Russian Life,

“This is a truly non-profit collaboration between cultures,” said Publisher Paul E. Richardson. “Russian authors have donated their works, American translators, designers and editors all worked pro bono, and books will be sold worldwide directly to consumers, using the power of the internet and digital publishing to ensure that the maximum return gets back to Vera Hospice Fund. Readers will receive some truly great works of modern Russian literature and at the same time help provide end-of-life care for countless fellow human beings.”

100 percent of the profits from book sales will be donated to the Vera Hospice Fund, a Russian not-for-profit enterprise dedicated to supporting hospice care. Click here to purchase Life Stories.

“Living in America, it’s easy to forget that most of the world does not speak English; and that much of the world’s literature is not written in English. In order for us to read the best of what the rest of the world writes — and in order for the rest of the world to experience our best literature — skilled writers must work in the art of translation. . . .”

So begins Rick Kleffel in “The Art of Translation,” which ran on NPR’s “All Things Considered” on November 22, 2008.  Kleffel interviews several working translators, including the great Burton Raffel, who expresses dismay at unneeded retranslations of classics when there is so much other literature left untranslated. The article also invites comparison of three translations of a passage from Victor Hugo’s Les Miserables.