Dr. Zhivago: The controversy of translations

Boris Pasternak’s seminal novel, Dr. Zhivago, generated a great deal of controversy when it was published in 195. The controversy has, begun again, with a new translation after fifty years from the death of the author. In this column, I intend to look at a few issues emerging from the second translation of the novel. For this, I have drawn heavily from an article appearing in the UK Guardian.

Dr. Zhivago was first translated into English from Russian by Manya Harari and Max Hayward. The original manuscript was smuggled out of the Soviet Union into Italy In 1957, by Italian Giangiacomo Feltrinelli and published it in both Russian and Italian.

The latest English translation is by Larissa Volokhonsky and Richard Pevear. It has received both brick bats and bouquets. In an article to UK Guardian, Ann Pasternak Slater (Pasternak’s daughter) casts doubt about the new translators and claims; “Fifty years have passed. Now we have the opportunity to reread – and reassess – his novel in a new translation. Larissa Volokhonsky and Richard Pevear's recent translations of Tolstoy’s and Dostoevsky’s works have been universally acclaimed. They come to Doctor Zhivago with an enviable reputation. Harvill Secker's publicity material promises that in "this stunning new translation" they "have restored material omitted from the original translation, as well as the rhythms, tone, precision, and poetry of Pasternak's original".

Lapses

Ann accepts that there might be lapses in the first English translation by Manya Harari and Max Hayward. Ann Pasternak says that “Doctor Zhivago was first translated, at great speed, by Max Hayward and Manya Harari in 1958. I remember Max saying he would read a page in Russian, and then write it down in English, without looking back. This sounds incredible – even though a page of the large-faced Russian typescript they worked from is roughly equivalent to only half a page of their Collins text. I can, though, readily believe that he did this with paragraphs and sentences. Of course both translators then cross-checked and agreed their combined version against the original. Nevertheless, it's perfectly true that there are negligible omissions which are made good in the Volokhonsky-Pevear translation. This comes at a price.

Max Hayward's main pitfall is to drift unconsciously into the linguistic aura of his original – in this case, to write a kind of Russified English. This is the danger besetting Volokhonsky and Pevear.

On a first reading, one is distracted by locutions that are somehow not quite right – often not strikingly, but continuously and insidiously so. They just don't sound English. The terrorist "was serving at hard labor". "Pavel had gone to bathe in the river and had taken the horses with him for a bath." (Hayward-Harari have, "Pavel had gone off to bathe in the river and had taken the horses with him.") He "fell to thinking" ("stood thoughtfully"). "The spouses went rolling off" ("The couple drove off").

Un-English word order

Sustained, low-level unease is intensified by un-English word-order. "Yura was pleased that he would again meet Nika." Inversions (ubiquitous in early Conrad) are natural to foreigners speaking English and a mistake in translators. The inversion of subject and verb, aggravated by an invasive parenthesis, is an elementary translator's error. "At the turn they would appear, and after a moment vanish, the seven-mile panorama of Kologrivovo." It is quickly apparent that Volokhonsky-Pevear follow the Russian very closely, without attempting to reconfigure its syntax or vocabulary into a more English form.

This misguided literalism is disastrous in dialogue. "Yes, yes, it's vexing in the highest degree that we didn't see each other yesterday" ("Oh, I wish I'd seen you yesterday").

Colloquialisms create similar problems. Pasternak's narrative prose is full of colloquialisms, regularly swallowed whole by Volokhonsky-Pevear, and regurgitated undigested: "The words Gintz uttered had long since stuck in their ears" ("They'd heard it all before"). "On makhnyl rukoi" is, literally, "he waved it aside", "gave it up". When a night storm banging at the hospital doors falls still, a character thinks: "They saw no one will open and they waved their hand and left." This suggests an actual wave of farewell, which is entirely misleading. It's instructive to check Volokhonsky-Pevear's English against the Russian. Yet the original isn't inept. It's simply been badly translated. Pasternak's Russian is packed, concise, colloquial and muscular. Volokhonsky-Pevear's English is prosaic, flabby and verbose. It often renders Pasternak's more philosophical passages incomprehensible. It's far worse than the compact, natural and always lucid prose of Hayward and Harari.

It is, perhaps, too easy to criticise Volokhonsky and Pevear. What about the sustained liberties taken by Hayward and Harari? Are they justified?

Volokhonsky-Pevear introduce us to a showy figure at the station, enigmatically wearing "an expensive fur coat trimmed with railway piping". What does that mean? The unusual Russian adjective, "puteiskii", suggests the function of a railway engineer. Hayward-Harari hazard an explanation: "an expensive fur-lined coat on which the piping of the railway uniform had been sewn". The italicised words have no textual basis. Which is better? To trip up the reader on a trivial enigma, or to try to make sense of it?

Literal fidelity

Volokhonsky-Pevear are ruled by the principle of literal fidelity, Hayward-Harari by the imperatives of clarity, elegance and euphony. Take Pasternak's description of a moonlit night rich with suppressed passion. In Hayward-Harari's version it begins:

"An enormous crimson moon rose behind the rooks' nests in the Countess's garden. At first it was the colour of the new brick mill in Zybushino; then it turned yellow like the water-tower at Biryuchi."

The unauthorised, italicised words clarify the implicit chromatic scale of the brightening moon.

Volokhonsky-Pevear have:

"Beyond the crows' nests of the countess's garden appeared a blackish purple moon of monstrous dimensions. At first it looked like the brick steam mill in Zybushino; then it turned yellow like the Biriuchi railway pump house." What is obvious from Ann Pasternak’s critique on the new translation of the Dr. Zhivago, there are many linguistic issues involved in a translation rather than merely trying mimicking the syntax of the original text which would ultimately produce un-English Editions.