Advice sought from anyone knowledgeable about English translations of Don Quixote

[Montmorency]

Is there anyone here who has looked at the various English translations of Don Quixote?

The reason is, that I have been given a Czech translation of this book, and I would eventually like to try to work through it with the help of the English version, but then, the question arises: which is the best English version?

I thought that somewhere, we had an English translation of this on our shelves, but it seems I was mistaken. So of course, I went to Gutenberg. There is a translation by John Ormsby, done in 1885. From Wikipedia, apparently this was a sort of standard translation used for many years, but more appeared in the 20th century, and apparently five have appeared in this century.

Does anyone have any suggestions as to which might be the best one to go for? I must say that (contrary to what I had feared), the language of the 1885 Ormsby edition is not archaic-looking. It may have the odd unusual word in it, but that is to be expected. What I suppose I need to be concerned about is how close is it to the original.

The other side of the question is: what is the provenance of the Czech translation? And to that I have almost no answer whatsoever.

I have not read any Czech literature before, and to be honest, this is not the one on which I would have preferred to start. I do in fact have two others lined up: one is the inevitable Harry Potter, and the other is an early 20th century Czech novel, for which I have both English and German translations, and I will probably start with one of those. But as this book (in a rather nice looking edition, it has to be said) has been given to me, I feel I ought to make a stab at it at some point, and I want to have a decent English version to help me along.


I will give the Ormsby edition a go, at least for a chapter or two; after all, the Gutenberg edition is free, although I'd really prefer a paper book edition.

If anyone has any thoughts, I'd be interested to hear them.

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Oh dear; I have just realised that this is a version for young people; "Verze pro mládež". I read in Wikipedia that there were "expurgated" versions with the "risqué" bits taken out. It might also be simplified. So to be honest, I suspect it's not going to be much help, at least, I'm unlikely to find a corresponding English version.

[Longinus]

There are two excellent modern translations of Don Quixote, by Burton Raffel and by Edith Grossman. Probably the Grossman one would be better for your purposes.

[iguanamon]

My personal favorite translation in English is by 18th Century Scottish novelist, Tobias Smollett. I read it a long, long time ago in school and loved the language Smollett used. At the time it spurred me to read more of the picaresque genre. Carlos Fuentes, the well known modern Mexican novelist, wrote that Smollett's version was his favorite translation because it was done by a "novelist challenging a novelist". I've found Smollett to be faithful to the original, and he includes detailed footnotes. For your purposes using it as a parallel text, I would go with one of the modern versions suggested by Longinus.

Often, a novel translated into both L1 and L2 can be like making a copy of a copy of a copy. Cervantes plays with words and names a lot and its not often easily translated. Is the Czech a translation from Spanish or some other intermediary language? That would be important to know.

[tactical_buddhist]

https://franklycurious.com/wp/don-quixote-english/

Here is an in-depth analysis. I personally prefer Rutherford. It's not a literal translation but seems to handle the humor better.

[Montmorency]

There are two excellent modern translations of Don Quixote, by Burton Raffel and by Edith Grossman. Probably the Grossman one would be better for your purposes.

Many thanks Longinus. Sounds like it would be worth having, although I suspect I won't be using it in the way originally intended for quite some while (since I will need to get hold of a full version in Czech, rather than a simplified / young person's edition. Having said that, the simplified edition will still be useful in its own right, but using a different approach).

[Montmorency]

My personal favorite translation in English is by 18th Century Scottish novelist, Tobias Smollett. I read it a long, long time ago in school and loved the language Smollett used. At the time it spurred me to read more of the picaresque genre. Carlos Fuentes, the well known modern Mexican novelist, wrote that Smollett's version was his favorite translation because it was done by a "novelist challenging a novelist". I've found Smollett to be faithful to the original, and he includes detailed footnotes. For your purposes using it as a parallel text, I would go with one of the modern versions suggested by Longinus.

Often, a novel translated into both L1 and L2 can be like making a copy of a copy of a copy. Cervantes plays with words and names a lot and its not often easily translated. Is the Czech a translation from Spanish or some other intermediary language? That would be important to know.

That's a very good question, and one that was already beginning to cross my mind, and to which I probably need to ask a Czech native speaker. However, now that I know that the edition I have is not the full version, it is less relevant. At some point (when my Czech is (hopefully!) more advanced, I'll need to do some more research into what are the good Czech editions to have, and what they are based on.

Thank you for the Smollet information.

[Montmorency]

https://franklycurious.com/wp/don-quixote-english/

Here is an in-depth analysis. I personally prefer Rutherford. It's not a literal translation but seems to handle the humor better.

Many thanks for that, tactical_buddhist. Just reading it now.