La Vengeance m’appartient only has three stars (or close to it) on GoodReads and StoryGraph. I wonder: is it because their userbase is uncomfortable with ambiguous, difficult texts? Or is it because their userbase is, more often than not, reading in English?
I ask because there’s something in the English translation that I found clunky and off-putting that was completely absent in the Swedish. Both of their translators are prolific and well recognized: the English translator is a highly lauded figure in English/French translation and even won an award for his translation of another book by NDiaye, as did the Swedish translator. Is my inner ear not attuned enough to know the difference between elegant and clunky French? Or elegant and clunky Swedish, for that matter?
The point that springs to mind is all the various translations of War and Peace, and the fanfare that met the translation by Pevear and Volokhonsky. It’s substantially different from older translations, and is often accused of being clunky in comparison. Pevear and Volokhonsky, however, insist that a lot of the original Russian is actually clunky, and that previous translations have done a lot—too much—to smooth it over. And in the middle of all this you have Constance Garnett: linguistic wunderkind? prudish censor? How central should her translations be when it comes to Russian literature in English?
It doesn’t help, either, that I find Stump’s style of writing irritating of its own accord. Maybe I was primed to dislike it because I didn’t bother looking him up until I was already annoyed with the English translation, who knows. But he has plenty of interviews to comb through: Words Without Borders, Center for the Art of Translation, Asymptote, Ploughshares, etc.
I suppose I’ll have to follow this post with a part two where I solicit my francophone friends for their opinions.
