How good (or bad) are the B&N Classics translations anons?

How good (or bad) are the B&N Classics translations anons?

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Pretty bad. B&N goes for cheapest translation, which usually means whatever's in the public domain. Their Dostoyevsky's atrocious. Penguin has them beat at every point except price

The only one I bought was Plato’s Republic. It was pretty shit and borderline unreadable.

No idea but if they're using Garnett I would assume "cheap"

This is not so bad sometimes but is not ideal most of the time

translations are old public domain ones iirc and wouldn't recommend. Anything english is a fine cheap choice but I find some of the footnotes to be a little patronizing b/c they give definitions for words that anyone with a 8th grade reading level should know.

The only good translation is Swann's Way because that B&N edition uses Moncrieff's translation of In Search of Lost Time, which is considered to be the best.

So does penguin have the best translation in general?

Garnett is the best translation, everyone else uses fucking P&V which is literal garbage.

If you're so poor that you have to buy the B&N version instead of the Penguin version, just fucking pirate them.

They're okay, you could do better with say penguin classics but they're not the horrible pile of garbage that everyone makes them out to be.

You've gotta approach it on a case by case basis. Penguin doesn't always use the very best translation either (although obviously they're pretty trustworthy, generally). Most world literature isn't as huge as fucking Dosto anyway so it's not like you have a dozen translations to pick from usually

Care to elaborate?

Buyer beware!
I bought their edition of the Divine Comedy only to find out it just contained the first half, and used the ancient Longfellow translation I could've got off gutenberg.
What they decided to fill this EMPTY SECOND HALF with was a short bio of Dante, abridged telling of each chapter, a drawn map of hell, a list of media associated with the Inferno story, and discussion questions made for what I assume to be drugged-up housewife book clubs killing time at some suburban library that sells coffee and donuts.

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It uses the Garnett translation for the Russian works, so they’re ‘fine’, really depends on what you think of Garnett.

No. Oxford usually does.

I got a Divine Comedy by Oxford, will it be a good read?

Not for philosophical works for sure, dunno about novels. Wouldn't really risk it though, I only buy penguin for English books.

read it and find out. you can't always rely on others to spoon-feed answers to you.

Yeah none of the dialogue had quotation marks and it made it incredibly annoying.

Good endnotes are important for DC.

i used garnett for tolstoy and dostoevsky so i had the standard of her by which to judge them

Garnett's translation of Anna Karenina is beautifully worded, but her translations of Demons and Notes from the Underground sound terse, odd, almost maniacal at points.

Their Meditations translation is bad.

Marcus Aurelius wasn't exactly a refined prose master. His writing style is leagues beneath Xenophon's in Greek.