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    War And Peace...

    ...by Leo Tolstoy is my mum's desired Xmas present. Can anyone recommend me a particular translator or edition?

    #2
    Avoid Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky

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      #3
      Originally posted by delicatemoth View Post
      ...by Leo Tolstoy is my mum's desired Xmas present. Can anyone recommend me a particular translator or edition?
      I have a trusty one-volume Wordsworth Classics edition which uses the fairly authoritative Maude translation - even though that (the translation, not the book) dates from 1920, it renders the Russian in fairly colloquial English that hasn't dated, and flows as much as Tolstoy's stylings will allow. Of course, even the most gifted translator can do little about the verbal stodge that comprises the author's philosophical digressions and epilogues.

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        #4
        A factor to take into consideration when looking at various editions concerns the paragraphs in French - my book leaves them as they are and unannotated, others leave them as they are but provide footnotes at the bottom of pages, while others still translate them into English, which rather ruins Tolstoy's commentary on the Russian elites of the era.

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          #5
          Another vote for the Louise & Aylmer Maude translation which I have in Wordsworth Classics. An advantage of this edition is the list of main character names which is very useful as the naming conventions change reflecting the social relationships between the characters.

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            #6
            I can't judge any other translations but I am another who was absolutely fine with the Wordsworth Classics version (apart, of course, from the epilogues and other redundant stodge).

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              #7
              A Level advice from our head of languages, Bolshoi Bill Nesbitt:

              BB: Have you thought about continuing Russian? We'll do Voina I Mir next term

              DG: Nyet spasiba I'm hardly MI5 material and can't be arsed reading it in English

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                #8
                What DR said about the passages in French - huge amounts of the aristocrats’ dialogue are in French, kicking off with all bar one word of the first seven lines or so of the book. I wouldn’t want to read any version which didn’t reflect that.

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                  #9
                  I'd really want the French translated in English footnotes though. Unless the toffs spent most of the dialogue spraffing about how their hometown has a swimming pool, and if someone knew the way to the bookshop.

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                    #10
                    ha ha ha, very good LS!

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                      #11
                      Thanks y'all.

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                        #12
                        Several years ago I asked my dad what he wanted for Xmas. "Peace and quiet," came the answer (he has never once in his life given anyone a helpful response to this question). So I gave him 'War and Peace' and 'The Quiet American'. He thanked me for the books over the phone and asked me why I'd chosen those particular titles. "Well, when I asked you what you wanted, you said Peace and Quiet." "Bloody hell," he responded. "Even when you're giving Xmas presents you have to be a bloody smartarse."

                        Nowadays I send him a box of wine.

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