Translation Matters: Larissa Volokhonsky and Richard Pevear

Over three decades of collaboration, Volokhonsky and Pevear have been alone together with Dostoyevsky, Gogol, and Tolstoy, and also with Bulgakov, Chekhov, Leskov, Pasternak, and Turgenev. In a now-famous story, they were brought to the public consciousness when Oprah picked their Penguin Classics translation of Anna Karenina for her book club. As they’ve often explained in interviews since then, their work happens in separate offices. First, Volokhonsky, a native speaker of Russian, produces a complete first draft. Then Pevear, whose spoken Russian is not fluent, revises the draft, working to reproduce the writer’s style coherently in English—'what the French call the language of arrival,' he says. This process is repeated as necessary, draft by draft. 'Translation is a craft that sometimes becomes an inspired craft,' Volokhonsky explains.
~Elina Alter, "Lost in Translation: Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky"

If you read enough books in translation, you start to realize that the translation (and the translators!) are really important. Sometimes, one book in a series will be translated by someone different, and the pacing or dialogue may seem off. People have read the same book translated by different people and preferred one version over another. In 2013, Buzzfeed writer Jason Diamond recommended "50 Works of Fiction in Translation That Every English Speaker Should Read" - if you're not already reading, say, Scandi noir or other translated literature, that list is a good place to start, as it specifies book and translator (Paste came out with a smaller, but more recent, list last year). If you're interested in reading about the process of translating, check out "The subtle art of translating foreign fiction." Lastly, if you think you might want to become a translator - there's a wikiHow for that!

The University of Rochester/Three Percent has presented the Best Translated Book Awards for fiction and poetry since 2007, if you want to find the cream of the translating crop, but for Russian-to-English, we usually recommend translations by Larissa Volokhonsky and Richard Pevear, "lauded for restoring the idiosyncrasies of the originals—the page-long sentences and repetitions of Tolstoy, the cacophonous competing voices of Dostoevsky." Do you have a favorite translator for Russian literature? Let us know in the comments!

The Master and Margarita by Mikhail Bulgakov

Notes From a Dead House by Fyodor Dostoevsky  

The Double; and, The Gambler by Fyodor Dostoevsky 

The Brothers Karamazov by Fyodor Dostoevsky [eBook]

The Idiot by Fyodor Dostoevsky [eAudiobook] 

Selected Stories by Anton Chekhov 

Demons by Fyodor Dostoevsky 

Doctor Zhivago by Boris Pasternak [Playaway & eAudiobook]

War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy [eBook]

Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy [eBook]

What Is Art? by Leo Tolstoy [eBook] 

Selected Stories by Anton Chekhov

 

Reading Without Borders

In the library, a lot of books with blurbs that say they are "international bestsellers" or "by internationally best-selling authors". Many of these are books you'd probably recognize, such as those by J. K. Rowling/Robert Galbraith, Elena Ferrante, Stephen King, Haruki Murakami, JoJo Moyes, Andrea Camilleri, Paula Hawkins, Lee Child, David Lagercrantz (for his continuation of Stieg Larsson's Millennium series). But we found it difficult to find an "international bestseller" list, even after employing other search terms ("global", "world", "foreign fiction").

Most countries have their own bestseller lists, and it seems like many books from other nations don't get translated for our consumption, or if they do, it takes a long time for them to show up in our bookstores and libraries. According to a Guardian article, "Just 3% of books published in the UK have been translated from a foreign language" - one wonders if the stats for the USA would be similar? Even books that don't require translation, such as those from England and Australia and New Zealand, are sometimes hard to find in this country. You can watch Vera the mystery series, but you can't find the Ann Cleeves novels on which they are based (Silent Voices was finally published here in 2013 - it's book 4 of 7, randomly) - though you can read the author's Shetland mysteries. That is a mystery to us!

