ITT: Best Translations (to English)

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consider the importance of a good translation, especially in a long work such as the brothers karamazov. constance garnett—for all the good she did—had terribly dry prose and sucked all the sensuality out of dostoyevsky. i thought her C&P and "fathers and sons" were serviceable, if not good. the popular translators for russians today are, of course, pevear and volokhonsky. i cribbed this blog to highlight the differences between 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

>I forgot to mention the bawdy song the innkeeper’s girls sing just before Dmitry’s arrest. It’s a good test for any translation, because one of the rhymes is left unfinished—the narrator breaks off halfway through the second line and simply says, “There followed a most unprintable rhyme.” Even P & V realize that a literal translation won’t do in this case. The English version has to imply how the verse would have ended , leaving the translator no choice but to decide what he thinks the missing text is, using context clues and his own intuition (mostly the latter).

>The song is about a series of men who come courting the singers, and their reasons for accepting or rejecting their advances. The gypsy, for example, is a no-go because “He’ll turn out to be a thief / And that, I’m sure, will bring me grief.” The businessman does better: “To the wealthy merchant I’ll be wed / And a queen I’ll lie, all day in bed.”

>The unfinished couplet is about a soldier. The original Russian doesn’t give a translator much to go on: Google Translate renders it “Soldiers will pack carry / And I for him . . . ”

>P & V make a decent attempt, managing to work in a mild profanity:

The soldier boy will pack his kit
And drag me with him through . . .

>But we must concede the superiority of the Avsey version, which, unlike P & V’s, makes me laugh:

The soldier will march to seek his luck
And leave me dying for a . . .

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for those anons deathly insecure over their lack of knowledge, a more in-depth guide to starting with the greeks.

>>10030608
Pope translation? Wtf

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>>10030620

Alternatively, for plebeians...