Russian Lit bros P/V translations were intentionally created to destroy our genre

[Anonymous No.21332484]

Some of the finest and most readable classics in all of world literature belong to the Russians. Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky have an unprecedented monopoly on modern tralsnation efforts despite producing the worst, by far, translations of Russian literature. Most likely this has been done (((intentionally))) in order to denigrate Russian literature and turn people off reading greats such as Dostoyevsky, Tolstoy, Gogol, Pushkin, Chekhov, Lermontov, Turgenev, and others.

https://www.commentary.org/articles/gary-morson/the-pevearsion-of-russian-literature/

This article with example comparisons from multiple translations proves that if you get a P/V translation (and they are VERY hard to avoid, especially if you shop at a bookstore rather than online) you are cheating yourself out of the entire style and meaning of the book.

If you enjoy this genre please make sure you tell everyone else who might ever read a Russian book to never ever read one translated by these unbelievable hacks. Before I knew anything about translations I purchased a number of books by these clowns and robbed myself of sufficient enjoyment and understanding.

Discuss why they've been (((promoted))) so heavily and why anyone should respect critics who apparently have no discernment and probably didn't even read the translations they were reviewing.

[Anonymous No.21332501]

>>21332484
For me, it's constance garnett.
first translation i read for Dostoyevsky was her's

[Anonymous No.21332509]

>>21332484
Commentary is a conservative jewish magazine, so using an article critical of these translations written by (((le jews))) to prove (((le jews))) have an (((epic plot))) to promote them is retarded

[Anonymous No.21332516]

>>21332509
Whoever wrote the article is clearly not involved in the academic and critical takeover of P/V translations in the commercial market and even in universities, apparently.

Why don't you actually read the article and show me the P/V excerpts you preferred to other translators?

[Anonymous No.21332517]

>>21332501
Same.

[Anonymous No.21332523]

>>21332509
And its not just "critical" of the translations, it proves beyond any doubt that the translations, every single P/V translation ever marketed to everyone, is nothing but a worthless hackjob in comparison to the efforts that preceded them. What's your explanation for why they're so promoted? It's clearly to destroy the soul of the books. I wonder how many people who would have fallen in love with a great translation but instead got bored by this supposedly "best translation" and decided Russian literature (which is coincidentally deeply and powerfully Christian) wasn't for them? I promise you it's thousands and thousands of readers.

[Anonymous No.21332533]

>>21332516
>>21332523
Why are (((le jews))) providing a limited hangout of (((their epic plot))) in a (((jewish magazine)))? I'm mocking the conceit of (((your post))) not (((the article)))

[Anonymous No.21332538]

>>21332484
this is literally only a problem if you are an (((anglo)))

[Anonymous No.21332540]

>>21332533
Le Jews don't involve every single Jewish person anon.

[Anonymous No.21332547]

>>21332540
>>21332533
lol but having said that
https://www.commentary.org/john-podhoretz/the-enabling-of-jew-hatred/

The magazine itself is bad, but the contents of the article simply demonstrate why the translations are so poor. It's a good read for anyone who doesn't just want to take someone's word for it and instead actually see the comparisons. This has been done elsewhere too. What's important is people who would read Russian books don't read these translations.

[Anonymous No.21332575]

>>21332484
In the first example PV translation is atrocious. It's the first paragraph from Notes from the Underground. I've never read the book, but checked this passage in russian and can say that the Garnett version is very close.

PV reads like a Looney tunes script with these "well, sir" and "no, sir". Here they use passive voice
>I am not being treated
while the narrator explicitly states that it's his conscious deliberate decision. And what kind of black people dialect is this:
>"muck things up"
An attempt to sound cool and approachable to their target audience? The whole tone of narration is completely wrong.

That's why I usually compare translations of popular books (unpopular only have one). The cost of accidentally picking the wrong one is too high.

[Anonymous No.21332596]

>>21332575
>I know very well I can not "get even" with doctors
>I know I can't "muck things up" for them
It's not even close

[Anonymous No.21332631]

I've read them in Russian, and so have no idea about the various Eng translations, however you are clearly schizo and doubtless deserve your paranoid fate. The jews are the reason for your failures anon.

[Anonymous No.21332649]

>>21332631
This is a conversation about translations anon. I have no idea what you're talking about.

[Anonymous No.21332677]

>>21332575
Lol stop lying. You dont speak Russian or it is not your first language. I would not say I am an expert in English but the Pevear versions are definitely the closest to Dostoyevsky in his original Russian. Small terms like “muck things up” (which we dont have anything for in Russian really) donnot matter so much as capturing the cadence and subtlety of his work. Thats is almost completely missed by Garnett when I first tried reading the English version s of his work.

