War and Peace has been translated into many languages. It has been translated into English on several occasions, starting with Clara Bell working from a French translation. The translators Constance Garnett and Aylmer and Louise Maude knew Tolstoy personally. Translations have to deal with Tolstoy's often peculiar syntax and his fondness for repetitions. Only about 2 percent of War and Peace is in French; Tolstoy removed the French in a revised 1873 edition, only to restore it later.[14] Most translators follow Garnett retaining some French; Briggs and Shubin use no French, while Pevear-Volokhonsky's and Amy Mandelker's revisions of the Maude translation both retain the French fully.[14]
List of English translations
(Translators listed.)
Full translations:
- Clara Bell (New York: Gottsberger, 1886). Translated from a French version
- Nathan Haskell Dole (New York: Thomas Y. Crowell & Co., 1889)
- Leo Wiener (Boston: Dana Estes & Co., 1904)
- Constance Garnett (London: Heinemann, 1904)
- Aylmer and Louise Maude (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1922–23)
- Revised by George Gibian (Norton Critical Edition, 1966)
- Revised by Amy Mandelker (Oxford University Press, 2010)
- Rosemary Edmonds (Penguin, 1957; revised 1978)
- Ann Dunnigan (New American Library, 1968)
- Anthony Briggs (Penguin, 2005)
- Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky (Random House, 2007)
- Daniel H. Shubin (self-published, 2020)
Abridged translation:
- Princess Alexandra Kropotkin (Doubleday, 1949)[17]
Translation of draft of 1863:
- Andrew Bromfield (HarperCollins, 2007). Approx. 400 pages shorter than English translations of the finished novel
Comparing translations
In the Encyclopedia of Literary Translation into English, academic Zoja Pavlovskis-Petit has this to say about the translations of War and Peace available in 2000: "Of all the translations of War and Peace, Dunnigan's (1968) is the best. ... Unlike the other translators, Dunnigan even succeeds with many characteristically Russian folk expressions and proverbs. ... She is faithful to the text and does not hesitate to render conscientiously those details that the uninitiated may find bewildering: for instance, the statement that Boris's mother pronounced his name with a stress on the o – an indication to the Russian reader of the old lady's affectation."
On the Garnett translation Pavlovskis-Petit writes: "her ...War and Peace is frequently inexact and contains too many anglicisms. Her style is awkward and turgid, very unsuitable for Tolstoi." On the Maudes' translation she comments: "this should have been the best translation, but the Maudes' lack of adroitness in dealing with Russian folk idiom, and their style in general, place this version below Dunnigan's." She further comments on Edmonds's revised translation, formerly on Penguin: "[it] is the work of a sound scholar but not the best possible translator; it frequently lacks resourcefulness and imagination in its use of English. ... a respectable translation but not on the level of Dunnigan or Maude."[39]
