Suite Française by Irène Némirovsky, translated by Sandra Smith, 2006

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Suite Française by Irène Némirovsky, translated by Sandra Smith, 2006

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1chrisharpe
nov. 4, 2008, 4:34 pm

Just a brief note to recommend the Sandra Smith translation of Suite Française, which I read last month. I had no access to the original French, but this English rendition read beautifully, just as if it were an original version, which I suppose is all that I ask of a translation. I recently read a comment by Robert Chandler, translator of (amongst other works) Life and Fate, which resonated: "Margaret Jull Costa, another fine translator from Spanish and Portuguese, has written, 'As all translators know, solving knotty problems such as puns and idioms is always the lesser part of the work. The greater part is finding the right tone and the right style, but the decisions taken to achieve this are far less easy to exemplify because they tend to be less conscious, more instinctive, and happen over a longer period of time.'" I couldn't agree more.

Suite Française was an enormously enjoyable book. There was considerable attention to detail; for example, the rich descriptions of nature were properly translated instead of the suffering the haphazard treatment I have come across in some translated works.