What does /lit/ think of the Garnett translation of Anna Karenina?

Quality.

>What's the difference.

>Reviewing the translations by Bartlett and Schwartz for The New York Times Book Review, Masha Gessen noted that each new translation of Anna Karenina ended up highlighting an aspect of Tolstoy's "variable voice" in the novel, and thus, "The Tolstoy of Garnett... is a monocled British gentleman who is simply incapable of taking his characters as seriously as they take themselves. Pevear and Volokhonsky... created a reasonable, calm storyteller who communicated in conversational American English. Rosamund Bartlett... creates an updated ironic-Brit version of Tolstoy. Marian Schwartz... has produced what is probably the least smooth-talking and most contradictory Tolstoy yet." Gessen found Schwartz's translation to be formally closer to the original Russian, but often weighed down with details as a result; Bartlett's translation, like Pevear and Volokhonsky's, was rendered in more idiomatic English and more readable.[15]

Having only read the Garnett translation, I'd say Garnett also approaches from a British ironic point of view, where the narrator is sympathetic to the characters and their experiences but still apart from them and able to critique and patronize. Bear in mind that anyone who posts in this thread has probably only read one version and is relying on hearsay to determine their views on texts they haven't read.

>>7620375
I'm only on book 3 of the CG translation but I completely see what you're saying with the British ironic voice.

>Bear in mind that anyone who posts in this thread has probably only read one version

Hopefully someone who's read two can contribute.

The Garnet translation was free on Amazon kindle. That was the deciding factor for me. I could see the bongness but didn't think it was overly monocle.