THE GREAT I AM.(Critical Essay)

In this age of widespread education and flagging creativity, new translations abound. The old standbys who nurtured our youth--Constance Garnett rendering the Russians, C. K. Scott Moncrieff putting his spin on Proust, the Muirs translating Kafka, H. T. Lowe-Porter doing Thomas Mann--are all being retired, with condescending remarks about their slips and elisions, by successors whose more modern versions infallibly miss, it seems to this possibly crotchety scanner, the tone, the voice, the presence of the text that we first read. In general--if it's generalizations you want--the closer the translator is in age to the translated, the more closely shared their vision and ...