"Are there books that are indeed too culturally specific to sell well across borders? I suspect there are. But the publishing industry is so finely tuned these days that virtually any book with potential to sell will get a good look; those that don’t are the ones that will remain locked within their own borders," Edward Nawotka wrote in Publishing Perspectives in 2013.What do you think? With the Man Booker International Prize longlist recently announced, we've compiled a list of some international bestsellers, literary prizewinners from other countries, and recommended titles from around the world that you might have missed and that we hope will capture your imagination. Do they translate for you? Let us know in the comments!

Love in Lowercase by Francesc Miralles

The Rainbow Troops by Andrea Hirata; translated from the Indonesian by Angie Kilbane 
As of 2013, Indonesia’s best-selling book of all time. 

The Truth About the Harry Quebert Affair by Joël Dicker; translated from the French by Sam Taylor

1914 by Jean Echenoz; translated from the French by Linda Coverdale

The Big Green Tent by Ludmila Ulitskaya; translated from the Russian by Bela Shayevich 

La emoción de las cosas by Angeles Mastretta [Spanish language]

The Confessions of Noa Weber by Gail Hareven; translated by Dalya Bilu [eBook]

 

All That I Am by Anna Funder

Ten White Geese by Gerbrand Bakker; translated from the Dutch by David Colmer 

The Life Intended by Kristin Harmel

Lineup by Liad Shoham; translated from the Hebrew by Sara Kitai 

Honor by Elif Shafak

Swimmer by Joakim Zander

Abyssinian Chronicles by Moses Isegawa [eBook]

Secret Daughter by Shilpi Somaya 

The Neruda Case by Roberto Ampuero; translated by Carolina De Robertis 

The Truth and Other Lies by Sascha Arango 

The Keeper of Lost Causes by Jussi Adler-Olsen

Broken Glass by Alain Mabanckou ; translated by Helen Stevenson [eBook]

Snow White Must Die by Nele Neuhaus 

The Dressmaker by Rosalie Ham 

Stone Upon Stone by Wiesław Myśliwski; translated from the Polish by Bill Johnston 

Europe in Sepia by Dubravka Ugresic; translated from the Croatian by David Williams 

The Patience Stone: Sang-e Saboor by Atiq Rahimi ; translated by Polly McLean

The End of Days by Jenny Erpenbeck; translated from the German by Susan Bernofsky

Signs Preceding the End of the World by Yuri Herrera; translated by Lisa Dillman

The Summer Book by Tove Jansson; translated from the Swedish by Thomas Teal

The Last Lover by Can Xue ; translated by Annelise Finegan Wasmoen

The Blood Brothers: A Novel of Berlin Gang Life by Ernst Haffner; translated by Michael Hofmann

The Dirty Dust: Crè Na Cille by Máirtín Ó Cadhain; translated from Irish by Alan Titley

"The Dirty Dust is consistently ranked as the most important prose work in modern Irish, yet no translation for English-language readers has ever before been published." [library catalog]

The Year of the Hare by Arto Paasilinna ; translated from the Finnish by Herbert Lomas 

Good Morning Comrades by Ondjaki ;translated from the Portuguese by Stephen Henighan [eBook]

Seconds Out by Martin Kohan ; translated from the Spanish by Nick Caistor [eBook]

Mauve Desert by Nicole Brossard ; translated by Susanne de Lotbinière-Harwood [eBook] 

Three Strong Women by Marie NDiaye; translated by John Fletcher

 

Links 

Independent Foreign Fiction Prize 

International Bestsellers, March 2016 [Publishing Trends] 

International Book News [Publishers Weekly] 

Literature Across Frontiers 

49 Incredible Books from 49 Countries [HuffPost]

The Best-Selling Books in 10 Countries Around the World [Flavorwire] 

Your Literary Passport: Must Read Books in Translation

There’s an entire world of literature out there if you just look beyond what was written in your native tongue. Major works in other languages are being translated into English all the time, meaning that there’s no time like the present for you to enjoy books from places like Russia, Egypt, Mexico, and other nations around the globe. If you’re looking to get your literary passport stamped, here are [some] destinations to start you off — but, by all means, don’t let these be the only translated books you read.
~Jason Diamond, "50 Works of Fiction in Translation That Every English Speaker Should Read"
 

