Dostoyevsky is fundamentally untranslatable. Here’s a great example.

I hear about Dostoyevsky and get kind of bummed out I can't speak Russian. But have you ever read any Twain or Shakespeare in Russian and what do they miss? Also, I know this is a long shot, but I wonder about the Russian translation of Call of The Wild and wonder what they would miss in that. Or even in the short story To Build A Fire. But man, you're lucky, I loved War and Peace and Anna Karenina and always wondered what it would be like to read them in Russian. Take care.

Some of the most prominent translators of Russian literature disagree with this view. Several of them have repeatedly said that nothing is lost when taken as a whole, just slight differences in sentences here and there. Think you're talking nonsense.

Nobody, nothing, is fundamentally untranslatable. Failed translations abound due to translators' fundamental unawareness of target language resources.

is the library beach towel because your home is as filthy as your desk and microphone

Why do you say we have to start the sentence with the subject in English? Millions of literary works in English provide evidence to the contrary: Sick, mean and unattrative, I am / The sick man, mean and unattractive that is me / This sick man, mean and obnoxious, etc.

Dang, going to have to learn Russian now. This wasn’t supposed to be on my life’s bingo card. 😩

How does one translate vocal fry?

Nothing is fundamentally untranslatable: every great book already lives in a state of perpetual migration, and a “faithful” original is merely the first of many possible dreams.

So...don't read him? Got it.

Never knew this!

You're kinda talking me out of reading Dostoyevsky. If I can't fully appreciate it without reading Russian well, there's a deep bench in the western canon in English?

Same can be said about any translation

Did you read it in the source material?

Russian is a difficult language

Fantastic, thank you. There is a lovely video of Borges discussing the richness of English compared to Spanish. I wonder if the same is possible with Russian, but compared to English. I suspect it is not just the translation but the language itself that is the difference