/lit/ - Literature

>>8502408
>>8502423
>>8502604
https://www.commentarymagazine.com/articles/the-pevearsion-of-russian-literature/

>>8443623
Personally I perpetuate it because, like I said, I read their M+M and a lot of it just felt horribly written.

But there's a more general critical article here:
https://www.commentarymagazine.com/articles/the-pevearsion-of-russian-literature/

They definitely also have defenders, though.

>>8401338
>Pevearsion
This calls for something equivalent for Volokhonsky.
Vulgarity maybe? I might run with that

>>8401238
I would go with Magarshack, or even Garnett, over P&V for this title. Generally one big criterion for me, for the reason detailed above >>8401179, is a simple litmus test whether the word in the first sentence is properly rendered as 'spiteful' or something similar.

>>8401235
I know, ever since someone did that the other day I can't think of him otherwise. The best I've thought up for Garnett is some riff on pic, but it lacks something. And of course we have 'Pevearsion' thanks to the following:
https://www.commentarymagazine.com/articles/the-pevearsion-of-russian-literature/

>>8401297
>you could just read this in Russian
>just
+1 though for the use of Greek here

>>8370095
Lol, fair enough. I read that Pevearsion article linked above and yeah, I'm convinced.

>>8368487
Read the "pevearsion" article linked above. It's actually kind of shocking.

Here are two relevant articles relating to the translation of C&P:
>https://www.commentarymagazine.com/articles/how-to-read-crime-and-punishment/
>https://www.commentarymagazine.com/articles/the-pevearsion-of-russian-literature/
>>8365477
>megashark

P&V sucks great big giant moist balls.

https://www.scribd.com/document/40906160/The-Pevearsion-of-Russian-Literature

>>8356510
Oprah Book club praised them you хyй.
What eminent critics.

It's a travesty.
https://www.scribd.com/document/40906160/The-Pevearsion-of-Russian-Literature

>>8356514
I leaved through several copies that belonged to some London slag that I porked.

>>7555348
https://www.commentarymagazine.com/articles/the-pevearsion-of-russian-literature/

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

http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2005/11/07/the-translation-wars

>>7543974
https://www.commentarymagazine.com/articles/the-pevearsion-of-russian-literature/

>>7422194
>constance garnett

Except if you do a "literal translation" of Dostoevsky you'll fuck it up, because Russian (or any other language) doesn't translate literally into English. Peaver and Volokhonsky are essentially bragging about her removing all the subtitles of the original Russian, and him guessing about what they should have been.

https://www.commentarymagazine.com/articles/the-pevearsion-of-russian-literature/

"Imagine someone translating Paradise Lost from English into Russian who had somehow missed that Milton was a Christian. There is something of that in the P&V version of Dostoevsky’s Notes from Underground. Its nameless narrator, the “underground man,” wants above all to discredit the deterministic credo that people are mere “piano keys” played upon by the laws of nature—that since we must always act according to our own perceived best interest, everything we do is in principle predictable and choice an illusion. In response, the underground man describes and performs acts that violate his best interest, either to disprove the prevailing theory or just because, just so, for no reason at all. His word for such acts of self-injury is, in English translations before P&V, “spite.” It is fair to say that to miss the concept of spite is to miss the work entire.

"But that is just what P&V do. Instead of “spite,” they give us “wickedness.” Now, the Russian word zloi can indeed mean “wicked.” But no one with the faintest idea of what this novella is about, with any knowledge of criticism from Dostoevsky’s day to ours, or with any grasp of Dostoevskian psychology, would imagine that the book’s point is that people are capable of wickedness."

P&V are a trend. Go with the classics.

>>7369124
>https://www.commentarymagazine.com/articles/the-pevearsion-of-russian-literature/

>Pevear and Volokhonsky, who are married, work in an unusual fashion. She, a native Russian speaker, renders each book into entirely literal English. He, who knows insufficient Russian, then works on the rendering with the intention of keeping the language as close to the original as possible. What results from this attempt at unprecedented fidelity is a word-for-word and syntax-for-syntax version that sacrifices tone and misconstrues overall sense.

