The Master and Margarita question

[O'Brien, Kevin]

My favorite of the translations of "Master and Margarita" available in English is the Hugh Aplin version published by OneWorld Classics in Britain. Though the translation contains a few Anglicisms (like "ginger" for "red-haired") which may be less familiar to American readers, it is the only one I have found that matches the rhythm of Bulgakov's prose. I've read all the others, apart from Karpelson. I find the other translations completely lacking in this aspect, something quite palpable in the Russian. I don't know why this version has not received greater acclaim on this side of the Atlantic. It's an inspired and faithful rendering of the original, with a real "ear" for Bulgakov's pulse.  Kevin O'Brien,  Chapman University.
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From: SEELANGS: Slavic & East European Languages and Literatures list [mailto:SEELANGS at LISTSERV.UA.EDU] On Behalf Of naiman at BERKELEY.EDU
Sent: Tuesday, October 30, 2012 9:55 AM
To: SEELANGS at LISTSERV.UA.EDU
Subject: Re: [SEELANGS] The Master and Margarita question

There is at least one more translation, by Michael Karpelson.
http://www.amazon.com/The-Master-Margarita-Mikhail-Bulgakov/dp/1411683056

Several years ago, I taught a graduate seminar on Master i Margarita.  For one of the final meetings, I gave the seminar participants (seven or 8 Berkeley graduate students) unidentified passages from five of the translations (Glenny, Ginsburg, Burgin & O'Connor, Pevear & Volokhonsky,
Karpelson) and asked them to rank them, considering both readability and fidelity.  P&V came out on top, with B& O'C second.  Interestingly, P&V were not always ranked first for the passages, but they were all but once first or second.  Karpelson was erratic, once or twice the best, but with some disqualifying mistakes.  Glenny is very readable and for a generation of undergrads in survey courses, he may have provided the hook that led to a major, but as the grad students quickly noticed, he skips things he doesn't understand; as Simon Karlinsky noted in a NYTimes review, at one point he turns a bath into a female character.  (Not even Woland could do that).
    This sort of thing, by the way, might be an interesting thing to try at an AATSEEL panel.

> I was able to identify 5 English translations by 7 translators:
> Michael Glenny, Mirra Ginsburg, Diana Burgin & Katherine O'Connor, 
> Pevear & Volokhonsky, Hugh Alpin.
>
>

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