Sitting beneath a tree with a portable bilingual copy of Tool in my lap I reached index-card TWO 13, .bringing the familiar image of the miniature chess-set with “tickly-looking little holes bored in the squares.”

On page 85 of the Brasilian translation I read:  OS BURAQUINHOS QUE PARECIAM CARRAPATOS NAS  CASAS.

 

In this version into Portuguese there are no more squirming  orifices ready for penetration by pin-sized pawns or larger  noblemen.

Ticks (carrapatos), those horrible black things often met in rural settings inhabit the “ticklish-looking holes”  

 

How about that for a translation???  I simply cannot get over this amusing, but strangely un-nabokovian but not strictly incorrect, image. Black ticks inside their little houses on the chess-board…

Who will come to rescue our Laura?

Jansy Mello