Nastiness, Gentlemen, and People

People, I’m still plugging away at my translation of Notes from Underground. Earlier I wrote about the word choices regarding zloi and zlost’, which lead off the book and present translators with a global interpretive question: is the U-Man spiteful? Or is he bad, evil, wicked? How about angry? These have all been tried, and… Continue reading Nastiness, Gentlemen, and People

The thing about злой

I suppose I’m fixating a bit on this now, though that seems perfectly appropriate for when one translates such a fixating book, but this злой really is a nasty thing. I now am seeing two sets of words, mostly “moral” on one side (as in Pevear’s dichotomy noted in post number 1, though it now… Continue reading The thing about злой

Communication, Literature, Translation

A couple of readers of a recent post of mine objected to my claim that literature makes very little use of the common tools of interpersonal communication. I suspect this is a simple case of miscommunication, not a disagreement about principle. Interpersonal communication makes use of a wide and rich spectrum of sensations, an extensive… Continue reading Communication, Literature, Translation