Is Stephen Pearl's 2006 translation of Oblomov worthwhile or should I go for an early translation?
>>7810190
Thank You
>>7810157
>translation
>>7810474
I don't speak Russian
>1915 – C. J. Hogarth’s translation is “clearly unsatisfactory… he greatly abridges the novel and even rewrites certain sentences to provide continuity…”
>1929 – Natalie Duddington’s “language” may be “old-fashioned,” but her translation is “quite accurate” and “influential on subsequent translators” (based on 1862 book version)
>1954 – David Magarshack’s “style, particularly in the dialogue, does not quite capture the richness of the original, and the rendering of metaphorical phrases is sometimes too literal” (based on 1859 serialized version)
>1963 – Ann Dunnigan’s translation “exhibits occasional flaws,” but she is “the most scrupulous of [Hogarth, Duddington, Magarshack, and Dunnigan] in following Goncharov’s paragraph structure, the liveliest in rendering his dialogue, and the most creative in finding English phrases that capture the flavor of the Russian,” and she consistently “combines fidelity to the original and naturalness in her English” (based on 1859 serialized version)
>2006 – Stephen Pearl “tends to rework the Russian more” than Schwartz will in 2008, “often coming up with phrases that make his version the more colloquial in English”; “at his best” he is “the most inspired,” and “many of his individual sentences are wonderfully idiomatic, though not every choice works equally well” (based on 1859 serialized version)
>2008 – Marian Schwartz is “particularly good at conveying Oblomov’s style and each character’s manner of speaking while staying close to the original”; her translation “contains various instances” where Scherr “felt that the choices in English were too literal… or did not convey the precise sense… even though on the whole her translation evinces an excellent sense of style and is a pleasure to read” (based on 1862 book version)
The 2 most recent translations are considered the best, but none are bad. Pearl's seems like it would be easier to read, Schwartz' more accurate.