A few years ago it was Don Quixote, more recently Madame Bovary; now Rosamund Bartlett asks -- apropos of her own new translation, forthcoming from Oxford University Press -- "Do we need another translation of Anna Karenina ?" in The Guardian, in Anna Karenina -- the devil in the details.
Sure, the Pevear/Volokhonsky-(re-)translation is ... over a decade old (and she notes a more: "recent 2008 version", by Kyril Zinovieff and Jenny Hughes), so maybe it's time for a new one -- but what Bartlett fails to mention is that, (in the US) barely a week apart from her version, Yale University Press' The Margellos World Republic of Letters-series is bringing out Marian Schwartz's (re-)translation ..... (I'd also have a little more respect for Bartlett's if her own publisher weren't hedging their bets by continuing to offer the "acclaimed Louise and Alymer Maude translation" as an Oxford World's Classics ... (see their publicity page).)
Obviously, Anna Karenina will sell more copies in English than probably somewhere north of 95% of all newly-translated titles published in the US or UK this year (that figure is a complete guess, but I feel pretty confident that it's a ballpark figure that would hold up), so you can understand publishers betting on this, just like they bet on other classics. Nevertheless .....
For the Rosamund Bartlett translation: see the Oxford University Press publicity page, or pre-order your copy at Amazon.com or Amazon.co.uk.
For the Marian Schwartz translation: see the Yale University Press publicity page, or pre-order your copy at Amazon.com or Amazon.co.uk.
Sure, the Pevear/Volokhonsky-(re-)translation is ... over a decade old (and she notes a more: "recent 2008 version", by Kyril Zinovieff and Jenny Hughes), so maybe it's time for a new one -- but what Bartlett fails to mention is that, (in the US) barely a week apart from her version, Yale University Press' The Margellos World Republic of Letters-series is bringing out Marian Schwartz's (re-)translation ..... (I'd also have a little more respect for Bartlett's if her own publisher weren't hedging their bets by continuing to offer the "acclaimed Louise and Alymer Maude translation" as an Oxford World's Classics ... (see their publicity page).)
Obviously, Anna Karenina will sell more copies in English than probably somewhere north of 95% of all newly-translated titles published in the US or UK this year (that figure is a complete guess, but I feel pretty confident that it's a ballpark figure that would hold up), so you can understand publishers betting on this, just like they bet on other classics. Nevertheless .....
For the Rosamund Bartlett translation: see the Oxford University Press publicity page, or pre-order your copy at Amazon.com or Amazon.co.uk.
For the Marian Schwartz translation: see the Yale University Press publicity page, or pre-order your copy at Amazon.com or Amazon.co.uk.