The novel has been translated several times into English:
- Mirra Ginsburg's 1967 version for Grove Press[29]
- Michael Glenny's November 1967 version for Harper and Row and Harvill Press[30]
- Diana Lewis Burgin and Katherine Tiernan O'Connor's 1993 version for Ardis Publishing[31]
- Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky's 1997 version for Penguin Books[32]
- Michael Karpelson's 2006 version for Lulu Press and Wordsworth[33]
- Hugh Aplin's 2008 version for Oneworld Publications[34]
- John Dougherty's 2017 version for Russian Tumble [35]
- Elena Yushenko's 2021 version for OmniScriptum
- Sergei Khramtsov-Templar's 2000 version (non-published, catalogued with the Library of Congress)
The early translation by Glenny runs more smoothly than that of the modern translations; some Russian-speaking readers consider it to be the only one creating the desired effect, though it may take liberties with the text. The modern translators pay for their attempted closeness by losing idiomatic flow. Literary writer Kevin Moss considers the early translations by Ginsburg and Glenny to be hurried, and lacking much critical depth.[36] As an example, he claims that the more idiomatic translations miss Bulgakov's "crucial" reference to the devil in Berlioz's thoughts (original: "Пожалуй, пора бросить все к черту и в Кисловодск…"[37]):
- "I ought to drop everything and run down to Kislovodsk." (Ginsburg)
- "I think it's time to chuck everything up and go and take the waters at Kislovodsk." (Glenny)
- "It's time to throw everything to the devil and go off to Kislovodsk." (Burgin and Tiernan O'Connor)
- "It's time to send it all to the devil and go to Kislovodsk." (Pevear and Volokhonsky)
- "To hell with everything, it's time to take that Kislovodsk vacation." (Karpelson)
- "It's time to let everything go to the devil and be off to Kislovodsk." (Aplin)
- "It's time to throw it all to the devil and go to Kislovodsk." (John Dougherty)
Several literary critics hailed the Burgin/Tiernan O'Connor translation as the most accurate and complete English translation, particularly when read in tandem with the matching annotations by Bulgakov's biographer, Ellendea Proffer.[38] However, these judgements predate translations by Pevear & Volokhonsky, Karpelson, Aplin, and Dougherty. The Karpelson translation, even when republished in the UK by Wordsworth, has not been Anglicised, and retains North American spellings and idioms.
