-------- Original Message --------
According
to bird classification, 'robin' belongs to the family of thrushes,
which is exactly 'drozd/' It looks like it, except that Russian drozd
has no such colorful breast. But it larger than 'malinovka' and sings
unlike it. Besides, a PURLY POETIC REASON: '"Robin drozd daet sdachi"
sounds right as a translation of "Robin Cock fights back" (RLSK); with
'malinovka' it does not work either semantically or phonetically. S.
Il'in often "drunk on his own wines", but he has a good ear.
Quite right, but I'm speaking about the translation of
'robin' in Pale Fire. The avian name that Kinbote finds in his
"ornithological work" should be (in translation) hard to fit to the
bird (which must be drozd, an American robin) he sees. Il'in translates
the name of the bird seen by Kinbote correctly, but he looses the
sentence's meaning in the process (he should have translated the
name that Kinbote looks up in his reference book and that is hard to
fit to the bird K. sees). In that sense, VeN's 'malinovka' is here a
perfect translation.
Alexey