The Translator’s Voice is a column from Ian J. Battaglia at the Chicago Review of Books, dedicated to global literature and the translators who work tirelessly and too often thanklessly to bring these books to the English-reading audience.
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There are few readers who aren’t familiar with Fyodor Dostoevsky, one of the titans of world literature. Whether in school or in personal life, many of us have crossed paths with Dostoevsky; but for those of us who aren’t Russian speakers, as much as we might’ve engaged with Dostoevsky, we’ve also engaged with the work of the translators who’ve brought his classics to us.
Dostoevsky has had no shortage of translations, but there’s no rule that says we can’t try again. The latest person to pick up the mantle is Michael Katz, a translator and retired academic with a storied resume of his own. He came to Russian at the height of the Soviet Union, and has been working to bring the works of Russian literature to both students and readers ever since.
Having already translated a number of Dostoevsky’s works, such as The Brothers Karamazov, Crime and Punishment, and Notes from Underground, Katz is now turning his attention towards The Idiot. Panned at the time of its release, The Idiot has since come to be seen as one of Dostoevsky’s most powerful and personal works.
I spoke with Michael Katz via Zoom about a trip to the Soviet Union that cemented his interest in the language, how it feels to translate one of the greatest writers of all time, and what earlier translations lacked.
This conversation has been edited for length and clarity.
Ian J. Battaglia
Do you mind introducing yourself and your background a little bit?
Michael Katz
My name is Michael Katz, and I am an American, born in New York City, went to school in New York City, and then attended college at Williams College in Massachusetts. I graduated from there with a degree in Russian—I was their first Russian major.
They had instituted Russian shortly after Sputnik was launched, as many colleges did, because they wanted to keep up with the Russians. Newsweek had a cover at the time that asked, “Why does Ivan know English but Johnny doesn’t know Russian?” So I was one of the Johnnies who studied Russian in high school for a couple of years before I went on to college.
I graduated with a degree in Russian, as I said, and then went on to Oxford, where I studied for another five years and did a dissertation in Leningrad. I came back to Oxford, finished writing it, and got my first teaching job in the department of my alma mater, where I taught Russian language and literature.
After 12 years there, I moved to the University of Texas at Austin and ran a Slavic department, which taught, in addition to Russian, Polish, Czech, and Serbian. It was a big department by American standards, but tiny by Texas standards.
And then I moved to Middlebury in 1998, where I became Dean of Languages and Language Schools, which included eight schools at the time. We added Portuguese and later Arabic, and I retired in 2010.
I started translating back in 1980 and have been translating ever since; I’ve continued in retirement.
Ian J. Battaglia
Sputnik brought American attention towards Soviet activities; what brought your attention to Russian?
Michael Katz
It was a combination of Sputnik and an uncle of mine who was a German teacher. He was visiting and discussing my future, and I asked him what he would do if he had it all over to do again. He said he wouldn’t learn German; he’d learn Russian—because of the importance of the Soviet Union and American fears of Soviet predominance.
So I decided in high school that I would take Russian. They had just added it to their curriculum, so I did two years of Russian at Horace Mann School in New York, and then, as I said, moved on as an undergraduate to study at Williams.
After my freshman year, my Russian teacher found a scholarship that got me to Russia for five weeks.
After I came back, I said, “I don’t know what I exactly am going to do, but I know it’s gonna be involved with the Russian language and the Russian culture.”
Ian J. Battaglia
That trip must have been really formative for you.
Michael Katz
It was eye-opening. I got a real kick out of using the language that I’d been studying for three and a half years, and met all sorts of people. We had some relatives living in Leningrad, and I met them and some young people there, and in general, thought it was a wonderful place to work and study.
Ian J. Battaglia
Did it change your perspective of Russia, especially given, like you said, the fears of the Soviet Union at the time?
Michael Katz
I wasn’t afraid. But did have some interesting conversations about the KGB and its secretive spying on other Soviets. I was with a young man who told me he wanted to emigrate, and that was an interesting set of conversations I had…
Did it change my mind about the Soviet Union? It was a time of Khrushchev and Kennedy—we talked about peaceful coexistence.
Robert Frost wrote a wonderful book about his trip to the Soviet Union, and said that he saw the two cultures drawing closer together. I was very much of the opinion that we could coexist. So I wasn’t afraid so much as looking at ways that my skills in language would assist that coexistence.
