Quote:
Originally Posted by Barty
It seems the P&V translation hews close to word for word and is a little stiff. Is there another translation that leaves the French untouched?
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I have both the P&V and the modernized Oxford Classics Maude translation which also has the French passages included (with linked translations of those) but to my mind it is similar to the P&V version in it seems a little "stiff" too, but I don't find them unpleasantly so is possibly just a personal thing. As has been mentioned by another it seems a paraphrasing thing, but that does not trouble me.
I suspect if one wants to read the book as it really is one has to read the Russian. For myself I just accept the translations as they are and not concern myself about the various academic or overly pedantic arguments regarding accuracy and tone.
It is said that Tolstoy personally approved of the Maude translation but I don't know how well he could have made a judgment about that. He was obviously fluent in French but it may have been that he was not so in English. For example in Wilson's biography
Tolstoy he makes comments such as Tolstoy's English was just
passable,
One wonders how well he understood spoken English, and referring to a reading of Dicken's
A Christmas Carol he says
Tolstoy’s English was not up to understanding the famous dramatic renderings which Dickens made of his own work.