Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky

Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky (Russian: Лариса Волохонская, RU) are a couple who are best known for their collaborative translations. Most of their translations are of works in Russian, but also French, Italian, and Greek. Their translations have been nominated three times and twice won the PEN/Book-of-the-Month Club Translation Prize (for Tolstoy's Anna Karenina and Dostoevsky's The Brothers Karamazov). Their translation of Dostoevsky's The Idiot also won the first Efim Etkind Translation Prize.

Richard Pevear

Richard Pevear was born in Waltham, Massachusetts on 21 April 1943. Pevear earned a B.A. degree from Allegheny College in 1964, and a M.A. degree from the University of Virginia in 1965. He has taught at the University of New Hampshire, The Cooper Union, Mount Holyoke College, Columbia University, and the University of Iowa. In 1998, he joined the faculty of the American University of Paris (AUP), where he taught courses in Russian literature and translation. In 2007, he was named Distinguished Professor of Comparative Literature at AUP, and in 2009 he became Distinguished Professor Emeritus. Besides translating Russian classics, Pevear also translated from the French (Alexandre Dumas, Yves Bonnefoy, Jean Starobinsky), Italian (Alberto Savinio), Spanish, and Greek (Aias, by Sophokles, in collaboration with Herb Golder). He is also the author of two books of poems (The Night Talk, and Exchanges). Pevear is mostly known for his work in collaboration with Larissa Volokhonsky on translation of Russian classics.

Larissa Volokhonsky

Larissa Volokhonsky was born into a Jewish family in Leningrad, now St Petersburg, on 1 October 1945. After graduating from Leningrad State University with a degree in mathematical linguistics, she worked in the Institute of Marine Biology (Vladivostok) and travelled extensively in Sakhalin Island and Kamchatka (1968-1973). Volokhonsky emigrated to Israel in 1973, where she lived for two years. Having moved to the United States in 1975, she studied at Yale Divinity School (1977-1979) and at St Vladimir's Orthodox Theological Seminary (1979-1981), where her professors were the Orthodox theologians Alexander Schmemann and John Meyendorff. She completed her studies of theology with the diploma of Master of Divinity from Yale. She began collaboration with her husband Richard Pevear in 1985. Larissa Volokhonsky translated from English into Russian "For the Life of the World" by Alexander Schmemann (RBR,Inc, 1982) and "Introduction to Patristic Theology" by John Meyendorff (RBR,Inc, 1981) Both translations are still in print in Russia. Together with Richard Pevear she translated into English some poetry and prose by her brother, Anri Volokhonsky (published in: Modern Poetry in Translation, New series. Ed. Daniel Weissbort. Vol 10, Winter 196, Grand Street,Spring 1989, ed. Ben Sonnenberg). Together with Emily Grossholz she translated several poems by Olga Sedakova (Hudson Review, Vol. 61, Issue 4, Winter 2009). Volokhonsky is mostly known for her work in collaboration with Richard Pevear on translation of Russian classics.

Collaboration

Volokhonsky met Pevear in the United States in 1976 and they married six years later.[1] The couple now live in Paris and have two trilingual children.[2]

Pevear and Volokhonsky began working together when Pevear was reading Dostoyevsky's The Brothers Karamazov and Volokhonsky noticed what she regarded to be the inadequacy of the translation by David Magarshack. As a result, the couple collaborated on their own version, producing three sample chapters which they sent to publishers.[3] They were turned down by Random House and Oxford University Press but received encouragement from a number of Slavic scholars and were in the end accepted by North Point Press, a small publishing house in San Francisco who paid them a $6,000 advance.[4] It went on to win a PEN/Book-of-the-Month Club Translation Prize.[5] Their translation of Anna Karenina won another PEN/BOMC Translation Prize. Oprah Winfrey chose this translation of Anna Karenina as a selection for her "Oprah's Book Club" on her television program, which led to a major increase in sales of this translation and greatly increased recognition for Pevear and Volokhonsky.[6][7] Their translation of Dostoevsky's The Idiot won the first Efim Etkind Translation Prize awarded by the European University of St. Petersburg.

The husband-and-wife team works in a two-step process: Volokhonsky prepares her English version of the original text, trying to follow Russian syntax and stylistic peculiarities as closely as possible, and Pevear turns this version into polished and stylistically appropriate English. Pevear has variously described their working process as follows:

"Larissa goes over it, raising questions. And then we go over it again. I produce another version, which she reads against the original. We go over it one more time, and then we read it twice more in proof."[8]

"We work separately at first. Larissa produces a complete draft, following the original as closely as possible, with many marginal comments and observations. From that, plus the original Russian, I make my own complete draft. Then we work closely together to arrive at a third draft, on which we make our 'final' revisions."[9]

Volokhonsky and Pevear were interviewed about the art of translation for Ideas, the long running Canadian Broadcasting Company (CBC) radio documentary. It was a 3-part program called "In Other Words" and involved discussions with many leading translators. The program was podcast in April 2007. Their translation of Leo Tolstoy's War and Peace was published on 16 October 2007 by Alfred A. Knopf.[10][11] It was the subject of a month-long discussion in the "Reading Room" site of the N.Y Times Book Review.[12] On October 18, 2007 they appeared in New York Public Library in conversation with Keith Gessen: celebrating the translation of "War and Peace". [13]

Their 2010 translation of Boris Pasternak's Doctor Zhivago met with adverse criticism from Pasternak's niece, Ann Pasternak Slater, in a book review for The Guardian,[14] but earned praise for "powerful fidelity" from Angela Livingstone in the Times Literary Supplement.[15]

Their translation of Svetlana Alexievich's book The Unwomanly Face of War: An Oral History of Women in World War II was published in 2017.