Ian J. Battaglia
Could you walk me through how you went from this interest in Russian language and literature into translation?
Michael Katz
It was a student who challenged me. I was teaching a course back at Williams on intellectual history—Russian intellectual history—and I kept talking about a book that had never been translated by Alexander Herzen—who was known as the first Russian socialist, who was a very good writer and social activist who emigrated from Moscow because of government persecution.
I kept saying to my students, “If this book were available in translation, we would be reading it in this course.” And students got tired of hearing me say that, and one student said to me, “Why don’t you translate it?” And I said, “Because I’m not a translator.” And that got me thinking of who is a translator, and I looked it up online—I didn’t look it up online. I went to the library. It was too early to look it up online. I went to the library and found that most of the translators of Russian novels were academics like me, and I thought I could try my hand at this, so I did.
I decided I would spend the summer—actually, it turned out to be two summers—translating Herzen’s novel called Who Is to Blame?, or Who’s Guilty? is the other translation of the title, and that was my first translation in 1980, and it was successful. Won a prize, sold well… so I decided I would try another one.
With that, I launched my career as a translator. I always saw it as auxiliary to teaching. Teaching was my main career, and translating was something I did on the side—in summers, vacations, and if I could, on a day that I didn’t have teaching responsibilities. But since then, I’ve translated about 25 Russian novels into English.
I have an early morning wake-up call. I wake myself up at 3:00 or 4:00 in the morning, and I translate for a couple of hours, and then I go back to sleep and wake up at 7:30 or 8 o’clock and start my day.
Ian J. Battaglia
You spoke a little bit earlier about trying to figure out who is a translator, and as somebody who got into the practice by doing, I’m curious if you’ve found an answer to that.
Who is a translator in your mind?
Michael Katz
It’s somebody who enjoys reading works by foreign authors and wants to spend time giving people who don’t know the language as close to their original experience in the foreign language as they can.
So that means, on the continuum of accessibility and accuracy, finding a place that’s comfortable but towards the more accessible end. Making the translation as accessible as possible to the general reader and the undergraduate student. Those are my target audiences.
I find that process enjoyable because it’s like having a mini-Russian lesson. I no longer have a Russian teacher, but I have a mini-Russian lesson with my translations every morning; learning more things about the language and more words and more meanings of words, and as I say, it’s a source of great enjoyment and pleasure.
Ian J. Battaglia
How does Russian compare as a language to English?
Michael Katz
Russian has a very interesting verb system. It has fewer tenses than English does.
English inherited its tenses from the romantic side, and Russian has something called aspect, which it shares with classical Greek. So determining whether something is a continuing action or a repeated action on the one hand or a completed action done once and is over with on the other hand is one of the more intriguing intellectual aspects of the process.
Also, Russian has an enormous number of prefixes that modify the meaning of a verb. So you don’t just go. You go to, towards, around, under, over. We do it with prepositions. Russian does it with prefixes. And it seems they’re infinite.
The Russian ear also is more tolerant of repetition than the English or American ear. An author will constantly use the name of a character, repeating it. Porfiry Petrovich is the examining magistrate in Crime and Punishment, and Raskolnikov, when he talks to Porfiry Petrovich, is constantly repeating those names. First name and patronymic, and English and American readers find that very tedious.
I try to get around that first by listing all the characters at the beginning of the book and all their names, and explaining the patronymic or explaining the meaning of the names if they have meanings.
Raskolnikov himself, for example, his last name means “of the schismatics.” So he is somebody who diverges from the mainline train of thought in Russian society.
Russian humor is very subtle, which is surprising. A lot of translators miss the humor in Dostoevsky. He’s actually a very funny writer. He uses political satire, he uses puns, and he enjoys making jokes in the language.
In Brothers Karamazov, the father, Fyodor Karamazov, who’s murdered in the course of the novel, is a jester, a court jester, a clown, and is funny every time he comes on the stage. And other translators, I think, miss out on the humor.
Ian J. Battaglia
Are there any other elements of Dostoevsky that you feel were lacking or missing in earlier translations?
Michael Katz
Russian comes from two sources: the Church Slavic source, which was a language written down by two monks from Macedonia who were sent to Christianize the Slavs, and colloquial Russian, which was being spoken by the residents of the Slavic countries at the time. So Russian has two very different stylistic levels, a low style and a high style, and I think that other translators don’t catch the elegance and the depth of the high style.
