THE ALL TIME BEST ENGLISH TRANSLATION OF WAR & PEACE

[tim dukes]

Thanks, Stephen.

'...the fact that the question can be formulated doesn't mean there is an
answer.'

This is true.  I guess I may have been too general in the way I worded my
question, eh?   But it appears that the many people who replied to it
weren't lost on the deeper implications of it; I found it quite interesting
to see all the various directions it sent them in.  In that way it was
extremely insightful and has definitely helped me come closer to a
decision.

By the way, you never did say what translation you preferred... :)

Tim



On 4/30/06, STEPHEN PEARL <sbpearl1 at verizon.net> wrote:
>
>   In this interesting and provocative discussion of the merits of the
> various English translations of War and Peace, there seems to be a tendency
> to overlook the rubric under which it is taking place, namely: "The Best WAR
> & PEACE English translation of All Time".
>
>       A British philosophical school which flourished about six or seven
> decades ago, whose leading light was Alfred Ayer ["Language , Truth and
> Logic"], held that the fact that a language allows certain questions to be
> formulated, does not mean that all possible questions, such as "What is
> Truth?", "What is Beauty", "What is the Sound of One Hand Clapping", "When
> did you stop beating your wife" and  "Which is the best English translation
> of W&P of all time" ? "are necessarily meaningful or answerable; although
> they have certainly engaged philosophers in sterile wrangling down the ages.
>
>     Defining one's terms is crucial. In this case, there are two extreme,
> although not exhaustive or mutually exclusive, criteria. Do we mean by a
> "good" translation one that contains few errors of translation, or one that
> reads "well", i.e. smoothly and seamlessly in the target language, both -
> or none of the above?
>
>      A translation that is error free may be totally unreadable, and one
> that is a good read may be totally inaccurate. Fitzgerald's "Rubaiyat" of
> Omar Khayam is said to be riddled with "errors" and the same has been said
> of the King James version of the Bible, but they are both impressive works
> of literature.
>
>     The culture in which we currently operate -  Oprah-rate? -is one where
> the word "loser" is just about the most opprobrious epithet going, where
> winning is "not the best thing, but the only thing", where "nice guys finish
> last", where being "numero uno" is "it" and so often determined by PR and
> "hype",  where endless "Awards Ceremonies", which celebrate and boost the
> "Entertainment Industry", have themselves become popular entertainments in
> their own right, where a Texan bishop once declared that the people of Texas
> are "the churchgoingest and guntotingest people in the world", and where
> Oprah decrees which books shall be bought, although her writ may not extend
> quite as far as enforcing the actual reading of them. Indeed it is Oprah who
> is largely responsible for the anomalous fact that in a discussion of the
> competing claims of the different translations of War and Peace, such
> disproportionate attention is being paid to a translation team which has not
> actually
> produced one.
>
>       Among the numerous symptoms of this unslakeable public thirst for an
> authoritatively proclaimed victor ludorum is the The Heisman Trophy which is
> awarded annually to the the "best" college football player of the year,
> almost always to a quarterback or running back, whose glamorous and
> conspicuous functions are at least as different from those of their "mute,
> inglorious" team mates as the apples are from the oranges which we are
> taught not to compare. Also, the Young Artists Artists Award for
> instrumentalists, an award which nearly always goes to those musical
> counterparts of the quarterbacks and running backs - violinists and
> pianists. The pernicious and distorting logic of this suggests that the
> hapless trombonist is ipso facto a worse performer and a lower form of
> musical life.
>
>       One other distinction that runs the risk of being muffled is that,
> whoever the reviewer may be and wherever s[he] may be coming from, there
> is  a printsipiyalniy difference between the point of reviewing a
> translation of a new or previously unknown work in order to bring it to the
> attention of English speaking readers and that of reviewing a retranslation
> of a classic. Essentially, a review of the former should be about the work
> itself and a review of the latter about the quality of the translation. A
> review of a translation of a classic by a reviewer who does not have the
> necessary linguistic qualifications ,or is not prepared to take the immense
> trouble of comparing the translation with the original, is at best a review
> of its readability, and cannot be a review of the accuracy of the
> translation, still less of the skill, ingenuity and inspiration with which
> that accuracy has been conveyed
>   Accuracy itself is only a necessary, but not a sufficient condition.
>
>       A reviewer who fails or is unable to evaluate the quality of the
> translation as such, is disqualified from making an informed judgment as to
> the winner  of "The All Time Best Translation" Stakes; although the fact
> that the question can be formulated doesn't mean there is an answer -
> unless, of course, Oprah is asked to deliver the final verdict.
>
>
>
>
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