[Anonymous No.21332695]

>>21332677
Post a comparison between garnett and p/v that you believe shows the overwhelming superiority of the latter
>p/v shills will NEVER do this

[Anonymous No.21332702]

>>21332484
>Robbed myself of sufficient enjoyment and understanding

No you didnt you fucking retard. P&V are actually the closest to the original Russian. Reading by that >woman Garnett you almost completely miss Dostoy’s sense of humor. For example, tbe governor’s speech to the factory workers is hilarious kn the original Russian, hilarious in P&V, but stern and serious in Garnett.
Stop listening to faggoty (((journalists))) trying to defend their favorite (((translator))).

[Anonymous No.21332708]

>>21332702
I'm not listening to anyone, I'm reading the comparisons and the P/V excerpts are just horrific.
>>21332695
Do this please

[Anonymous No.21332728]

>>21332702
>(((Translator)))
Like this one?

[Anonymous No.21332736]

>>21332695
>>21332708
Lol take the word of actual Russian born speakers (who nearly unanimously agree P&V are the closest to original Russian) and not (((Gary Saul Morrison))). Larissa being born Russian makes the difference, Garnett did her best for the time but there was a reason Nabokov (another native Russian tongue) would do a whole lecture criticizing her.
Stop shitting on the most accepted thing tk be contrarian. Youre not fooling anyone into thinking you are smarter because you are dissident.

[Anonymous No.21332740]

Actual meaningful thread on /lit/?
I'm staggered.
Is Commentary generally a decent source for information.

[Anonymous No.21332749]

>>21332736
You missed the entire point of the article, which is that literal translation undoes all the stylistic flourishes of the original writing. Highly cultivated Russian novels should not read like autistics giving a speech in highschool when rendered into any other language.

[Anonymous No.21332750]

>>21332736
No I'll take the actual texts I can read and compare them.
https://www.firstthings.com/blogs/firstthoughts/2013/01/the-pevearvolokhonsky-hype-machine-and-how-it-could-have-been-stopped-or-at-least-slowed-down

Again, I ask you to provide a single comparison in which the p/v translation isn't clearly inferior.
>b-but muh recommendations
It's clearly a conspiracy to get people to hate reading these books

[Anonymous No.21332757]

>>21332740
No its extremely Jewish. But the article linked is good on this subject.

[Anonymous No.21332765]

>>21332757
>da Joos
You got any substantive criticism of the website?

[Anonymous No.21332769]

>>21332749
>the stylistic flourishes of the original writing
The stylistic flourishes of Constance Garnett. The author isnt eben fluent in Russian so what would he know about the ‘original Russian’

[Anonymous No.21332773]

>>21332765
jewish is a useful if tongue in cheek descriptor for a lot of contemporary bourgeois midwittery

[Anonymous No.21332775]

>>21332765
Yes, the editors and columnists are wrong about everything.

[Anonymous No.21332780]

>>21332769
The author of the article is fluent in Russian.

[Anonymous No.21332784]

>>21332750
It doesnt matter comparing the two, lmao. My point is how it stands against the lriginal Russian, whoch you cant read you fucking idiot. Why would i go through the time to post a passage in Russian and then two english version and give you a fucking grammar lesson om why P&V is superior when you are too fucking stupid to grasp even the basic comcept of why I am dling it?
>muh Garnett! More dissident! I-I prefer an English woman who learned Russian at 30 because intellectuals say she ks inferior! See how smart I am?

[Anonymous No.21332788]

>>21332780
>(((Gary Sol Morrison)))
Ah yes, I remember the Morrisonovich family from back in the motherland

[Anonymous No.21332794]

>>21332784
Your inability to type properly and your generally spastic behavior are making me think Garnett must be onto something.

[Anonymous No.21332801]

>>21332484
I started reading Garnett's and then went to Oliver Ready's because I thought the cover looked cool.
Pic related
Never read P/V but I've gotten mixed opinions about them. Some people love them, some hate them. I think they're recommended fairly often on the lit charts iirc

[Anonymous No.21332803]

>>21332784
Because everyone who doesn't speak Russian has to read these books in their language, the most common being English and how the books compare to each other in English matters regarding how enjoyable they are to read. Most people wouldn't recommend Nabokov's Onegin to someone they wanted to leave the reading with a love of the book.

I'm just asking you to post a comparison between two translations and explain why one is better than another for someone who has to read the book in translation. You refuse to do this because you know any comparison between a P/V translation and nearly anyone else (you guys are obsessed with denigrating Garnett but she's not the only translator) will show the deficiencies in the formers work. What they produce is bad, it's done on purpose, and it turns people off from books they would rightly, and reading a good translation, love.