So, for example, Father Zosima in Brothers Karamazov speaks beautiful high-style Russian. And his sermons, which are transcribed in book six of Karamazov, are all in this semi-liturgical language, which is very lovely compared to what everybody around him is speaking. And I think that other translators don’t have that ear to catch that higher, more sublime level of language that Dostoevsky uses. He was a very religious person. So he was very familiar with that style of Russian.
On the one hand, you have Father Zosima speaking in this elevated Russian. On the other hand, you have Fyodor Karamazov, the father, using expletives and ridiculously colloquial Russian. When the two of them get together and have a conversation at the end of book one, it’s really very funny. They’re speaking different languages.
Ian J. Battaglia
How do you approach translation in terms of making it readable, without stripping away too much of that language?
Michael Katz
Gosh, it’s a difficult question. What I’m finding with The Idiot, which I didn’t find with the previous novels that I translated, is that Dostoevsky’s vocabulary has broadened. So when I look up a word in the dictionary that I don’t know, I see what the first meaning given is, and then I have to look at the second and the third meaning in the dictionary because often Dostoevsky is using the words in original ways that differ from his previous novels. So what I might have guessed the word meant isn’t appropriate. I have to look further.
So I translate into that second or third meaning and then read through the whole draft to make sure that it reads smoothly and is understandable to a non-Russian speaker.
Ian J. Battaglia
I’m fascinated by the idea of just approaching Dostoevsky, who’s arguably the greatest writer of all time.
How do you feel about Dostoevsky? And what is it like to translate somebody like that?
Michael Katz
I don’t think he’s the greatest writer of all time; but I think he’s right up there with the best. He and Tolstoy share the honors.
Dostoevsky writes quickly, and he prefers actions that happen suddenly. His favorite adverb is the word suddenly. I looked through his prose for the word gradually or slowly, and you can’t find it. Every character who says something or behaves in a certain way, he’s doing so all of a sudden or suddenly.
And I think that speaks to his attention paid to feelings, and not to thinking. So if you think, you pause, and you consider, you ponder. But if you react suddenly, it comes right from the heart, and that’s the sort of existence that he prefers.
The other word that I find is the most frequent of all in Dostoevsky is the adjective strange. When he says something is strange, it is off the continuum. It’s not just strange; it’s bizarre. And he says at one point, “The kind of experience, human experience that interested me is always at the extremities of action.” And that’s certainly true.
In Notes from Underground, when Lisa, the prostitute, opens her arms and offers herself and her love to the underground man, everything takes place very suddenly.
And if you look at the prose, Dostoevsky repeats that word four or five times. Editors write to me when they’re working on copy editing my prose and say, “Can’t you find another synonym for suddenly?” And I answer, “No! He’s the one who wrote it; I’m just translating. He’s using that word over and over again to emphasize the abruptness and the genuineness of the feeling that comes with it.”
Ian J. Battaglia
I’ve never thought about that abruptness having connotations of immediacy or directness like you mentioned. It’s a common piece of advice for fiction writers to get rid of all the adverbs and remove “suddenly.”
With Dostoevsky, did you look at any of the other translations while you were doing the work?
Michael Katz
Yes, I keep them nearby, and when I get stuck on a sentence or a phrase after puzzling over it for a while in Russian, I will look and see how other translators coped.
Often, I find that their solution is what I don’t want to do. But every now and then there’ll be a word or a phrase that is precisely what it means, and I have two choices. I can ignore it and say “They thought of it first, so it’s theirs,” or I can borrow it and use it because it’s the best possible alternative.
And I view translation somewhat as a collaborative enterprise, so if another translator who came before me, back to Constance Garnett at the beginning of the 20th century or Pevear and Volokhonsky now, gives me something, I take it. I borrow it—and I give an acknowledgment to the source, in my introduction, and say, “I’m grateful to the following translators who have coped admirably with this text.”
Ian J. Battaglia
Can you think of any examples?
Michael Katz
In Karamazov, there are a few chapters called “Laceration.” “Laceration in the Fresh Air,” “Laceration in the Tavern,” and I forget where the third one is.
Laceration is a five-dollar word. And the Russian word is надрыв (nadrif), which is much shorter and abrupt. So I thought, “What do I do?”
Some translators call it a rupture, which to me sounds too surgical. Or a break, which is too short and not colorful enough. So I decided to go back to what Constance Garnett uses. She was the first one to translate Karamazov, and she uses laceration.
