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For a context: I am a native Russian speaker, I read "Eugene Onegin" in original and in Charles Johnston's translation, which was done more than 10 years after

For a context: I am a native Russian speaker, I read "Eugene Onegin" in original and in Charles Johnston's translation, which was done more than 10 years after the article was written. I have not read Nabokov's or Arndt's translation, apart from the fragments in the article, but from what I understand, Johnston's translation is closer in spirit to Arndt's, trying to preserve Pushkin's iambic stanzas, sacrificing precise literal meaning here and there. From this limited experience I have to say that I very much prefer Johnston's (or - supposedly - Arndt's) translation to Nabokov's. It is very close to the original and - most of the time - precise _enough_, and it recreates this unbelievable feeling of the "flying" verse one experiences reading Pushkin in Russian. To get a feeling what I am talking about, try to read aloud few verses from Johnston's translation http://lib.ru/LITRA/PUSHKIN/ENGLISH/onegin_j.txt http://lib.ru/LITRA/PUSHKIN/ENGLISH/onegin_j.txt Side note: I also enjoy poetry in English, in particular William Blake, Robert Burns, John Keats, and Alfred, Lord Tennyson; but it took me a while to get accustomed to an approximate rhyming as opposed to the perfect rhyming that was used almost exclusively in classical Russian poetry, including Pushkin. Johnston's translation follows that too.

dang 11y ago
Most of the now-approximate rhymes in classic English poets were precise at the time the poems were written, but got dislocated as pronunciations shifted. In some cases no one really knows whether the rhymes were originally precise. See this pretty neat Language Log thread (read the comments—skip the top post) about Pope's "obey/tea" and Blake's "eye/symmetry": http://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/nll/?p=1421 http://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/nll/?p=1421
idlewords 11y ago
Have you read Falen's translation? I think he's the best translator of Pushkin into English.
- mynegation 11y ago
  No, I have not. I managed to find only a few stanzas of Falen online after a quick search, so my assessment is definitely too quick and too dirty. I had an impression that Falen's translation is similar to Johnston's, but tries to be even closer to the original at the price of using more archaic and arcane words (at least for non-native English speakers like me). I was immediately thrown off by the usage of "base" as adjective meaning "dishonourable", and "pat" as "glib". I also had to look up words, such as "prate". Not a problem of translation per se, but rather of the expanse of my English vocabulary. Interesting trade-off.

dang 11y ago

Most of the now-approximate rhymes in classic English poets were precise at the time the poems were written, but got dislocated as pronunciations shifted. In some cases no one really knows whether the rhymes were originally precise. See this pretty neat Language Log thread (read the comments—skip the top post) about Pope's "obey/tea" and Blake's "eye/symmetry": http://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/nll/?p=1421 http://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/nll/?p=1421

idlewords 11y ago

Have you read Falen's translation? I think he's the best translator of Pushkin into English.

mynegation 11y ago
No, I have not. I managed to find only a few stanzas of Falen online after a quick search, so my assessment is definitely too quick and too dirty. I had an impression that Falen's translation is similar to Johnston's, but tries to be even closer to the original at the price of using more archaic and arcane words (at least for non-native English speakers like me). I was immediately thrown off by the usage of "base" as adjective meaning "dishonourable", and "pat" as "glib". I also had to look up words, such as "prate". Not a problem of translation per se, but rather of the expanse of my English vocabulary. Interesting trade-off.