@Horsa @Moxie @mrzz
I just finished watching the panel discussion on translation. It was well worth the nearly 2 hours. I enjoyed learning about their individual methods.
Of course P&V have a unique approach, since they’re married and began this whole journey into translation through their relationship. In a way, they’re translating twice: first her, then him. I liked their emphasis on getting the voice of the writer right, and prioritizing that over a rote, word-for-word translation. Their example of a Dostoevsky passage, in which a character repeats the same word a dozen times, was informative. Apparently copy editors would have changed it so that the word was only used once, but P&V stressed the importance of the repetition.
I think Grossman had the best line: “You don’t do translations with tracing paper.” That seems to have been the old way of approaching it, which is why so many Russian novels, in particular, were considered to have been dull, dry, and boring. P&V bring it alive.
I read their “Anna Karenina” a few years ago. Now, I have never read another translation, so I can’t compare, but I thoroughly enjoyed theirs. It felt so ... alive. Modern, even, but not in a bad way. More so in a way which demonstrated Tolstoy’s universality. Ironically, two of the greatest novels ever written, in my opinion, are Don Quixote and Anna Karenina (I read Grossman’s translation, of course, which moxie brought to my attention), so what a treat to see the people who worked so hard on these books, which allowed me even to read them, interact together!
Finally, near the end, they got to poetry vs. novels. P&V were asked the apparently inevitable question of translating Pushkin, and agreed it just can’t be translated in any manner which does him justice. They didn’t address the question of retaining rhyme scheme, but I thought it interesting nevertheless that two people who have spent so long translating Russian literature admit there’s something which they can’t or shouldn’t do.
