War and Peace

Anyone who has tried to read Leo Tolstoy's War and Peace (Moscow: The Russian Messenger, 1869) or any other great novel in translation knows that translation is a creative process and requires the translator to reenter the work. Understand the author's design. Choose words that support that design. Give characters the lifelikeness the author gives them. And so on.

In trying to read War and Peace, for instance, I have given up because the translator had not solved the problem of Russian naming conventions. Each character in a Russian novel has a given name, a patronymic, and a family name. The practical translator picks one version of the person's name and pretty much sticks with it (if he or she expect me to keep reading, anyway).

Then, to make things worse, it's always somebody or other's name day.

Maybe you can tell by now that my irritation got the better of me, and more than once, at the two Natalyas' name day in Chapter 1.

I have also given up reading a translation because the writing sounded stilted, as if the translator just plodded along word by word, instead of choosing the best word for the job, and the publisher didn't know the difference.

Just go to Amazon or Barnes and Noble, search on "leo tolstoy war and peace," and take a peek inside different editions, and you will see what I mean. With War and Peace, the translator has a particularly difficult problem: the first sentence is in French and, to be true to the novel, must stay in French or somehow retain its French "flavor."

A word to the wise. If you are translating a work of fiction, be prepared truly to become the author's voice. If you are reading a work of fiction in translation, be picky and look for the integrity the work of art deserves.