There is an important transformation here.  The text presents Van as using
"bloomers" as a substitute for "howlers", a favorite word of VN in his
criticism of translations.  Howlers is a gendered image, if you think
about it (though perhaps you'ld rather not), "schoolboy howlers" (whoever
heard of schoolgirl howlers?) with reference, perhaps to the type of
behavior stereotypically associated with English boarding schools --
another case where interpretation and sexuality run together. (In the
first use of "howlers" in Ada bad translation and bad performance are
sexualized, though not explicitly homosexualized: "At an invisible sign of
Dionysian origin, they all plunged into the violent dance called kurva or
‘ribbon boule’ in the hilarious program whose howlers almost caused Veen
(tingling, and light-loined, and with Prince N.’s rose-red banknote in his
pocket) to fall from his seat." By transforming howlers into bloomers
Nabokov is both feminizing the immediate connotation of a translation
mistake and also aestheticizing such mistakes -- as if they were something
to be culled and put in a bouquet.
Eric Naiman

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