French translator was trying to translate, say, Dickens or Wordsworth, should he try to render them in modern, idiomatic French (making them sound to modern Frenchmen like they were written in modern France) or some form of classic French (making them sound to modern Frenchmen like they were written in 19th century France)? I tend to think that translators that make everything sound as if it was written by a modern author to be disingenuous, and it's why I dislike Fagles, because Homer and Virgil were not 20th Century American novelists/poets.

[Vota]

I recently read Dostoyevsky's Notes From Underground and Crime and Punishment. The former was the Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky and I enjoyed it a lot. The latter was the Constance Garnett translation which I also enjoyed. I feel like it was easier for me to really inhabit Notes because of the more current feeling language, possibly, but then again I felt some of the dialogue was extremely sharp with Garnett. I will probably read both again and I might try different translations, but I already enjoyed them and feel like I understood the stories and ideas pretty well, so both translations served their purpose imo.

I do keep an eye on which translations are considered tops, but I tend to do comparisons myself unless there are limited translations or one clearly stands out.

[kiki1982]

Without knowing Russian enough to read it or knowing any of the writers, you should bear in mind that Russian humour is more anecdotal than witty in itself. So maybe Volkhonsky rendered it as it was, not as an English speaking mind perceives it should be. Maybe it takes some time to get used to. On the other hand, it's no excuse to write a text that grates. You can always find a solution to a translation problem if you look long and hard enough.
The lieutenant Kige story for example is such an anecdote that grew out of proportion into one big joke: while copying some administrative document, a clerk in the ministry is not concentrating very well and misreads, doubling the letter at the end of a word and confusing it with the preposition that follows, thus inadvertently creating the character Kige who is apparently a lieutenant in the army. Because the mistake is only discovered later and no-one dares to admit it, they try and cover it up (as we would all do, I guess), but that means that this fictitious lieutenant Kige makes promotion at the emperor's good will. To an imperial Russian who is daily plagued by bureaucracy that's rather humorous: the idea you can create life with one simple document (I'm sure Kafka would have loved that too). Although that is satire, which we all know, it's usually such stories people tell to each other in pubs as opposed to jokes (I'm told).

As a(n aspiring literary) translator, I think you need to look at the merits of a work. Austen is known for her wit, then translate the wit, but it should still be English wit, even in say French. Don't translate it into French wit, because then you're writing a new book. And, yes, in that case you do have the issue that it may not instantly attract monocultural French readers, but people reading in foreign languages always have this problem all the time. No-one asks them whether it would not be better to update the work into their modern culture or whatever.
As to style, that's a tricky thing. But take Dickens, for example. His great merit is that he wrote like a journalist, not like a Hardy or Austen with a flowery style. It's quite down to earth, doesn't contain any difficult words, and reads easily, even if it's a bit dated (naturally). Then adopt a style in your own language that is also that way, don't make it any more lyrical than it is. If you were translating Richardson into French you would probably have to adopt a kind of more high-brow, precise and less melodramatic Dumas style: very lively and colourful and not so heavy as Hugo, Zola or Balzac. Maybe have a look at Dangerous Liaisons for some inspiration.