Anyone who reads literature in translation probably has some inkling of the effort it takes a specialist to mold foreign masterworks into readable prose that feels alive and inviting. Some translators have earned renown for their impeccable renditions of the classics — Lydia Davis comes to mind — but such formidably intelligent people are accustomed to working, for the most part, in complete obscurity, unknown except to the book publishers who commission their interpretive labors and those who bother to notice bylines. Until her death last year at age 87, Svetlana Geier was the most distinguished translator of Dostoyevsky in Germany, having shouldered the monumental task (beginning in 1992) of rendering the Russian novelist’s “five elephants” (Crime and Punishment, The Idiot, The Brothers Karamazov, The Devils, and The Raw Youth) into her adopted language. Born in Kiev, Ukraine, Geier began her work in the late fifties, but developed a special passion for the...
- 7/20/2011
- by Damon Smith
- Filmmaker Magazine - Blog
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