The Red and The Black - Translations

Translations

Le Rouge et le Noir, Chronique du XIXe siècle (1830) was first translated to English c. 1900; the best-known translation, The Red and the Black (1926), by Charles Kenneth Scott-Moncrief, has been, like his other translations, characterised as one of his “fine, spirited renderings, not entirely accurate on minor points of meaning . . . Scott Moncrieff’s versions have not really been superseded”. The version by Robert M. Adams, for the Norton Critical Editions series, is also highly regarded; it “is more colloquial; his edition includes an informative section on backgrounds and sources, and excerpts from critical studies”; it is modernized compared to Moncrieff, but also contains many errors on detailed points. Burton Raffel’s 2006 translation for the Modern Library is sometimes criticized, e.g., as “actually a vulgar, anachronistic retelling of Stendhal’s novel. I recall abandoning it in disgust when the main character refers to his life as a total ‘blast’ ”. In its stead, that reviewer recommends C. K. Scott-Moncrieff’s translation, as revised by scholar Ann Jefferson, (Everyman paperback, ISBN 0-460-87643-0)