182 of 186 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Raffel vs. Grossman, March 21, 2005
This review is from: Don Quijote (Norton Critical Editions) (Paperback)
I've spent a bit of time comparing the early pages of Burton Raffel's decade-old rendition with Edith Grossman's brand new one. Both are excellent, so you can't go wrong---and I think either would be a better choice for most people than past translations. I've chosen Raffel's, though, based not only on word choices (and I think some people need to lower their antennae when it comes to things such as Sancho referring to his "kids", which seems quite natural), but on Raffel's better balanced, more focused style, and his clarity of phrasing (which also involves word choices). Raffel's style overall is traditional. Grossman seems to jump between the literal, which is sometimes confusing, and the breezy and modern, which is enjoyable but not as wry and witty as Raffel's balanced approach.
For example, Grossman's description after our hero has tried to grapple with the philosophical convolutions of de Silva: "With these words and phrases the poor gentleman lost his mind, and he spent sleepless nights trying to understand them, and extract their meaning. . . ." Raffel writes: "Arguments like these cost the poor gentleman his sanity; he'd lie awake at night, trying to understand them, to puzzle out their meaning. . . ." A minor example, but with Raffel's rhythm and word choice you can almost visualize the old fellow lying awake trying to "puzzle out" the "arguments"---not just "words and phrases," per se. Raffel is often more subtly attuned. Notice also that "cost the poor gentleman his sanity" is not as modern-sounding as "lost his mind." So don't think that because Raffel uses a few modern word choices for the sake of vigor that he's less distinguished.
Grossman again:
"His fantasy filled with everything he had read in his books, enchantments as well as combats, battles, challenges, wounds, courtings, loves, torments, and other impossible foolishness, and he became so convinced in his imagination of the truth of all the countless grandiloquent and false inventions he read that for him no history in the world was truer."
Raffel:
"He filled his imagination full to bursting with everything he read in his books, from witchcraft to duels, battles, challenges, wounds, flirtations, love affairs, anguish, and impossible foolishness, packing it all so firmly into his head that these sensational schemes and dreams became the literal truth and, as far as he was concerned, there were no more certain histories anywhere on earth."
Grossman's sentence is more difficult to scan, and less concrete. Raffel's clear, no less fine prose in paragraphs like this brings the character of Don Quixote to life.
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31 of 33 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Outstanding!, August 27, 1998
By A Customer
This review is from: Don Quijote (Norton Critical Editions) (Paperback)
As he has with previous translations, Raffel has again proved himself a master at providing an old classic in a fresh and readable way. This edition is even more vitally rendered than the Putnam translation or the Cohen one. While it's true that this work reads more like a loose collection of short stories than like the sort of tightly organized novels we expect today, it still remains an old friend to many of us, and for first readers this translation is direct and passionate.
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86 of 102 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
I was once enthusiastic about this, but--, November 26, 2003
This review is from: Don Quijote (Norton Critical Editions) (Paperback)
I once thought very highly of this translation, and even recommended it to someone. I was thinking of buying it, and now after browsing it heavily in a bookstore, I'm glad I did not. I have opted for the Edith Grossman translation instead.
This translation could almost be called "'Don Quixote' for the Under-Thirty Crowd". I am all for modern translations of this great work, and I fully support the idea of modernizing antiquated language in a translation and avoiding sounding heavy or old-fashioned. This is NOT the same as a translator being so eager to make a version of a great work accessible to normally uninterested readers, that the translation is purposely made in a TOO informal style.
The language of this translation is almost ostentatiously colloquial, and I'm not trying to be a snob about this. Even the narration is deliberately phrased in as colloquial a manner as possible. Contractions abound all over the place, not only in the dialogue, but in the narration--something I frankly don't remember any other author doing when he or she is writing in the third person. I am not criticizing the translation for not being accurate--it is highly accurate, with some very ingenious English equivalents for obscure phrases. But there is not a single sentence that does not use an informal style of writing, and if one wants to get picky about it, it is very difficult to imagine a very well-educated sixteenth-century gentleman like Don Quixote speaking like this.
And Raffel makes a catastrophic translation error at the beginning of the novel which apparently neither he, nor his editor, nor any critic has yet caught. In describing Alonso Quijana, the old gentleman who eventually becomes Don Quixote after going mad, Cervantes states something like "In short, the old gentleman so immersed himself in his books..", etc. Raffel actually writes, "In short, Don Quixote so immersed himself in his books", thus introducing the name "Don Quixote" in the narrative before Cervantes himself mentions it.
The fact that this error has not been pointed out by ANYONE is proof of how blindly overpraised this translation has been. It is accurate, but it is too eager to be "readable" rather than great.
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