Quote:
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“I have a prejudice against people who print things in a foreign language and add no translation. When I am the reader, and the author considers me able to do the translating myself, he pays me quite a nice compliment – but if he would do the translating for me I would try to get along without the compliment.”
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In the Penguin translations of
À la recherche du temps perdu, the American edition translates any direct quotations (from French writers, usually) and puts the original in a note at the back of the book. The British edition gives us the quotation in the original language (French, almost always) and puts the TRANSLATION in a note at the back of the book. I often wondered why the British editors thought I could read Mellarme or Racine in the original, given that I had chosen to read Proust in translation.