Larissa Volokhonsky

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Larissa Volokhonsky (Russian: Ларисса Волохонский)" is a Russian-born translator who frequently collaborates with her American-born husband, Richard Pevear, on translations of works mainly in Russian, but also French, Italian, and Greek. Their translations have been nominated three times and twice won the PEN/Book-of-the-Month Club Translation Prize (for Tolstoy's Anna Karenina and Dostoevsky's The Brothers Karamazov). Their translation of Dostoevsky's The Idiot also won the first Efim Etkind Translation Prize.

The husband-and-wife team live in Paris and are said to work in a two-step process: Volokhonsky prepares a literal translation of the Russian text, and Pevear adapts the literal translation into polished and stylistically appropriate English. After that first draft, Pevear says, "Larissa goes over it, raising questions. And then we go over it again. I produce another version, which she reads against the original. We go over it one more time, and then we read it twice more in proof." ^[1] Pevear and Volokhonsky have recently finished a translation of Leo Tolstoy's War and Peace, published on 16 October 2007 by Alfred A. Knopf.^[2]

Volokhonsky and Pevear were interviewed about the art of translation for Ideas, the long running Canadian Broadcasting Company (CBC) radio documentary. It was a 3-part program called "In Other Words" and involved discussions with many leading translators. The program was podcast in April 2007.