782 SEER, 85, 4, OCTOBER 2007 television is largely Prague-based may have a more profound bearing on the use of language than has generally been appreciated. Not surprisingly, this study has many of the strengths and some of the weaknesses of a typical doctoral thesis. It offers a comprehensive summary and evaluation of existing research and provides very useful cross-references. It also highlights the complexity of language usage in a linguistic settingwhere stylisticallyand functionally divergent forms coexist, and where theprestigious 'standard' variant is not the spoken norm. Most importantly, it offers new statistical information to add to the existing body of data on morphological, phonological and lexical variation, and to substantiate claims that language choice always depends to a significant extent on the purpose of the dialogue and the formality of the situation.However, minor problems with editing and proof-reading detract from the overall quality of thework. Furthermore, the selection of television broadcasts inevitably contains a degree of subjectivity and is not indicative of the speech of the population as a whole. Finally, itwould appear that a lack of space may have prevented the author from developing some of hermore interesting ideas, such as the notion thatwomen may be treated differendy tomen in the television studio, and that this may be reflected in theiruse of language. In summary, despite some shortcomings, this is an original and stimulating study,which is of relevance to all scholars of language variation and change, and presents considerable scope for further research. School of Humanities, Languages and Social Sciences Tom Dickins Universityof Wolverhampton Pushkin, Alexander. 'TheGypsies' and Other NarrativePoems. Translated, with an introduction and notes, by Antony Wood. Engravings by Simon Brett. Angel Books, London, 2006. xl + 116pp. Notes.?14.95. Anyone who has ever attempted to translate nineteenth-century Russian verse into English should make a point of turning to the Afterword of Antony Wood's new book. Subtided 'Pushkin's Voice inEnglish', it is a pithy credo from one of the UK's leading translators of verse. One statement in particular should be writ large above any translator's desk: 'the rise of translation theory in recent decades has not been accompanied by the emergence of any sub stantial body of translation of Pushkin's verse that has impressed as verse in English' (p. 114). Wood makes clear how he intends to remedy thisdeficiency. To begin with he is uncontroversial. He will eschew alternating masculine and feminine rhymes as being too difficult to achieve inRussian. He will have recourse to half-rhymes, since rhymes are far easier to find in an inflected language than in an uninflected language. His other points, however, are more contentious. He is clearly no enthusiast for translations which reproduce exactly themetre and rhyme scheme of the original, considering that their effect 'tends to be self-conscious, self-satisfied,unengaged and disembodied' (p. in). Nor does he think that the number of lines of the original should necessarily be maintained. reviews 783 The Afterword is one of the items added toWood's earlier work 'The Bridegroom', with 'Count Nulin} and 'TheTale of the Golden CockereT,published by Angel Books in 2002 and reviewed in this journal (vol. 82, July 2004, no. 3). These three poems are reproduced here with slight amendments, one of which, fromThe Bridegroom,isparticularly felicitous.Whereas in 2002 we find in the tenth stanza of the poem 'and then a jet/Over Natasha's head', the revised translation reads 'then splash a/Dash of iton Natasha. The new book is some twice the length of the earlier book. The new translations are Pushkin's first 'problem' poema,The Gypsiesand the skazka,The Tale of the Dead Princess and theSevenChampions.True to his credo,Wood does not attempt to replicate Pushkin's iambic tetrameter throughout his transla tion of The Gypsies. His favoured departure from this involves removing the initial unstressed syllable and turning the line into trochaic tetrameter. There are numerous examples of the type 'Life resounds on every side' (p. 3 ). In addition there are variants of this variant, all scrupulously noted in the Afterword. These departures from Pushkin's metre are clearly no oversight and Wood shows considerable expertise in producing...