translations

Last weekend I was reading the Pevar/Volokhonsky translation of The Brothers Karamazov. This is one of those books that I have on my lifetime read list. Somewhere, long ago, I got the notion that there are certain books that you have to have read to be a civilized person. Of course the list just gets longer and longer and there's no way that I'll ever get caught up, so I'll never get that civilization Brownie point, but I persevere because lots of these classic texts are fun to read*. For example, the best thing about The Brothers K is that all of the characters so far are completely insane. They go about ranting and raving and having these religious/philosophical conversations in the midst of some fairly sordid wheeling and dealing. Much fun. Part of the reason I chose this edition was an article in The New Yorker not so long ago about translation and translators. The P/V collaboration are supposedly more true to the Russian than the Constance Garnett ones that I'm sure I read in high school.

The Garnett ones are supposed to be characterized by a British, Victorian habit of slang. If so, it's not something I would have noticed as a teenaged reader. The world of Crime and Punishment (the single Russian novel that I'm sure I read in high school) was strange enough that if it was strained through some English vernacular, it hardly mattered. But the world of Pevear and Volokhonsky is definitely some where different again, not English, nothing I reconize except in some Gogol stories. This makes me think that it's probably a good translation.

It's odd, the effect of translation. If you don't speak or read a different language, you completely depend on the proficiency and agility of the translator. Douglas Hofstadter spends an entire book messing around with the idea of translation in one of his books. If you read a lot, you run into a lot of different translation of the same material. I expect that people who do this for a living (scholars and such) develop a neutral attitude towards different translations, not much minding variation unless something is dreadfully wrong or it's in their area of expertise. But as an amateur reader, the differences in translation can bring you up short. For example, a few years ago I bought the newest, bestest, most complete translations of Luis Borges, an old, old favorite of mine. Although I definitely think the language is crisper, clearer somehow, like a wiped bathroom mirror, there are things that bring me to a screeching halt as I read the stories.

For one thing Andrew Hurley, the translator, calls the story "Funes, The Memorious", "Funes, His Memory". Even though he has a completely reasonable explanation for his choice in the notes, this change just jars my reading funny bone. The original translations, even if they had flaws, are part of my mental picture of Borges. I read them before I was 25. I cannot remember at all why I began reading that copy of Labyrinths or even how I knew who Luis Borges was. But Borges is part of my mental landscape now and that landscape is made of imperfectly rendered paraphrases of his thinking.

But imperfect approximations are life. Right now, I'm feeling an imperfect approximation of a good sister. My younger sister had quit her job and given up her apartment because my great -aunt said that she'd be willing to have Michele come out and take care of her. What wasn't so clear was that Aunt Marjorie was only willing to do it for a short time and now has decided that she doesn't want Michele there at all. I have some responsibility because I was the got between who made a bad translation of what Aunt Marjorie wanted through the filter of what I thought she needed and the desire for a clean, elegant solution. So MIchele's life is a mess (again) and there's nothing I can do about it. And no matter what my rational mind says I feel guilty because in this 56 y.o. is still the little girl who loved her little sister and always wanted to protect her**.

But I can't.


*This is not true of Henry James, who I've completely given up on reading, along with Faulkner. Some styles are just too uncongenial.

** I'm on the right in the photo.