More Omissions in Translation.

I’ve frequently had occasion to complain about translators simply skipping passages they found difficult, and I’ve run across some in my latest reading. I decided to finally try one of Mark Aldanov’s historical novels, and I chose Истоки (‘Sources’) [Russian text: I, II], which I have a hard copy of — it’s set in the period leading up to the assassination of Alexander II, in which I have an interest at the moment — and I’m enjoying it; it’s easy reading compared to many of the modernist writers I’ve struggled with, and it’s good Tolstoyan fun to have historical personages show up to interact with the fictional characters. In the section I recently finished, a restless young painter named Mamontov leaves Russia with the vague plan of visiting Bakunin in Switzerland and Marx in London, partly to try to understand their ideas and partly with the hope of painting them. He learns in Zurich that Bakunin is living at the Villa Baronata on Lago Maggiore, and when he stops for a rest in nearby Locarno he discovers the great anarchist is actually in town giving a lecture, which of course he decides to attend. He meets Bakunin afterwards and is invited up to his rented room, where they eat, drink, and talk a great deal. At some point it occurred to me to wonder how Catherine Routsky had handled some of the material in her 1948 translation Before the Deluge; as I suggested above, it did not go well.

The first instance is minor and I wasn’t surprised at its being skipped; when Bakunin sizes up our hero, bedraggled from his long travels, he offers to treat him to dinner: “I have ten francs and dinner here only costs one and a half.” The embarrassed Mamontov insists on paying, producing this exchange:

— Ради Бога!.. Напротив, я прошу вас сделать мне удовольствие и честь быть моим гостем. Для меня будет величайшим удовольствием, если вы со мной пообедаете.

— Я могу сделать вам и это удовольствие, и эту честь, — благодушно ответил Бакунин. Он произносил «чешть». — Разве вы тоже при деньгах?

Routsky renders it:

‘On the contrary, I am asking you to give me the pleasure and the honour of being my guest. It will be a great pleasure for me if you will have dinner with me.’

‘I can give you that pleasure and that honour,’ Bakunin replied good-naturedly. ‘Are you, too, in funds?’

The substitution of Ради Бога! ‘For God’s sake!’ with “On the contrary” is pathetic, but I can’t blame her for skipping “Он произносил «чешть»” ‘he pronounced [chest′ ‘honor’] chesht′,’ since I can’t think of a good equivalent. But a few pages later, when Bakunin is complaining about Marx and his fellow Germans and their delight at the victory of Germany in the Franco-Prussian War, we get a whole chunk of text omitted:

Да еще объяснял своей ненавистью к «Баденгэ»… Заметьте, кстати, ни один немецкий революционер в разговоре ни за что не скажет «Наполеон III», а непременно «Баденгэ», потому что такова у Наполеона была кличка в Париже, а ежели так говорят в Париже, то так и надо говорить, чтобы быть echt Pariser. Только произносят они не по-парижски, а как-то необыкновенно мерзко: «П-пат-тенкэ», — старик очень похоже воспроизвел немецкий говор. — Маркс и ссылался на «Баденгэ»

My version:

And he explained [that delight] by his hatred of “Badinguet“… “Note, by the way, that not a single German revolutionary will talk about ‘Napoleon III’ but always ‘Badinguet,’ because that was Napoleon’s nickname in Paris, and if that’s what they say in Paris, then that’s how you should say it to be echt Pariser [a true Parisian]. Only they don’t say it like Parisians do but in some unusually revolting way, ‘P-pat-tenke'” — the old man reproduced the German accent very accurately. “And Marx too referred to ‘Badinguet.'”

That wasn’t so hard — why leave it out? And later on, when they’re drinking champagne, Bakunin suddenly says “Ну, вот что: мы должны выпить на «ты»! Тебя зовут Николай? Я тебя буду звать Nicolas, a ты меня зови Michel. Меня все бакунисты зовут Мишелем.” (‘Look, let’s do this: we should drink to calling each other ty [using informal pronouns]! Your name is Nikolai? I’ll call you Nicolas, and you call me Michel. All the Bakunists call me Michel.’) Fine, leave out the pronouns, but why not use the French names? And why omit the following passage, where Mamontov calls it an honor and Bakunin says that’s silly and Mamontov says “How do you know I’m a revolutionary, anyway? Maybe I’ll turn you over to the police!” using polite forms because he can’t bring himself to be informal with a man he hardly knows, but reflecting that Bakunin was “one of those people who find it physiologically difficult to address someone they know using the formal vy, especially over a bottle of wine.” Routsky only picks it up several lines later, with “Он чокнулся с Мамонтовым” (“They touched glasses”). Really, there’s no excuse for that.