Let's talk translations?

[takethewatch]

Does anyone have Opinions and/or Advice about translations to share? It's been a few years since my initial read-through of the Brick, and now that I have relapsed with a vengeance into this fandom, I am about due for another one (as soon as Life permits). I know not to read Denny--but I would love to see some discussion of the other translations out there (especially the new Donougher one) and their relative merits.

Comments

[tenlittlebullets]

As a translator, I love Donougher; as a fan, I find myself frequently giving her the stink-eye. She pays scrupulous attention to word choice, to not inflating the ponderousness of Hugo's prose with unthinking calques on the French, and to either footnoting the wordplay or trying to render it in English, but her campaign against artificially inflating the register often comes at the expense of Hugo's more lyrical passages. So some of the most striking sentences from the original can end up dull as ditchwater. I recommend her translation if only because it's the most thoroughly-annotated one that exists in English, and because she's got a knack for getting the gist of a turn of phrase that would be a non-sequitur if translated literally, but if you've got favorite Brick quotes that you're attached to then be prepared to slam your book shut and go "Goddammit, Donougher" from time to time.

Fahnestock/Macafee is a nice, reliable, readable, mostly-faithful translation. It suffers from some of the problems Donougher was trying to eliminate--excessive ponderousness and occasional non-sequiturs especially in the wittier dialogue--but it's solid and not obnoxiously archaic like the public-domain translations, or obnoxiously modernized like Julie Rose.

[melannen]

I will speak up in favor of Hapgood, the version on Gutenberg, if only because it's the standard translation in current online fandom - it's not necessarily the best translation, and it is a bit dated (but then again, so is Hugo's French) but it's tolerably good, and it's the one people seem to fall back on for quotations and excerpts and so on - even if they've read other versions, that's the easy-access one when you're messing around on the internet - so that one will get you the familiar wordings.

[needsmoreresearch]

How do people feel about Wraxall as a translation? I ended up with a copy that I wasn't expecting, and obviously it's a treat with the illustrations and I've enjoyed the overall feel of the passages I've looked through--but I haven't really sat down with it scrupulously.

...also, they cut the joke about Joly's 4 Ls, which is clearly a great crime against the entire history of literature.