Reception

Universal acceptance of their translation process has not been met by other translators, either in Russia[16] or outside of Russia. Gary Saul Morson wrote in Commentary that the translations "take glorious works and reduce them to awkward and unsightly muddles."[17] Criticism has been focused on their translation's excessive literalness and the perception that they miss the original tone of the authors.[16][17]

Bibliography

Credited to Pevear and Volokhonsky

Fyodor Dostoevsky

Svetlana Alexievich

  • The Unwomanly Face of War (2017)

Mikhail Bulgakov

Nikolai Gogol

Nikolai Leskov

  • The Enchanted Wanderer: and Other Stories (2013)

Boris Pasternak

Alexander Pushkin

  • Novels, Tales, Journeys: The Complete Prose of Alexander Pushkin (2016)

Leo Tolstoy

Anton Chekhov

  • Stories of Anton Chekhov (2000) - 30 short stories in total. ISBN 0-553-38100-8
  • The Complete Short Novels (2000)
  • "The Cherry Orchard" (2015) With Richard Nelson
  • "Uncle Vanya" with Richard Nelson, premiered 10 February 2018 at Old Globe Theater,[18]

Ivan Turgenev

Mother Maria Skobtsova

  • Essential Writings (2002)

Credited to Pevear

Pevear also translated Alexandre Dumas' book The Three Musketeers (French: Les Trois Mousquetaires), commenting in the introduction that most modern translations available today are "textbook examples of bad translation practices" which "give their readers an extremely distorted notion of Dumas' writing."[19]

Notes

  1. ↑ Trachtenberg, Jeffrey A. "Translating Tolstoy", Wall Street Journal, November 17, 2009. Retrieved 2011-02-28.
  2. ↑ Abramovich, Alex. "Russian-to-English translators turned Oprah stars", Newsday article, July 31, 2004, reproduced in EIZIE. Retrieved 2011-02-27.
  3. ↑ Navrozov, Andrei (11 November 1990). "Dostoyevsky, With All the Music". New York Times. Retrieved 2008-05-06.
  4. ↑ Remnick, David. "The Translation Wars", The New Yorker, November 7, 2005. Retrieved 2011-02-27.
  5. ↑ Wagner, Vit (15 December 2007). "A mention on Oprah translates into success". The Star. Toronto. Retrieved 2008-04-23.
  6. ↑ Wyatt, Edward (7 June 2004). "Tolstoy's Translators Experience Oprah's Effect". New York Times. Retrieved 2008-04-23.
  7. ↑ Remnick, David (7 November 2005). "The Translation Wars". The New Yorker. Retrieved 2008-04-23.
  8. ↑ "Eizie - Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky". Retrieved 2007-05-26.
  9. ↑ Pevear, Richard (14 October 2007). "Tolstoy's Transparent Sounds". New York Times. Retrieved 2008-04-23.
  10. ↑ Wood, James (26 November 2007). "How War and Peace Works". The New Yorker. Retrieved 2008-04-23.
  11. ↑ "Random House Academic Resources". Retrieved 2007-04-20.
  12. ↑ Tanenhaus, Sam (2007-10-11). "Welcome - Reading Room - Sunday Book Review - New York Times Blog". The New York Times. Retrieved 2008-09-10.
  13. ↑ "Richard Pevear & Larissa Volokhonsky in conversation with Keith Gessen Celebrating a New Translation of War and Peace". The New York Public Library.
  14. ↑ Slater, Ann Pasternak (2010-11-06). "Rereading: Doctor Zhivago - The Guardian". The Guardian. Retrieved 2011-07-09.
  15. ↑ Livingstone, Angela, (24/06/2011) Meaning Every Word of It. TLS.
  16. 1 2 http://www.thinkaloud.ru/feature/berdy-lan-PandV-e.html The Sweet Smell of Success? Russian Classics in the Translation of R. Pevear and L. Volokhonsky M.Berdy, V.Lanchikov
  17. 1 2 Morson, Gary Saul. "The Pevearsion of Russian Literature" (Archive). Commentary. July 1, 2010. Retrieved on July 19, 2015.
  18. ↑ Hebert, James (7 February 2018). "With fresh look at 'Uncle Vanya,' Old Globe bringing something new to the conversation". San Diego Union Tribune. Retrieved 18 February 2018.
  19. ↑ Dumas, Alexandre The Three Musketeers, Penguin Classics Deluxe Edition, "A Note on the Translation", page xxi
  • Pevear at American University of Paris (Archive)
  • American University of Paris page on Pevear
  • Resume from University of Bologna website
  • Richard Pevear at Library of Congress Authorities, with 49 catalogue records
  • Larissa Volokhonsky at Library of Congress Authorities, with 37 catalogue records
  • Hunnewell, Susannah (Summer 2015). "Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky, The Art of Translation No. 4". The Paris Review (213).
  • John Biguenet, "Better a Live Sparrow than a Stuffed Owl", a conversation with Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky, Tin House N°63, Spring 2015.


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