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The Big Books of Summer 2025
Amy asked this question about War and Peace:
I'm trying to find the best translation available on kindle as I live on an island with no bookshops or viable postal service. Any advice?
LB I read the book in print, not on Kindle, so I don't really know about Kindle, but in print, I read part of P&V and part of Maude (the book is so long,…mǰI read the book in print, not on Kindle, so I don't really know about Kindle, but in print, I read part of P&V and part of Maude (the book is so long, I couldn't keep one copy for a long time, had to switch). I didn't read any others. In my opinion, neither is really good, they're both so-so, but Maude is the better one. I am bi-lingual, English-Russian, and I could see the problems in both. The biggest problem I found in the Maude translation is the translation of the names. It translates the names into English (Andrew, Nicolas, Mary, etc), yet the patronymics are not translated, and these combinations look pretty ridiculous to me. I guess patronymics can't be translated at all, so I think the translators should've kept the original Russian names (Andrey, Nikolay, Maria, etc), so they would go better with the patronymics. Another problem w/those anglicized names is that it seems like the writer's intention was to give his favorite characters Russian names while the least favorite ones got foreign ones. Once all the names are translated, this distinction is lost. The P&V version doesn't have this problem but it has many others. Most Russian idioms are translated word for word, no comparable English idioms are used though those exist. I think that if I weren't able to trace those translations back to the original, I wouldn't have understood them at all. Also, many single Russian words are not translated, just transliterated, and while some have footnote translations/explanations, others don't. Not high quality work, if you ask me. (less)
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War and Peace
by Leo Tolstoy
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