I think it is just the opposite, and I'm not sure how much Dostoevsky thought about excultural readers. The setting is supposed to be familiar, or at least feel familiar, to many of the readers, to the point where certain names are redacted to give the feeling that the author is "protecting the innocent", or avoiding accusations of libel, because you are actually reading a true story and not something made out of whole cloth.
The first line of the original is (asterisks mine, indicating where Dostoyevski intentionally did not write the name of a street or bridge):
"В начале июля, в чрезвычайно жаркое время, под вечер, один молодой человек вышел из своей каморки, которую нанимал от жильцов в **С — **м переулке, на улицу и медленно, как бы в нерешимости, отправился к **К —** ну мосту."
In English:
"On an exceptionally hot evening early in July a young man came out of the garret in which he lodged in S. Place and walked slowly, as though in hesitation, towards K. bridge."
I assumed that the redactions were not in the original, and that the translators were avoiding complexity by presenting the English-speaking audience with a digstible form.
I guess I underestimated the translators, or the reading public. Thanks for the correction.
PS: I did not mean that Dostoevsky intended excultural readers to feel unfamiliar, but that excultural readers should expect (and maybe prefer) a certain amount of unfamiliarity in foreign works. I thought the translators were insulating their readers from it, which felt inauthentic.
I'm even more bothered by the idea of the translators "filling in the blanks" that were intentionally placed by the author. Curious that both translators who did so, used roughly the same names for each -- perhaps they are the real names that we know the author was referencing? Still, that's a bit presumptuous, I think.
The first line of the original is (asterisks mine, indicating where Dostoyevski intentionally did not write the name of a street or bridge):
"В начале июля, в чрезвычайно жаркое время, под вечер, один молодой человек вышел из своей каморки, которую нанимал от жильцов в **С — **м переулке, на улицу и медленно, как бы в нерешимости, отправился к **К —** ну мосту."
In English:
"On an exceptionally hot evening early in July a young man came out of the garret in which he lodged in S. Place and walked slowly, as though in hesitation, towards K. bridge."