Michael Frayn

So I said, why don't you ask me to translate from a language I do know, Russian?

I don't think the dramaturg had ever thought of that before.

He was rather struck by the idea.

So that's how it began.

Well, everyone translates Chekhov.

I'm sure you've translated Chekhov.

There can't be many citizens left who haven't, because everyone knows what Chekhov said in his plays, and you don't need to look at the original.

But I think sometimes, if you look at the original text, you get a bit of a surprise.

It's not quite as you've supposed from all the versions you've seen.

Well, I think for years people didn't realise that Chekhov was a funny writer.

And all the early translations of Chekhov...

were just sort of strange and about these remote, weird people who had a completely different view of life from us.

And it's not really like that.

Chekhov was a comic writer long before he was a playwright.

And he wrote an enormous amount of comic stuff.

And there's always comedy in his things, however serious.

And his characters are not really all that different from middle-class English people.

A lot of what people thought was strange was the kind of self-deprecating humour that English middle-class people use to protect themselves, and so do Russians.

Rather smaller cheques than you get from writing your own works.

Rather smaller cheques than Alan has got from writing his own works.