[Anonymous No.21332805]

>>21332784
>classisicist intellectual who self-taught Russian and was intimately familiar with the realm of contemporary European novels
vs.
>some guy and his russian wife who both write like animate potatoes

[Anonymous No.21332808]

>>21332794
Garnett is very good. It makes P/V chuds seethe because her being flawed and outdated is the only ammo they have as if there aren't many other translations to pick from, all far superior to (((p/v)))

[Anonymous No.21332812]

>>21332805
>learned Russian at 30 years old in the 1930s from some jew (she was not self taught, which would make your case worse)
>Arguing that she is more superior to someone who was born in and has college education from Russia
Lmfao

[Anonymous No.21332816]

>>21332812
She produced superior translations. Pevear doesn't speak Russian at all and he is half the translation project, while his kike wife doesn't speak English.
>that makes sense

[Anonymous No.21332817]

>>21332808
Read the Nab lecture on Garnett from the 50s. Lmao, there was heaps of critique from native Russian speakers long before she was outdated.

[Anonymous No.21332819]

>>21332816
Larissa is fluent in English you fucking retard. Stop trying to be dissident

[Anonymous No.21332821]

>>21332801
People only love them because they read the book jackets praising them and because they have am almost total monopoly on the market for (((some reason))). Hint: that reason is to destroy the enthusiasm for Russian literature that could bring people greater intellectual and spiritual clarity because the morals of the books are at odds with the Jewconsensus of academics today.

[Anonymous No.21332827]

>>21332817
I'm sure every translation meets with fair criticism of native speakers. The fact is though that her translations are superior in style to p/v, and not just a little bit, and that she's the only translator p/v shills ever speak about because they can apparently make some sort of case against her. That doesn't make p/v good.
>>21332819
>stop trying to be dissident
I'm not trying to be anything. I sincerely wish the best translations possible were widely available and pushed on people so that more of them would come to love Russian literature like I do.

[Anonymous No.21332834]

>a dozen p/v shill posts later
>not a single textual comparison between translations which shows them to be superior
And there never will be lol
They refuse to even try

[Anonymous No.21332859]

>>21332834
>thinking comparing 2 English translations without the original Russian holds any merit
>being this much of a faggot

[Anonymous No.21332871]

>>21332859
We read the entire book in English anon. If it's a bad translation that matters. Surely with your not made up fluency in Russian and love of the genre you can easily compare two excerpts and explain exactly what makes p/v anything but absolutely terrible.

[Anonymous No.21332888]

ahh, nice to see a continuation of the other day's thread, i'm the guy who started the argument, desu, which has now become a comfort beyond measure.

don't forget, Pevear himself agrees thst constance garnett's translations are the best.

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=H2ykytca6Y8&t=3836s

for any doubters.

it is obvious from simply *reading* the texts that P&V have no consistency of prose. neither is themselves a writer of any merit. What sets CG apart is that she had a style, and vision. these alone are extremely helpful in giving character to a given text, which when translated literally, would be ineffably dry and jagged. Yes, there are flaws to her work, but with the knowledge that translation is inherently flawed, (ambiguity compounds with each degree of separation from the author's mind, beginning with the process of pen to paper itself), so ultimately the story itself must be known, and its intent, and its pacing, and its structure, before a loyalty to the *word itself* must even be considered. As a whole, one must peer at a work and let the words act as the mere symbols that they are, which is not accomplishable in the hunt and peck style that P&V use. they shuffle back and forth a pile of papers between two offices, one a man who knows passing russian, and one a woman who knows passing english, does not a whole translator make. Constance Garnett was a genius, one of the few female literary figures I am able to sincerely admire, and it's an absolute shame to see anyone attack her, or demean her absolutely vital contribution to the world of literature. Every novelist from Joyce to Gaddis adored her translations, and when you hear these russian authors referenced in history by the english speaking world, they refer to them through the filter of Constance Garnett. Nabokov, without a doubt, offered a legitimate criticism that her voice was one that glossed over the style of Tolstoy, but to be able to truly capture a vital style of an artist in his native language, *then accurately reproduce it in another* is tantamount to folly. those few percent of genius that linger in a style cannot be criticised into being, they simply must be witnessed by one who knows the language by heart, and reads the words in the original. Nabokov clearly had issues in this endeavor, (his onegin is widely panned), which illustrates the necessity for a sort of ambassador, someone to give us a palatable revision of the text, someone who understands the subtleties advanced by the author, and is able to render it in a style conducive to the process of reading itself, Constance Garnett is this creature.

