The Overcoat

Vladimir Nabokov once wrote that reading a poor translation of “The Overcoat” “leaves [him] with the impression that [he is] witnessing a murder and can do nothing about it” (Nabokov). Language choice is important in any work of literature, especially short stories. For instance, many versions of “The Overcoat” choose to translate Akaky Akakievich’s first garment as a “cloak,” which does not connote the feminine “dressing gown” that the original Russian does. This gendered distinction is one of the ways his coworkers taunt him. Similarly, some translations refer to the supernatural apparitions at the end as “ghosts” instead of “corpses.” To do so obscures Gogol’s delight in the absurd and semi-macabre. Translating Akaky Akakievich’s reappearance as a ghost may draw English comparisons to the work of Charles Dickens, where souls return to right past wrongs and stick up for the impoverished lower classes, as in A Christmas Carol. However, even though the two classics were published just one year apart, Gogol’s corpse of the poor clerk bears little resemblance to Dickens’s Ghost of Christmas Past. Gogol’s writing is satirical and strikes the reader as creepy. Diction can help convey such tonal differences to readers in all languages.