El arte de la traducción de Vladimir Nabokov. Problemas de recepción y transmigración en la traducción (original) (raw)
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Writer's Change of Language: Nabokov and Others
This research focuses on a writer’s choice of language, primarily on Vladimir Nabokov’s choice, but also on Joseph Brodsky and Vasily Aksyonov’s. All three writers are prominent in the context of Russian literature; they are recognized as those who possess a great mastery of language, and they have, each in their own right, a wide readership. All three of these Russian-born writers had written and published works in Russian before switching to English, which occurred, in all three cases, late in life. Nabokov, the author of a number of widely acclaimed works in both his primary languages, Russian and English, switched to English determinedly and almost entirely. Nabokov represents a very important figure of a rare highly successful metamorphosis, not only cross-language but also cross-cultural. Joseph Brodsky was somewhat less successful, but he is still a widely acknowledged writer in both English and Russian. And finally Vasily Aksyonov represents a telling “failure” as “an English-writing author project,” remaining an important writer in Russian. What was supposed to become his masterpiece in English, a novel “The Yolk of the Egg,” was deemed unmarketable by publishers, perhaps not as much in connection with the author’s linguistic ability as with his writing strategies.
Nabokov's Transition from Russian to English: Repudiation or Evolution?
Nabokov Studies, 2007
Nabokov was unsparing in criticism, but outsiders-and perhaps even insiders-are surprised how sparing Nabokovians tend to be to other Nabokovians. As editor of Nabokov Studies, Zoran Kuzmanovich would like more controversy in the Nabokov world. I don't believe in controversy for his sake, or for its own sake, but I do believe we should always be ready to challenge our own and others' strong opinions and confident claims by testing them against the evidence. Five years ago in the Cambridge Companion to Nabokov, Alexander Dolinin offered a "strong" reading of Nabokov's career. 1 He characterized Nabokov's early years as a period of creatively combative engagement with the Russian literary tradition but his later years, some time after his switch to English, in terms of, first, a disavowal of that former engagement, second, a diminution of his own Russian achievement, and third, a "mythmaking" self-portrayal as "a born cosmopolitan" never attached to anything (53). Given that these claims were made by the foremost Russian Nabokovian, in an authoritative series from a major academic press, given that they would rewrite our sense of Nabokov's late career and his character, they deserve scrutiny. Dolinin's claims prove far more mythical than Nabokov's pronouncements on his own career: the evidence contradicts them at every turn. After showing this, I pass beyond the negative to explain in a new way why Nabokov continually drove himself to develop artistically, and why he was hard not just on some of his own past work but also on the work even of authors he revered. High standards lurk behind his strong
Nabokov's " triangulation " between Europe and America was characterized by different stages. The aim of this paper is to analyse the elements that led to the writing and rewriting of Nabokov's memoirs. Starting from the concepts of displacement and misplacement in Brodsky's most prominent essays, my work will carry out a comparative analysis of the most significant phrases and expressions in Nabokov's final account of his life, Speak Memory (1966), and in Drugie berega (Other Shores), 1954, the Russian version of Nabokov's first autobiography. It will point out that the former represents a further revision and, thus, an intratextual expansion of the latter, owing to a process of cultural and linguistic enrichment. I will then focus on the features of Speak Memory from a semiotic angle. The autobiography mingles elements of the Russian world with the ones of the American context, and using the European setting as a transitional space in-between. Furthermore, the paper will employ Steiner's theories on bilingual people's neurological mechanisms, as well as Moro's recent theories on cognitive neurosciences, to analyse the process which encouraged Nabokov not to relinquish his mother tongue. It will highlight the different " boundaries of Babel " in the work from a neurolinguistic perspective, as borders separating different cognitive areas, thus " forging " Nabokov's autobiography as a unique output built on different cultural texts and contexts.
Autotradução e a autobiografia de Nabókov
2016
This paper tries to explore authors’ self-identity in their self-translated autobiographies through a reading of Vladimir Nabokov’s self-writing in two languages and presented in three different forms with three different titles. Nabokov’s autobiography is a twofold translation on the one hand and three different life-writings on the other hand. The first version was written in English and entitled Conclusive Evidence, in which the author seems to be trying to provide evidence for his place in a foreign culture. The second book is the translation of the above-mentioned book, but it was done by the author himself, he approached to this process very creatively, courageously adapting it to a new audience. This Russian version was entitled Druqie bereqa, where Nabokov discuss his life in other shores to his compatriots. This book does not include all parts of the first version, and the author chooses suitable information to affect on Russian soul. The third version Speak Memory is the m...
