I have just read "Steppenwolf" in a Russian translation and was completely amazed by it. I wanted to give this book to my English-speaking friend but when I went to the bookstore and looked at the translation by Basil Creighton and edited by Joseph Mileck and Horst Frenz. The translator's note said that the translation has been "improved" by simplifying some words and the sentence structure. I picked my favourite portion of the book and read it in English. It conjured up no emotions (perhaps because I read it out of context and wasn't used to the translator's style) and found that in this "simplification" a lot of the meaning was lost.
Did anyone else find this particular translation similarly inadequate and if so, can someone recommend a better one? Or did I simply judge too quickly and this is a good translation after all?