For the Love of Translation

I'm not fluent enough in any other languages to translate very well, myself, but I'm slightly obsessed with comparing translations to find the best one. Anyone who loves books from other cultures has got to do a little work to make sure they're finding the best rendition of their favorite works.

I realized this most emphatically during my sophomore year at Sarah Lawrence College, when I was reading Tolstoy's "War and Peace" for a class with my favorite professor, Fred Smoler. My fellow classmates and I were absolutely loving the book, devouring it; it was for a lecture class, and everywhere you went on campus, people were engrossed in it.

A vacation break came while we were reading it, and during my drive back home to North Carolina, I stopped by my dad and stepmom's then-home in Annapolis to visit for a couple days. I forgot my book when I journeyed on to NC, but I knew Mom had "War and Peace" on the bookshelves at home. (As a child, I'd sometimes stared at the immensely thick tome and wondered when I would read it.)

So my first night home, I pulled the book off the shelf and curled up on the couch to enjoy it. After I realized I'd read the same paragraph ten times and not retained a word of it, I thought to look at the translation credits. Sure enough, it was a different person than the translator of our version, which is Ann Dunnigan (Signet Classic, 1968). If you've ever tried to read "War and Peace" and found it as enthralling as eating sawdust, I urge you to pick up Dunnigan's translation and discover one of the greatest classics in literature.

In other cultures, if you like Eastern literature, Red Pine is an incredibly talented translator. He has an extensive body of work, and his version of the Tao Te Ching is remarkable.