35.1039, Review: Vladimir Nabokov as an Author-Translator: Loison-Charles (2022)

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LINGUIST List: Vol-35-1039. Mon Mar 25 2024. ISSN: 1069 - 4875.

Subject: 35.1039, Review: Vladimir Nabokov as an Author-Translator: Loison-Charles (2022)

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Date: 25-Mar-2024
From: Natalie Operstein [natacha at ucla.edu]
Subject: Translation: Loison-Charles (2022)


Book announced at https://linguistlist.org/issues/34.13

AUTHOR: Julie Loison-Charles
TITLE: Vladimir Nabokov as an Author-Translator
SUBTITLE: Writing and Translating between Russian, English and French
SERIES TITLE: Bloomsbury Advances in Translation
PUBLISHER: Bloomsbury Publishing
YEAR: 2022

REVIEWER: Natalie Operstein

SUMMARY

Is writing a form of translation? Is translation a form of writing?
How do the two underpin and reinforce each other in the creative
output of a bilingual writer? These questions are fundamental to Julie
Loison-Charles's book “Vladimir Nabokov as an Author-Translator”,
which seeks the answers through in-depth immersion into three related
themes: Nabokov's relation to pseudotranslation, the practice and
theory behind his translation of Eugene Onegin into English, and his
role as co-translator of his novels into French. Each theme forms the
subject of a separate, self-contained part of the book.
Part 1 examines Nabokov's relation to pseudotranslation, a literary
technique which consists in disguising the originality of the author's
work by presenting it as a translation (e.g., from a lost original in
another language). The issue is approached from a variety of angles:
Nabokov's teaching of well-known pseudotranslated literary texts
(e.g., his lectures on Quixote), his translation of literary texts
containing pseudotranslations (such as Tatyana's letter to Onegin),
and pseudotranslations present in his novels (e.g., Pnin) are all
brought to bear. Loison-Charles argues that the function of
pseudotranslations in Nabokov's oeuvre is "to reaffirm his attachment
to the Russian literature of his own past and its main figure,
Pushkin" (p. 79). The main thrust of the discussion is summarized in
the title of the closing chapter: "Are Nabokov's Novels in English
'Pseudotranslations'?". In it, Loison-Charles tackles the intriguing
(and unresolvable) issue of the precise nature of the composition
process engaged in by bilingual writers, in general, and by Nabokov,
in particular.
Part 2 focuses on Nabokov's dual role as an author and translator in
his translation of Eugene Onegin into English. The overarching
question that informs this part of the book is whether the two roles
are separable; or, in the author's words, "where Nabokov's faithful
translation of Pushkin's idiosyncratic language stops and where his
own brand of English, as an author, starts" (p. 100). The discussion
unfolds against the backcloth of Nabokov's lifelong reflection and
changing views on the practice of translation, which evolved, over the
course of his life and literary career, from an insistence on free
(domesticating, target-text oriented) translation to a preference for
literal (foreignizing, source-text oriented) one. Nabokov's
translation of Eugene Onegin is designedly faithful to the source
text, with the attendant consequences for the English-language
version. Loison-Charles illustrates, with a breadth of examples, two
translational strategies which end up rendering awkward the English of
the translation: Russification of the syntax and Gallicization of the
vocabulary. While the former aims to achieve the "line-by-line fit"
between the original and the translation, the latter performs the
subtler function of replicating in English "the Gallic dimension of
Pushkin's language" (p. 110). With this aim in mind, Nabokov
occasionally employs French loanwords in preference to native
equivalents, or uses different words in the translation where the same
word appears in the original. His justifications for these
translational choices, ranging from literary to linguistic and to
cultural-historical, are discussed at length.
The last part of the book takes a close look at Nabokov's
collaboration in the French translations of his novels. It is broken
down into two substantive chapters. In the first, Loison-Charles
scrutinizes Nabokov's published and unpublished correspondence with
his translators, with an eye to understanding his working procedures
when collaborating on the translation of his work, as well as his
interpersonal relationships with the translators as individuals. Given
this focus, the errors, mistranslations and "little careless mistakes"
themselves, mentioned in Nabokov's letters are, tantalizingly, not
discussed. In the second chapter, Loison-Charles examines the four
types of elements whose translations into French were supplied by
Nabokov himself: botanical and zoological terms, puns, poetry and
foreign-language incrustations. Unlike the previous chapter, this one
presents a number of examples, such as the word for hickory in Pale
Fire, the French in Ada, and the puns in Lolita. The closing chapter,
"Should Nabokov Be Retranslated?", makes an argument for the validity
of multiple translations as a way of accessing the original text.
The brief conclusion is devoted to the state of translation within the
ambit of Nabokov studies and the teaching of Nabokov's work.

