Why you should read War and Peace on your phone

[doubleshuffle]

I want this version:

https://www.theguardian.com/culture/...-peace-cartoon

[drofgnal]

Originally Posted by astrangerhere

+1 to this rec. I read the Signet in high school and again in college. I was lucky enough to get one of the first print runs of the hardcover of the Pevear translation when it came out in October of 2007. I promptly threw my back out in December of that year and spent days in my recliner reading the new translation. It was like reading a new book.

The same two gentlemen also have a newer translation of Anna Karenia.

[Pulpmeister]

My, er, extensive Russian vocabulary comes from reading The Moon is a Harsh Mistress, by Heinlein.

Wait, I think "gospodin" was in there, too. Who says SF isn't educational?

[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?

[Lady Stardust]

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?

Oxford World's Classic edition, translated by Louise and Aylmer Maude, revised by Amy Mandelker
From Notes on Text and Translation

Oxford University Press first published the English translation of War and Peace by Aylmer and Louise Maude in their 21-volume Centenary Edition of Tolstoy’s Works (Oxford, 1928–37). The Maude translation has long been considered the best English version of Tolstoy’s masterpiece, despite the subsequent publication of numerous other translations. The Maudes consulted the most accurate edition of War and Peace available to them, which included corrections made separately to the third and fifth editions of the work. They were personal friends of Tolstoy, and dedicated themselves to translating his work into English, as well as to writing their own accounts of his life and his ideas. Their translation of War and Peace has quite justly acquired the status of a classic in its own right, and readers continue to appreciate its elegance, fidelity, and helpful apparatus. Biographer A. N. Wilson states that ‘every English reader owes a vast debt to Louise and Aylmer Maude for their contributions to Tolstoy scholarship’.1 Leo Tolstoy himself asserted that ‘better translators [than Aylmer and Louise Maude] could not be invented’, and he chose to authorize Louise Maude as translator of Resurrection.
Despite the excellence of the Maudes’ War and Peace translation and annotations, their edition has drawn a certain amount of justifiable criticism: in particular, critics have noted the Anglicization of Russian names, the translation of the French passages into English, the insertion of narrative chapter headings composed entirely by the Maudes, and a tendency to elevate the level of discourse inappropriately and according to Victorian literary tastes.
This new redaction of the Maude translation is intended to correct and refurbish the Maudes’ edition, aligning this English version of the novel as closely as possible to Tolstoy’s original text. The French passages have been completely restored, names are given in their Russian forms (an exception is made for the names of Tsars and saints, which are retained according to their customary usage in English, e.g. ‘Peter the Great’). The small errors or omissions of the Maude edition have been corrected and the language has been adjusted where dated usage and non-idiomatic discourse impede the reading process. The transliteration system used is GOST (1971), except where there is a more commonly used and more familiar transliteration choice, e.g. Tolstoy instead of Tolstoj.

I don't know how much it is known, but Richard Pevear doesn't really speak Russian, you can read some comments about it here

[issybird]

Originally Posted by Lady Stardust

I don't know how much it is known, but Richard Pevear doesn't really speak Russian, you can read some comments about it here

The linked article provides a fascinating and highly persuasive analysis; many thanks.

[HarryT]

Very interesting article - thanks for posting the link! I don't see, though, that it makes the P&V translations any less good if one member of the partnership does a word-for-word translation, and the other paraphrases into good English prose. Having read their "War and Peace", I found it to be an excellent translation, however it came about. I certainly found it more readable than the Maudes' translation, simply because it's written in modern English, and hence flows better for the modern reader.

[Lady Stardust]

You are both welcome.
It depends also in what you are looking for when you read translated work. I have read both Tolstoy and Dostoevsky translation in my own language, and when I first read P/V translations it seemed to me just as Harry called them - paraphrased text. But I much prefer translations truer to the real novels, including for example Ignat Avsey's translation of Karamazov Brothers.
I have read in my language paraphrased Shakespeare translations (the target was mainly young readers, so it was made in modern language), and when I read the more serious ones I liked them much more, I have to admit. The language closer to those times, and not modern, made me feel more like I went back to the times it was written in, or rather to the times the plays take place in.

[AnotherCat]

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?

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.

[ZodWallop]

Went to Barnes and Noble this weekend and while we were there, I checked out the various editions of Was and Peace. While I'll most likely try the Signet edition, my friend (who isn't much of a reader) preferred the Pevear and Volokhonsky edition because it was big and meaty and imposing. I doubt she'd actually read the thing if she bought it, but it did impress her.

[drofgnal]

It just depends on what you want to get out of reading the book. If you want a fascinating story, read signet classics so you don't have to worry about linking to French passage translations. If you want to understand something of the time, both historical and cultural, read P&V's translation.