Which Translation Do I Choose?
Which Translation Do I Choose?
Comparing Eight Translations of Crime and Punishment
Choosing a translation of a foreign classic can be a difficult choice. You might be wondering why there are so many. There are currently fourteen published translations of Crime and Punishment into English that I know of, starting with Frederick James Wishaw’s translation of 1886—the same year as the novel’s publication—through to the most recently published translation by Roger Cockrell.
This website has an excellent page on the available translations of Crime and Punishment and you should absolutely visit it, as I have done many times over the past few months.
I’m comparing eight translations for my 2024 Crime and Punishment project and also reading it in the original Russian.
Constance Garnett, 1914
Jessie Coulson, 1953
David McDuff, 1991
Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky, 1992
Oliver Ready, 2014
Nicolas Pasternak Slater, 2017
Michael R. Katz, 2018
Roger Cockrell, 2022
Choosing a translation is a rather subjective business. Translation is an art form, all the more so when translating fiction. Tastes and opinions vary, just as they vary about the source material. You may love the way a particular translator renders a word or phrase and dislike how they render another. I hope that this project will help you to choose one through the many examples I will be providing as we read the novel together.
Lost in Translation
Some things will inevitably get lost in translation, but there are also potential gains to be made. That might sound strange, but as translation is an art form, it can bring to life a text that may have been less lively in the source text, making it more readable for a new audience. A translator will have to decide whether to stick to the original as closely as possible or to make their translation more contemporary. They’ll have to decide how much context to provide by way of footnotes and expansions. They’ll have to consider cultural references, idiom, rhythm, neologisms and paleologisms, naming conventions—decision after decision, both big and small. It’s a wonder they don’t freeze in the headlights!
Interestingly, I just came across an excellent description of the process in The Three-Body Problem by Cixin Liu and translated by Ken Liu. In his Translator’s Postscript, Ken Liu writes:
The act of translation involves breaking down one piece of work in one language and ferrying the pieces across a gulf to reconstitute them into a new work in another language. […] Overly literal translations, far from being faithful, actually distort meaning by obscuring sense. […] In a sense, translating may be harder than writing original fiction because a translator must strive to satisfy the same aesthetic demands while being subjected to much more restrictive creative constraints. […] The best translations into English do not, in fact, read as if they were originally written in English. The English words are arranged in such a way that the reader sees a glimpse of another culture’s patterns of thinking, hears an echo of another language’s rhythms and cadences, and feels a tremor of another people’s gestures and movements.1
This perfectly illustrates my own thoughts on the subject of translation. That ‘gulf’ that Liu mentions refers not only to language and culture in the example of Crime and Punishment, but also to time. This novel was first published in 1866. Language has changed a lot since then. There’s a school of thought that a translator should use no vocabulary that came into use after the original publication date—yet another reason why the job of a translator can be more challenging than writing original fiction. Oliver Ready chose to use no vocabulary that came into use after the 1960s.
In his translation, Ready, a research fellow in Russian society and culture at St. Antony’s College, Oxford, chose not to use 19th century English or contemporary language. Instead, his vocabulary belongs somewhere in the middle of the 20th century, and he tries to avoid words that appeared after the 1960s. This makes the new translation's language “modern, but not contemporary.”2
Here’s an extract from an article in The New Yorker, in which translation duo Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky are interviewed by David Remnick:
For instance, they will not use an English word that the Oxford English Dictionary says came into use after the publication of the novel they are translating. In the Sidney Monas “Crime and Punishment,” the translator uses “pal” instead of something like “old boy.” “We won’t do that,” Pevear said, making the face of a child who has inadvertently eaten a Brussels sprout.3
Keep all this in mind as you analyse the translation examples I’ve provided in my comparison spreadsheet. Ask yourself: Does this translation convey the culture of the original? Or is it a more modern interpretation? Both are valid, and each has nuance.
King Pea: A Translation Example
A good example of what I’ve discussed above is found in Part One, Chapter 1. The original Russian reads:
Это я в этот последний месяц выучился болтать, лежа по целым суткам в углу и думая... о царе Горохе.
The last five words literally read, ‘thinking… about Tsar Pea.
Tsar Gorokh is a cultural reference that 19th-century Russian readers would have understood. Here’s a Wikipedia article in English. It states that the term means something like ‘since time immemorial’ and has folklore or fairy-tale vibes. But that would only work if the original text used a time reference; it didn’t.
So, what’s a translator to do?
One possibility would be a straight literal translation, something like, ‘thinking … about Tsar Gorokh’. How would you, as a reader, feel about that? You’d need a footnote, right? That’s what Oliver Ready did in his translation, except that he changed Tsar to King.
It's only this past month that I've learned to witter away like this, lying in my corner for days on end and thinking ... about King Pea.
He provided an extensive footnote:
King Pea: Tsar Gorokh (literally, 'Tsar Pea') has his wife's head chopped off in a famous folktale, though he is also remembered as the 'Good Tsar Gorokh' who reigned over an idealized Russia. A striking oxymoron, 'Tsar Pea' eventually came to stand for something silly or nonsensical (SB); yet, as often in Dostoyevsky, the use of a familiar image or phrase hides depths of meaning and allusion. In an article of 1981 J. L. Rice noted that the very name 'Tsar Gorokh' is 'a perfect, ironic representation of Raskolnikov's grandiosely unbalanced Napoleonic ambition'; the essay is collected in Rice, Who Was Dostoevsky? (Oakland, California: Berkeley Slavic Specialties, 2011).4
Other translators chose a different route. The most popular choice among the seven translations that I’m reviewing were variations on cloud-cuckoo-land:
McDuff: It's during this past month that I've picked up this habit of rambling, lying on my back for whole days and nights on end in my room and thinking ... about Cloud-cuckoo-land.
P&V: I've learned to babble over this past month, lying in a corner day in and day out, thinking about ... cuckooland.
Cockrell: During this last month I've learned to chatter away to myself, lying in my little hole for days on end and thinking.... living in cloud-cuckoo-land.
Two others went with the Jack and Beanstalk fairytale:
Garnett: I’ve learned to chatter this last month, lying for days together in my den thinking... of Jack the Giant-killer.
Pasternak Slater: It's over this past month that I've learnt to chatter, spending whole days on end lying on my bed in that corner and thinking about ... Jack and the Beanstalk.
Jessie Coulson’s translation is fantastic nonsense.
I have got into a habit of babbling to myself during this last month, while I have been lying in a corner for days on end, thinking ... fantastic nonsense.
And lastly, Michael R. Katz went with once upon a time:
And it's in the last month I've learned to prattle, lying for days and nights in my corner, thinking about ... 'once upon a time....'
I know which version I prefer, but it is a subjective choice and I’d rather not influence your vote!
I will provide translation analyses in my weekly posts during the 2024 read-along and compile them in my Translation Comparison spreadsheet.
Paid subscribers may request comparisons of any points in the translation they’re reading.
The Three-Body Problem, Cixin Liu, Translated by Ken Liu, Translator’s Postscript, p432; English translation ©2014 China Educational Publications Import & Export Corp., Ltd.
Oliver Ready, 2014 (SB - S.V. Belov, Roman F. M. Dostoevskogo ‘Prestuplenie I nakazanie’)