Études de Stylistique Anglaise, 2016
L’alternance codique est un trait prédominant de l’écriture en anglais de Nabokov. Cependant, cette logique de juxtaposition des langues laisse parfois la place à l’hybridité, ce qui le rapproche linguistiquement et stylistiquement des écrivains créoles. En effet, le style de Nabokov est parfois créolisé, dans le sens glissantien du terme. Cet article étudie dans un premier temps les romans Lolita et Ada en se concentrant sur leur hybridité lexicale et syntaxique et sur deux langues macaroniques qui sont en permanence associées à l’érotisme. Puis, l’article analyse les deux langues que Nabokov a inventées et utilisées abondamment dans deux de ses romans. Dans Bend Sinister, le « vernaculaire » – un mélange de russe et d’allemand – est la langue du régime totalitaire du roman et a pour contrepoint un autre idiome hybride, basé cette fois sur le français, qui défie la tyrannie avec le pouvoir de suggestion poétique qui est propre aux langues étrangères. Dans Pale Fire, le « zemblien » est la langue créolisée d’un exilé déchiré entre ses deux identités et qui parle une langue qui ne fait que révéler sa folie par le retour du refoulé linguistique. Vladimir Nabokov makes a predominant use of code-switching in the novels he wrote in English. However, he occasionally indulges in hybridity, which makes him resemble, linguistically and stylistically speaking, Creole writers. Nabokov’s style is indeed creolized, in the sense of Glissant’s philosophy, and his hybridization of tongues is manifest in four of Nabokov’s novels. This paper first focuses on Lolita and Ada by studying lexical and syntactical hybridity as well as two macaronic tongues which are always associated with eroticism. It then studies two forged languages used extensively by Nabokov. In Bend Sinister, the “vernacular” is defined by the author as “a mongrel blend of Slavic and Germanic” and is the language of the totalitarian regime in the novel; it is contrasted with another hybrid idiom, based on French, which challenges tyranny with the poetic power of suggestion inherent to foreign languages. In Pale Fire, “Zemblan” is the creolized language of an exile torn between his two identities; this tongue reveals his madness through the return of the linguistically repressed.
2017
Raguet, C. (2017). "El arte de la traducción de Vladimir Nabokov. Problemas de recepción y transmigración en la traducción". Estudios de Teoría Literaria. Revista digital: artes, letras y humanidades, 6 (12), 25-37. Esta obra se encuentra bajo una Licencia Creative Commons Atribución-NoComercial-CompartirIgual 4.0 Internacional. 25 El arte de la traducción de Vladimir Nabokov Problemas de recepción y transmigración en la traducción Resumen Los propósitos de este artículo son: i) analizar las relaciones de Vladimir Nabokov como autor multilingüe con la traducción al enfrentarse al exilio, y con la publicación de una de sus novelas en una lengua en que sabía escribir; ii) explorar las actitudes de Nabokov hacia la traducción en uno de sus libros, sus deseos de ser reconocido como autor y de pulir su estilo en la nueva lengua-cultura; iii) presentar factores como la identidad personal y cultural, y también las necesidades financieras de manera ligada al exilio y como elemento...
Translation Studies: Retrospective and Prospective Views, 20/2017, nr. 2, Editura Casa Cărții de Știință, Cluj-Napoca, 2017
The present article is centred around Vladimir Nabokov's autobiographical novel "Speak, Memory" and its translation into the Romanian language. The writer in question is known to be one of the most famous bilingual authors of the 20 th century. His works stand out due to the mixture of a number of specific features typical of both languages that the author used to speak as a native-English and Russian. As far as novel under analysis is concerned, "Speak, Memory" is the second English version of Nabokov's autobiographical novel, which also has its Russian version-"Другие берега". The latter can be regarded, according to the classification suggested by Michaёl Oustinoff, as a case of recreative selftranslation-a type of self-translation that presupposes a high level of independence of the two texts. The writer introduces a large number of changes when elaborating the Russian version, dramatically modifying the original. The reason for this is not difficult to see: he addresses another audience and another reader, with other preoccupations, background and attitude concerning the history of Vladimir Nabokov's homeland. The present paper will look closely at the Romanian translation of "Speak, Memory" under the title "Vorbește, memorie" by Sanda Aronescu. We will try and highlight some possible difficulties concerning the translation of a self-translated text into a third language and underline the advantages a translator can gain due to the bilingual character of the original.
Études de stylistique anglaise, 2015
In his American novels, Russian-born writer Vladimir Nabokov demonstrates his perfect mastery of the English language but he also exhibits his personal multilingualism. This can lead to the impression that his oeuvre was meant for an elite sharing the same idiolect as him. However, I intend to show that the inscription of foreign words (or xenisms) in the midst of English words is actually a means of preparing the monolingual English-speaking reader to Nabokov’s heteroglossia: indeed, the typography and many metalinguistic comments surround the foreign word with a cushion of precaution, so that the reader grows accustomed to this recurring transplant into her mother tongue. Moreover, the reader is granted an intellectual access to xenisms thanks to different types of explanation and translation; but she’s also given a sensory and sensual perception of foreign languages, which become connoted with pleasure and even eroticism. The heteroglossic text turns out to be a palimpsest which puts to the fore what the Nabokovian reader was supposed to be for the demanding writer: “a good reader is bound to make fierce efforts when wrestling with a difficult author, but those efforts can be most rewarding after the bright dust has settled.”
"They Are All Too Foreign and Unfamiliar...": Nabokov's Journey to the American Reader
Readers of Speak, Memory are familiar with Nabokov’s insistence on his early proficiency in English, French, and Russian, and may be tempted to believe that his transition to English was easy. And yet, a close reading of Nabokov’s correspondence with publishers and his literary agent, Altagracia de Jannelli, reveals that this conversion was torturous and required extensive support from native speaker editors and translators. The essay documents Nabokov’s inner turmoil at the time when he began to explore the British and American literary markets. In spite of the publication of Camera Obscura in England (1936) and, as Laughter in the Dark, in the US (1938), his other works’ journeys to the Anglophone reader were strenuous. Nabokov’s afterword to Lolita, comparative analysis of Winifred Roy’s translation of Camera and Nabokov’s self-translation of Laughter, and the correspondence with the literary agent illustrate the writer’s difficulties in conveying stylistic intricacy of his fiction to this new audience.