[asark]

I did a pretty deep survey of the various translations (there are a lot) and landed on Maxwell Staniforth's as the best balance between readability and faithfulness to the original language. It's a fairly straight translation rendered in modern-enough English, unlike some of the older ones which add difficulty due to the age of their language, pointlessly, since it's a translation anyway and they're (obviously) so much more recent than the original that they are in no way contemporary so there's no claim to be made on that merit, as one might for, say, a 19th century translation of Jules Verne.

I think the only hardcover is from Folio Society, so medium-pricey as fine books go, but his translation's also the one used by at least some editions of the work from Penguin Classics, so, cheapish paperbacks. I'm having trouble verifying which editions of theirs are his translation, but it may be all of them.