EVALUATION

Reflecting on his translation of Josep Pla's "Quadern gris" [The Gray
Notebook], the Spanish writer Dionisio Ridruejo described the
translation process essentially as one of rewriting: each language has
a structure of its own, says Ridruejo, and what is thought in one
needs to be rethought in the other ("las lenguas tienen su estructura,
y lo que se piensa en una hay que volver a pensarlo en otra")
(Ridruejo 1983: 24).
The quotation above is just one of the many attempts to analyze and
theorize the relationship between writing and translation, which, in
spite of its enormous interest, continues to remain elusive. In the
case of bilingual writers actively engaged in both, this relationship
acquires additional layers and dimensions of complexity. By exploring
it in one of the twentieth-century's most original and least
classifiable authors, one who is regarded as a superb stylist in both
his major languages, this book contributes data, discussion, and
insights to a range of specialist fields, from translation studies to
literary theory and linguistics.
For the linguist reader, perhaps the most interesting aspect of the
book is the discussion of Nabokov's actual translational solutions.
Aspects of interest include, among others, language-contact effects in
Nabokov's translation of Eugene Onegin, where his conscious striving
for literalism of the translation has as a surface by-effect
Russification of the syntax and Gallicization of the vocabulary; the
use of synonyms to render different shades of meaning of the original
word (p. 117); rendering archaisms in the original with archaisms in
the target language, in some cases “to revive a nuance of meaning
present in the ordinary Russian term but lost in the English one” (p.
134); translational equivalents when the original contains foreign
material, such as calques or outright loans; and the rendering of
puns.
In some of Nabokov's translational choices, readability for the
present-day reader takes second place to historical accuracy, as when
Pushkin's сладкиe мeчты <sladkie mečty> and сладoстныe мeчтания
<sladostnye mečtanija> are rendered not with ‘sweet dreams’ but rather
with ‘delicious reverie’ or ‘sweet delusions’: Nabokov explains that,
just as the Russian phrases, these collocations of eighteenth-century
English poets were calqued on “[t]he ‘douces chimères’ of French
elegies” (p. 105; Nabokov 2000: 75).
“[T]he Gallic dimension of Pushkin’s language” sometimes becomes more
explicit in the translation due to rendering of what in Russian are
merely French calques with straightforward French loanwords in
English. One example of this is the rendering of чeрты <čerty> (“Мнe
нравились eго чeрты” <Mne nravilis’ ego čerty>) with ‘traits’ rather
than features (“I liked his traits”): the phrase eго чeрты <ego čerty>
is calqued on the French <ses traits>, hence the choice of ‘traits’
over ‘features’ (p. 109). “Кувшины с яблочной водой” <kuvšiny s
jabločnoj vodoj>, similarly, become in translation ‘pitchers of
eau-de-pomme’, яблочная вода ‘apple water’ being a calque from the
French (p. 113).
Some of the translational choices have arguably more idiosyncratic
justifications, as, for instance, when малиновый <malinovyj> as a
color term is rendered in English with ‘framboise’ rather than
‘raspberry’ because, for Nabokov, the French term is closer to the
Russian one in that it “seems to convey a richer, more vivid sense of
red than does English ‘raspberry’” (p. 115).
In the French translations of his novels, Nabokov occasionally added
English words not present in the original to reference items that are
alien to the target culture; a by-effect of these additions is greater
explicitness of the target-language text. For example, the sentence
from Lolita “All she wanted from life was to be one day a strutting
and prancing baton twirler or a jitterbug” becomes in French “Elle
n’avait d’autre ambition dans la vie que de danser le jitterbug et
être une des drum majorettes de l’équipe locale de rugby” (p. 207).
Here, the added English term ‘drum majorette’ is clarified by an
explicit reference to the sport.
Loison-Charles’s unhurried discussion of these translational
conundrums and their surrounding cultural, critical, and historical
context, with an occasional glimpse of the agonizing process by which
Nabokov arrived at his final choices, will no doubt offer many a
pleasant moment of discovery to both experts and aficionados.

REFERENCES

Nabokov, Vladimir. 2000. Problems of translation: "Onegin" in English.
The Translation Studies Reader, Lawrence Venuti (ed.), 71-83. London
and New York: Routledge.

Ridruejo, Dionisio. 1973. De nuevo con Josep Pla. Destino 1.873:
24-25.

ABOUT THE REVIEWER

Natalie Operstein's research interests center on language contact,
phonology, and language change. Her publications include "The Lingua
Franca: Contact-Induced Language Change in the Mediterranean" (2022),
"Zaniza Zapotec" (2015), "Consonant Structure and Prevocalization"
(2010), "Valence Changes in Zapotec", ed. with A.H. Sonnenschein
(2015) and "Language Contact and Change in Mesoamerica and Beyond",
ed. with K. Dakin and C. Parodi (2017).



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