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Abstract During the last 10 to 15 years, the Dutch-language book market has witnessed an increase in the number of Dostoevsky retranslations. Whereas some observers explain this development by referring to the ageing of previous translations, the translators themselves tend to justify their translations by calling them “better translations”. By offering a comparative contextual and textual analysis of early and recent Dostoevsky retranslations into Dutch, this article tries to explain the phenomena of retranslation in general and of recent Dostoevsky retranslation into Dutch in particular. It does so by going beyond the popular assumptions, which show close ties to the Retranslation Hypothesis. On the basis of a historical analysis, which shows that the first Dostoevsky retranslations into Dutch were more oriented towards acceptability than the first translations, it is argued that the concept of norms, as conceived by Gideon Toury, remains a better tool than the Retranslation Hypothesis to interpret and to explain the phenomenon of the Dostoevsky retranslations into Dutch. However, because of translators’ possibilities to go against the norms, which is illustrated through the work of contemporary Dutch translator Hans Boland, norms too fail to provide us with a full explanation. Author Biography Pieter Boulogne, KU Leuven University, Leuven, Pieter Boulogne (1982), PhD in Slavonic and East European Studies, is assistant professor of Russian literature at KU Leuven and visiting professor of Slavonic Studies at Ghent University. Since October 2018, he is the director of CETRA, the KU Leuven Centre for Translation Studies. He is also a member of CERES, the Centre for Reception Studies of the same university. His main research interests lie at the crossroads of history of Russian literature, descriptive translation studies and imagology. Currently, he is exploring activist art in post-Soviet Russia. Once in a blue moon, he indulges in literary translation from Russian into Dutch. References Abrahams, Roger. “De vertalers: ‘Dostojevski is mijn core business’.” Roger Abrahams. Taal & Geschiedenis, rogerabrahams.nl/vertalers-dostojevski-is-core-business/. Accessed 31 Mar. 2018.

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