: Re: Untranslated passages in translated works I constantly find in translations of classic works untranslated passages. In English translations of Russian novels I find dialogue or narrative in French

@Michele605

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I am not a translator, but as I understand that craft the primary goal is to render a text from one language into another while keeping the author's intentions and stylistic choices as intact as possible. In the case of a Russian novel with French phrases -- well, French would be equally foreign to a Russian readership as it would to an English one (i.e. in the 19th century -- when most of 'classic' Russian literature was written -- the wealthy & educated classes who made up a majority of readers in either country would be expected to know French, as it was the lingua franca of Europe; in the modern world this is not the case, but such are the perils of reading classic literature), so it would make sense to leave those phrases untranslated.

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