Larissa Volokhonsky

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Larissa Volokhonsky is a Russian-born translator who frequently collaborates with her American-born husband, Richard Pevear, on translations of works mainly in Russian, but also French, Italian, and Greek. Their translations have been nominated three times and twice won the PEN/Book-of-the-Month Club Translation Prize (for Tolstoy's Anna Karenina and Dostoevsky's The Brothers Karamazov). Their translation of Dostoevsky's The Idiot also won the first Efim Etkind Translation Prize.

The husband-and-wife team live in Paris and are said to work in a two-step process: Volokhonsky prepares a literal translation of the Russian text, and Pevear adapts the literal translation into polished and stylistically appropriate English. After that first draft, Pevear says, "Larissa goes over it, raising questions. And then we go over it again. I produce another version, which she reads against the original. We go over it one more time, and then we read it twice more in proof." Pevear and Volokhonsky have recently finished a translation of Leo Tolstoy's War and Peace, published on 16 October 2007 by Alfred A. Knopf.

Volokhonsky and Pevear were interviewed about the art of translation for Ideas, the long running Canadian Broadcasting Company (CBC) radio documentary. It was a 3-part program called "In Other Words" and involved discussions with many leading translators. The program was podcast in April 2007.

Volokhonsky and Pevear met in a curious fashion, via their love of Russian literature. Volokhonsky, who was born and raised in Leningrad (now St. Petersburg), first visited the United States in the early 1970s and happened across Pevear's Hudson Review article about the Soviet dissident author Andrei Sinyavsky. At the time, Pevear believed Sinyavsky was still in a Russian prison; Volokhonsky had just helped him and his wife emigrate to Paris. Pevear was surprised and pleased to be mistaken.

"Larissa had just helped Sinyavsky leave Russia," Pevear recalled. "And she let me know that, while I'd said he was still in prison, he was actually in Paris. I was glad to know it."

Bibliography

Fyodor Dostoevsky

• The Brothers Karamazov (1990)
• Crime and Punishment (1992)
• Notes from Underground (1993)
• Demons (1994)
• The Eternal Husband and Other Stories (1997)
• The Idiot (2002)
• The Adolescent (2003)
• The Double (2005)
• The Gambler (2005)

Mikhail Bulgakov

• The Master and Margarita (1997)

Nikolai Gogol

• The Collected Tales (1998)
• Dead Souls (1996)

Leo Tolstoy

• Anna Karenina (2000)
• War and Peace (October 16, 2007)

Anton Chekhov

• Stories of Anton Chekhov (2000) - 30 short stories in total. ISBN 0553381008
• The Complete Short Novels (2000)

Alexandre Dumas, père

• ''The Three Musketeers (2006)

Notes

External links

• http://www.aup.fr/faculty/dept/clen/pevear.htm

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