I adopted that translation, and a number of scholars wrote to me after I published the book and said, “Thank you for keeping her word. It’s not exact, but it’s the best we can do in English,” and I’m afraid I agree.
Pevear and Volokhonsky seem to follow Russian syntax, for my money, too literally. Their language comes out a bit awkward and clumsy. And I think that they don’t make enough compromises with spoken, written English.
I’m writing in English for a reader of no Russian, a reader of English and American literature. It has to be accessible to that kind of reader and not follow Russian syntax, word order, or grammar.
Ian J. Battaglia
I recently reread Homer, rereading a couple of translations side by side; primarily the Fagles and then also the much more contemporary Emily Wilson translation.
How they approach the language is so drastically different, and it gives such a completely different character to the work.
Michael Katz
Which one do you prefer?
Ian J. Battaglia
I liked the Fagles more. I think the dramatic nature of it lent itself to the subject matter a bit more.
Michael Katz
Sometimes it’s the one you’re brought up with or the one you read first or the one you studied in school.
Ian J. Battaglia
And that could be part of it too. I guess with a classic work like this—a Homer or Dostoevsky—why is it important to give people the choice of translations? Why is it important to give a reader options?
Michael Katz
Well, I hope I’m not just giving them options. I hope they’re adopting my translations! (laughs)
A lot of people write to me, and I get notes saying, “Thank you for making the book so accessible,” or “Thank you for the humor which you capture.”
I think the important thing is to retranslate a book that you think is not very well served by the existing translations. And to make it more popular, more accessible.
The sales of Karamazov have surprised the translator, and even the publisher. It’s doing very well, and I’m delighted, which means that people are rediscovering the book if they read it once a long time ago, or discovering it for the first time to see what all the fuss is about.
Ian J. Battaglia
Yeah, it’s so great. I think there’s plenty of people for whom Dostoevsky is a “Mount Rushmore” type author, and almost to have this excuse like, “Oh, there’s an incredible new translation out. You have to read it.” It’s as exciting a reason as any to jump in right now, right?
Maybe this is a bit too “inside baseball,” but in terms of your own translations, is there anything you think other translators might react against?
Michael Katz
That’s funny you ask because with my very first translation, that Herzen novel, it was published in England and in the US. Some of the British readers found the style, and I quote, “too lively.” (laughs)
I think that means too American; not staid and English enough, British enough.
But I haven’t had any criticism of my translations that points the finger and says they’re too X, Y, or Z.
Ian J. Battaglia
I think I’d take “too lively.”
Michael Katz
I was flattered. I didn’t think it was an insult.
Ian J. Battaglia
We spoke a little bit about the differences between English and Russian, and also the distance you try to strike between the English and Russian.
In terms of language, is there anything that you try to accentuate rather than tone down?
Michael Katz
The humor, certainly, as I said before. I want to make sure the reader is aware that Dostoevsky is using humor as one of his tools. The same with the Church Slavic and churchy parts.
A good example is in Crime and Punishment, towards the beginning when the drunk, Marmeladov, has pinned Raskolnikov down and is telling his life story and goes from a drunken ramble to a high-style sermon where he says “Pity me. Christ said, ’Suffer the children to come unto me.’ Here’s what Christ could have said,” and he then puts words in Christ’s mouth and gives a beautiful sermon—and this is in part one of the book before you really know what Crime and Punishment is going to be about.
That high style, that’s one of the areas that I fault other translators for not rising to.
Ian J. Battaglia
I hadn’t known about that as a feature of Russian as a language.
Michael Katz
English has two sources of vocabulary as well: the Latin side—romantic languages—and the Germanic side.
The famous example is the difference between intercourse on the romantic side and the Germanic side with the four-letter word that you don’t say on film.
Those two mean the same thing, but one is high style, and the other is low style. The translator has to know when to use one and when to use the other.
Ian J. Battaglia
Is there anything else you’d like people to know about Dostoevsky?
Michael Katz
You asked before about how he ranks as a writer, and I would put him in, let’s say, the top 10 writers of world literature, along with Tolstoy.
If they can occupy two of the 10 spots, that’s pretty good.
FICTION
By Fyodor Dostoevsky
Translated by Michael R. Katz
Liveright Publishing Corporation
Published July 21, 2026
