Vladimir Nabokov

NABOKV-L post 0013555, Thu, 12 Oct 2006 16:00:35 +0400

Subject
Re: help with translation!
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Dear Miss Tarvi,

I don't claim that I have kept in my translation 100% of the original (even the author would have failed it), and if I had really managed to render 81% of all the things that Nabokov has put in Ada (which I doubt) it would have been a great success and I could have been proud of my achievement.

Any serious reader who knows Ada (the original, of course) and who would open one of its Russian translations (only to shut the book next moment) will at once see that it is all wrong, to put it mildly. In regard to some translations you mention in your list even the figure 8% would have been a compliment and an exaggeration.

I don't believe that you can properly evaluate my translation using your method (which no doubt is good having allowed you to defend the dissertation) and on the example of only four relatively short fragments.

I am not "elbowing my way up" (I'm not so eager to publish my translation - which I know will be published and acclaimed one day - as you believe me to be), I just tried to explain why I preferred to publish my paper on Ada in English.


>Good luck to you in finding a translator for your essay.
Thank you for wishing me that!

>And let's hope that the resulting translation will not be "awful and having nothing to do with the original". Sometimes it happens.
It won't happen in the case of my article, I can assure you.

best wishes,
Alexey Sklyarenko

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