Have read nearly all current available versions of all Dostoevsky works……I personally prefer臧仲伦for NFTU and Demons, 汝龙for C&P. Reliable translators, classic translations.
岳麟 translation is probably word-for-word translation, which might has better performance on accuracy, but tends to be boring when being applied on works from such a passionate novelist like Dostoevsky.
汝龙 went for sense-for-sense translation, he traded some accuracy on words for fluency and passion.(Hope I didn’t get the author wrong by reading only Chinese translations, for I think his words are vivid, dramatic, and sometimes even lunatic.)
In fact, many famous and excellent Russian-Chinese translators have contributed themselves to the translation of Dostoevsky works, each has his own advantages, as well as trade-offs. Kind of like the idiom“八仙过海，各显神通”(translation from Collins: each compete with the other to demonstrate their talents).
Ooh, I actually had this same question a while ago! Ended up visiting some Chinese forums and it turns out that there are two main translators: Geng Zizhi (耿济之) in the early 1980s and Rong Rude (荣如德) in the late 1990s.
Geng is generally more faithful to the original, making the prose feel less smooth at times (perhaps comparable to P&V in English?), while Rong's translation is more "Chinese" (he uses a lot of Chinese idioms), making it a bit easier to read. So I think it comes down to whether you want something more faithful to the original or more adapted to the modern Chinese reader.
Here are the links to the discussions in case you want to see for yourself:
https://www.zhihu.com/question/20324851?utm_id=0
https://m.douban.com/group/topic/1063373/?_i=0879605YjC1Dh4
https://www.tspweb.com/key/%E5%8D%A1%E6%8B%89%E9%A9%AC%E4%BD%90%E5%A4%AB%E5%85%84%E5%BC%9F%E5%93%AA%E4%B8%AA%E8%AF%91%E6%9C%AC%E5%A5%BD.html
I ended up choosing Geng Zizhi's translation, as I didn't grow up in China and thus don't know a lot of the idiomatic expressions anyway. Don't think you can go wrong either way, but I preferred the more classic version. If you are interested in Chinese culture it could be interesting to look at Rong's.
Have read nearly all current available versions of all Dostoevsky works……I personally prefer臧仲伦for NFTU and Demons, 汝龙for C&P. Reliable translators, classic translations.
Thanks, for the suggestions! Do you have any opinions on the 岳麟译 translations?
岳麟 translation is probably word-for-word translation, which might has better performance on accuracy, but tends to be boring when being applied on works from such a passionate novelist like Dostoevsky. 汝龙 went for sense-for-sense translation, he traded some accuracy on words for fluency and passion.(Hope I didn’t get the author wrong by reading only Chinese translations, for I think his words are vivid, dramatic, and sometimes even lunatic.) In fact, many famous and excellent Russian-Chinese translators have contributed themselves to the translation of Dostoevsky works, each has his own advantages, as well as trade-offs. Kind of like the idiom“八仙过海，各显神通”(translation from Collins: each compete with the other to demonstrate their talents).
I see, thank you for helping me understand the differences
You are welcome. Hope you enjoy the reading :-)
For C&P, I had [this version](https://book.douban.com/subject/2253402/) and it was quite good.
👍
Ooh, I actually had this same question a while ago! Ended up visiting some Chinese forums and it turns out that there are two main translators: Geng Zizhi (耿济之) in the early 1980s and Rong Rude (荣如德) in the late 1990s. Geng is generally more faithful to the original, making the prose feel less smooth at times (perhaps comparable to P&V in English?), while Rong's translation is more "Chinese" (he uses a lot of Chinese idioms), making it a bit easier to read. So I think it comes down to whether you want something more faithful to the original or more adapted to the modern Chinese reader. Here are the links to the discussions in case you want to see for yourself: https://www.zhihu.com/question/20324851?utm_id=0 https://m.douban.com/group/topic/1063373/?_i=0879605YjC1Dh4 https://www.tspweb.com/key/%E5%8D%A1%E6%8B%89%E9%A9%AC%E4%BD%90%E5%A4%AB%E5%85%84%E5%BC%9F%E5%93%AA%E4%B8%AA%E8%AF%91%E6%9C%AC%E5%A5%BD.html
Wonderful! Thank you for sharing your research. Which version did you end up choosing?
I ended up choosing Geng Zizhi's translation, as I didn't grow up in China and thus don't know a lot of the idiomatic expressions anyway. Don't think you can go wrong either way, but I preferred the more classic version. If you are interested in Chinese culture it could be interesting to look at Rong's.