>Imagine someone translating Paradise Lost from English into Russian who had somehow missed that Milton was a Christian. There is something of that in the P&V version of Dostoevsky’s Notes from Underground. Its nameless narrator, the “underground man,” wants above all to discredit the deterministic credo that people are mere “piano keys” played upon by the laws of nature—that since we must always act according to our own perceived best interest, everything we do is in principle predictable and choice an illusion. In response, the underground man describes and performs acts that violate his best interest, either to disprove the prevailing theory or just because, just so, for no reason at all. His word for such acts of self-injury is, in English translations before P&V, “spite.” It is fair to say that to miss the concept of spite is to miss the work entire.

But that is just what P&V do. Instead of “spite,” they give us “wickedness.” Now, the Russian word zloi can indeed mean “wicked.” But no one with the faintest idea of what this novella is about, with any knowledge of criticism from Dostoevsky’s day to ours, or with any grasp of Dostoevskian psychology, would imagine that the book’s point is that people are capable of wickedness.

https://www.commentarymagazine.com/article/the-pevearsion-of-russian-literature/

Anyone read this absolute burial of P&V?

more like Memear and Volokplebsky

>>6897194
I'm seeing a lot of mixed reviews for Pevear and Volokhonsky too. Someone showed me this article, it's worth a read

https://www.commentarymagazine.com/article/the-pevearsion-of-russian-literature/

https://www.commentarymagazine.com/article/the-pevearsion-of-russian-literature/

Any thoughts about this?

I can't decide which translation to go with, both P&V and Garnett get criticized a lot.

An anon posted this a while ago.
Any opinions about it?

https://www.commentarymagazine.com/article/the-pevearsion-of-russian-literature/

>>6764774
>The Pevear-Volokhonsky versions of Dostoevsky, Tolstoy, Gogol, Chekhov, and Bulgakov have earned rapturous reviews by James Wood in the New Yorker and Orlando Figes in the New York Review of Books, along with a PEN translation award. It looks as ifpeople will be reading P&V, as they have come to be called, for decades to come.

>This is a tragedy, because their translations take glorious works and reduce them to awkward and unsightly muddles. Professional writers have asked me to check the Russian texts because they could not believe any great author would have written what P&V produce. The danger their translations pose is this: if students and more-general readers choose P&V—and it is clearly the intent of their publishers here and in England that their editions become the universally accepted renditions into English for a generation or more—those students and readers are likely to presume that whatever made so many regard Russian literature with awe has gone stale with time or is lost to them.

>https://www.commentarymagazine.com/article/the-pevearsion-of-russian-literature/

>>6698602
>if it's in wide enough circulation it's probably decent

Except you're fully, 100% wrong. Popularity amongst translators is like movies, all about fame and advertising yourself. P&V are possibly the worst thing that has ever happened to Russian literature.

https://www.commentarymagazine.com/article/the-pevearsion-of-russian-literature/

>>6487995
>https://www.commentarymagazine.com/article/the-pevearsion-of-russian-literature/
I've heard a TON of shit talking regarding Garnett though, not sure if I want to gamble an experience like The Brothers Karamazov on that.

https://www.commentarymagazine.com/article/the-pevearsion-of-russian-literature/

There is no best choice.
http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2005/11/07/the-translation-wars
https://www.commentarymagazine.com/article/the-pevearsion-of-russian-literature/
Pick it yourself.

>>6438730
I think anon is referring to 'The Pevearsion of Russian Literature' by Morson:
https://www.commentarymagazine.com/article/the-pevearsion-of-russian-literature/

Opinions vary on the P&V translations.

This guys loves them: http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2005/11/07/the-translation-wars?printable=true

This guy hates them: https://www.commentarymagazine.com/article/the-pevearsion-of-russian-literature/

I believe Morson recommends the McDuff translation. I've read both, and I prefer P&V personally, but I didn't feel like I was missing out either way. I think on both sides of this debate things get a little to overblown.