Re:Mystical Experiences of Arthur Koestler (1954)
by sbergjohansen on Sunday February 06, 2022 @04:53PM
(#30237402)
Unfortunately, I haven't read the new translation! (I was thrilled to learn of the discovery only weeks after finishing Hardy, but the whole thing receded from my attention in the three years it took for the new volumes to actually become available. I've taken this opportunity to finally order the German text.)
A 2019 LA Review of Books article [0] gives Hardy quite some credit and concludes about the new translation by Boehm:
> Despite aspects that makes this a less-than-authoritative edition, the translation itself shines. It is a smooth, gripping read, and contains passages inserted after Hardy’s translation was made, which now appear in English for the first time. New details, such as the exact song sung by Rubashov’s neighbor in prison, add freshness. Boehm corrects the chapter titles from Hardy’s “The First Hearing,” “The Second Hearing,” and so forth to “The First Interrogation,” which makes more sense in context.
[0] https://lareviewofbooks.org/article/logic-alone-all-love-lai... (previously on HN but with no comments)
> Daphne Hardy, the translator of the Urtext, had never before translated a book into English. She was just 21 years old and was forced to work under tremendous time pressure. She was familiar with neither the practices of the Soviet and National Socialist secret police nor the mechanisms of totalitarian states, thus she replaced Bolshevik terminology with British legal concepts and terms, which lent the system a milder and more civilized manifestation.