I did notice my grim suggestion that P&V are propped up to knock down the glory of russian literature has been also taken up, and I am sad to say it's more likely than not, any chance to revise and taint and twist the tyrannical words of those old geniuses has been displayed across all aspects of literary academia, and is a blot of shame that stains this age.

[Anonymous No.21332889]

>>21332871
>being this much of a faggot

[Anonymous No.21332896]

>>21332819
>fluent in english
have you listened to the woman speak? obviously not, she's a babushka muffin in the stage i presented in that video, and at her age i doubt she's gotten any better. all the ugliest marks of ESL are clear, misinterpretation of questions, rants that are juvenile and off topic, and such an overt accent that it garbles every word. You are provably absolutely wrong in saying and believing this.

[Anonymous No.21332900]

>>21332888
Nice trips anon!
>I did notice my grim suggestion that P&V are propped up to knock down the glory of russian literature has been also taken up
I was immediately ashamed I hadn't recognized this as a likely possibility. You are very wise.

[Anonymous No.21332906]

>>21332889
Just post a single textual example and defend your view that p/v aren't awful, it won't be difficult for you to do and it's what this thread is about. And there can be an end to this horror.

[Anonymous No.21332947]

>>21332900
thank you, wise! hah, cynical, sure, but not wise, (yet, if i'm lucky)
i do hope i'm not correct about that, to be sure. i want to believe that it's simply greed, but something lurks in me that suggests otherwise. i had no idea that volokhonsky herself was jewish, a little surprising, it adds to the theory, doesn't it? it almost makes me laugh it's all so absurd. tearing down our giants, so that we may never see from their shoulders again. what a mad world this has become. I await the day sterilized safety machine learning models do all the 'translation' and inherently render all works to drossy phantoms of their former beauty.

[Anonymous No.21332961]

>>21332947
Not just Jewish but lived and studied in Israel! A lot of the big Russian classics are huge Christian epics too, but at the very least they present a morality that's totally opposed to the (((spirit of our age))). May we see better times in the future anon ^.^

[Anonymous No.21332995]

>>21332961
to be clear, i do not hate the jews, it's all too harsh to feel that way, no, their plight inspires only pathos in me, they have the one true god, to whom they do not listen, they have his only begotten son, and their hands are stained with his blood, no. i first and foremost forgive them, and after, pity. I think of the jewish people as the final test, if you can forgive and love even them, the most abominable sort of man, you can forgive and love all men.

[Anonymous No.21333006]

>>21332995
Well first they need to be stopped and revealed. Only after that happens can anyone think of forgiveness and pity.

People are so harmed by the medical industry for example, we have to get past this.

[Anonymous No.21333021]

>>21332736
>Lol take the word of actual Russian born speakers
Like this guy? Alright, I'll take their word.

[Anonymous No.21333040]

>>21333006
yes, i do find it philosophically difficult to forgive the unrepentant, but i often do all in my power to open their eyes.

as to the medical industry, there is a long legacy in the medicine stick, the most subversive face of the snake, Mercury's Caduceus, that famous symbol is a reiteration of the Nehushtan, (something flaubert put me onto), yes, i am rather suspicious of medicine, though it can be used to soothe great pain and help the blind to see, so it is very difficult to weigh that truth. Peace, love, and chicken grease, my friend.

[Anonymous No.21333116]

>>21332677
You sound like a pseud, triggered by someone mentioning they read a paragraph in russian. Insecurity issues?

[Anonymous No.21333120]

>>21332484
Who cares

[Anonymous No.21333128]

>>21333120
Russian literature seems to be the most popular on all of lit

[Anonymous No.21333179]

I don’t agree with the article. For one thing, I don’t think “spiteful” captures the humor. The Underground Man is a curmudgeon, and such a man might say i conversation he is a wicked man precisely because it reflects his personal pride in being disliked by them and their aversion to him, but spiteful is not humorous. If one says an old woman is spiteful versus wicked, well, you can see them the difference. As for swindler versus crooks, I think that has to do with the Russian word which here is repeated for emphasis as a four-letter expletive, swindler is more comical in English that is true but obviously if someone tells you these people are “crooks, crooks, crooks” it is more vehement than “swindlers, swindlers, swindlers,” which sounds less like an emotional outburst

[Anonymous No.21333190]

>>21332484
Reading that article, it seems like this couple is choosing less accurate words just to be different.

[Anonymous No.21333207]

jfc dostotrannies need to take their darn meds thats for sure

[Anonymous No.21333896]

bump