When you read a book in translation, you might forget that the original book was written in a different language - if the translation is a good one! Did you know the University of Rochester runs an annual Best Translated Book Award?  Judging a book by the quality of its translation is nothing to sneeze at. Writer Daniel Mendelsohn, in a column in The New York Times, says that "no translation can work without...accuracy...sensitivity to formal considerations...texture...[and] tone." The following list of recommended fiction is heavy on classic novels in translation, but there are plenty of other books out there, from children's books to mysteries for adults, as any keyword search of "translated by" or any subject search using the term "Translations" can show you.

Don Quixote, Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra (Edith Grossman, translator)

One Hundred Years of Solitude, Gabriel García Márquez (Gregory Rabassa, translator)

Anna Karenina, Leo Tolstoy (Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky, translators)

Swann’s Way, Marcel Proust (Lydia Davis, translator)

The Trial, Franz Kafka (audiobook, Breon Mitchell, translator)

The Stranger, Albert Camus (Matthew Ward, translator)

Labyrinths, Jorge Luis Borges (various translators)

The Death of Artemio Cruz, Carlos Fuentes (Alfred MacAdam, translator)

The House of the Spirits, Isabel Allende (Magda Bogin, translator)

The Lover, Marguerite Duras (Barbara Bray, translator)

Austerlitz, W. G. Sebald. (Anthea Bell, Translator)

The Land of Green Plums, Herta Müller (Michael Hofmann, translator)

1Q84, Haruki Murakami (Jay Rubin and Philip Gabriel, translators)

My Name Is Red, Orhan Pamuk (Erdağ Göknar, translator)

The Nimrod Flipout, Etgar Keret (Miriam Shlesinger  Sondra Silverston, translators)

Day of the Oprichnik, Vladimir Sorokin (translated by Jamey Gambrell)

The Savage Detectives, Roberto Bolaño (Natasha Wimmer, translator)

The Hottest Dishes of the Tartar Cuisine, Alina Bronsky (Tim Mohr, translator)

Suite Française, Irène Némirovsky (Sandra Smith, translator)

My Struggle: Books One and Two, Karl Ove Knausgård (Don Bartlett, translator)

Act of the Damned, António Lobo Antunes (Richard Zenith, translator)

Satan Tango, László Krasznahorkai (George Szirtes, translator)

Stone Upon Stone, Wieslaw Myliwski (Bill Johnston, translator)


Books about translation

The undeniable reality is that the work becomes the translator’s (while simultaneously and mysteriously somehow remaining the work of the original author) as we transmute it into a second language. Perhaps transmute is the wrong verb; what we do is not an act of magic, like altering base metals into precious ones, but the result of a series of creative decisions and imaginative acts of criticism. In the process of translating, we endeavor  to hear the first version of the work as profoundly and completely as possible, struggling to discover the linguistic charge, the structural rhythms, the subtle implications, the complexities of meaning and suggestion in vocabulary and phrasing, and the ambient, cultural inferences and conclusions these tonalities allow us to extrapolate. This is a kind of reading as deep as any encounter with a literary text can be.
~Edith Grossman, from "Why Translation Matters"

What is it like to be translator?  How does a literary translator do their job?  Here are a couple books from the library catalog that will hopefully illuminate the art of translation to the layman.

Found in Translation: How Language Shapes Our Lives and Transforms the World by Nataly Kelly and Jost Zetzsche

If This Be Treason: Translation and Its Dyscontents by Gregory Rabassa

Is That a Fish in Your Ear?: Translation and the Meaning of Everything by David Bellos

Reading Rilke: Reflections on the Problems of Translation by William H. Gass


Links

Popular translated books - a Goodreads list

The 20 Best Books in Translation You've Never Read

What Do You Look for in Modern Translation?