The Brothers Karamazov--what translation?

English

I've only read McDuff's, and I thoroughly enjoyed it, but I haven't read any of the others and certainly don't know shite about the original Russian and how well it translates.

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I didn't find it that difficult to read

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Dostoevsky has a reputation has being hard to read, but I don't think he is. He's not nearly as inscrutable as say Beckett or Pynchon.

Which translation did you have of Anna Karenina? For me the novel read better than Victorian novels of manners and even Dickens.

I just looked up that the one I read was translated by McDuff. I don't know how it compares, but I thought it was very readable.

watch the movie with CC turned on. Done

No movie? then the book must have sucked

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I love the Richard Pevear and Laura Volokhonsky translations

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This is the only answer.

Their translation of Crime and Punishment is also top notch. Great book too.

Stick with the King James version

I read the Richard Pevear and Laura Volokhonsky translation

I think she's justified. Having read Pevear / Volokhonsky it is hard to get past the super, ultra-mega annoying / almost incoherent sentence structure, and enjoy the book. Particularly a book that long. McDuff took greater liberty, so he loses exactness, but in so doing, he made it readable for native English speakers. Anyone who has taken a foreign language knows that there's a way to translate what's in front of you DIRECTLY and there's a more artful way of translating that takes it from the direct into the other language, as the other language is spoken / written. What Pevear / Volokhonsky did was just translate it directly and then barely clean it up. McDuff fully transported it into English.

I read Pevear / Volokhonsky and didn't like it much. Having read snippets of McDfuff, I think I missed out. I'd like to go back and read it McDuff's way.