Quote:
Originally Posted by Timboli
And of course the quality of translators varies for all sorts of reasons, and a tough call in my view to make a generic statement in that regard.
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It's actually perfectly possible to make a general statement about Victorian translations, for one very simple reason.
Victorian Britain was a society in which cultural norms severely curtailed what could be published. Not only in terms of material of a sexual nature, but in all sorts of other ways too. That state of affairs did not prevail elsewhere in Europe, so novels translated in Victorian times are almost invariably heavily "censored" to remove material not suitable for a British audience. That doesn't mean that such translations are without literary merit, but you are not reading what the author actually wrote.