In Dostoevsky's cacophonic catastrophes, at Russia Beyond the Headlines, Georgy Manaev profiles Oliver Ready, translator of (yet another) English version -- "five years in the making" -- of Dostoevsky's Crime and Punishment (recently released by Penguin Classics; see their publicity page, or get your copy at Amazon.com or Amazon.co.uk).
Some interesting observations -- including that:
Some interesting observations -- including that:
Several earlier translations tended to smooth over Dostoevsky's stylistic peculiarities, robbing the novel of the unique, jagged tone and nervous repetitions that best represent Raskolnikov's anxious state. Ready sought to preserve these lexical peculiarities of Dostoevsky's language in his own work, while also trying to maintain the novel's hypnotic and compelling power.