about translators and translation and child reading

[Robert A. Rothstein]

Alina Israeli wrote:
> There were some other translated books that were a much better read 
> than the Russian originals.
>
And vice versa: as far as I'm concerned, Vinni-Pukh is better than 
Winnie-the-Pooh, and Fenimore Cooper is probably more readable in 
Russian than in English.

Except for Alina's mention of "Karlson," I don't think anyone 
recommended Russian translations from other languages. Among the authors 
on our reading menu (at different ages) were Jules Verne, Alexandre 
Dumas, Jaroslav Hašek, Oskar Lunts ("Vesna" - from Estonian), Leyb 
Kvitko (from Yiddish), ne govoria uzhe o skazkakh raznykh narodov. Our 
son - now forty - can still quote such things as "Ia nad vami ne 
smeius'" (from one of the Dumas novels) and "Vielleicht Katzendreck, 
Herr Oberst" (left in the original in Petr Bogatyrev's translation of 
"Švejk").

Bob Rothstein

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