Not
sure I follow your argument, Jansy. Let me sleep on’t. Bertie Russell
(forgive the familiarity) discussed a related translational problem. He
pondered the English sentences (I paraphrase/reconstruct from memory):
A: “The number three has five letters.”
B: “The number two has three letters.”
A mechanical translation into French might give
A: “Le numero trois a cinq lettres”
Which is fine!! But
B: “Le numero deux a trois lettres,”
which, of course, just ain’t true! BR then corrects both the original
and the translation of B to restore some sanity:
“The English number-word ‘two’ has three letters.”
“Le mot-numeral Anglais ‘two’ a trois lettres.”
Hope you can see the relevance, Jansy mia cara! When translating
certain innate, language-specific word properties such as
sound, shape and length, the translator must avoid falsehoods.
For those target languages in which, by chance, the words for “lovely,”
“dove,” “velvet” etc happen to share the same “magical” associations,
assonances and alliterations, the translator can preserve (some or all
of) the author’s fanciful intentions.
For other languages, the translator must take risks! Consider “kvunko,”
the Zemblan for “lovely” (any questions?) The translator (paging
Professor Kinbote!) could not use “lumbino” (“dove” in Zemblan) but
might settle for “nukvna” (Zemblan for “waxwing.”) Likewise, he
switches from “velvet” (“zumiza”) to the Zemblan “vuknovo” (“silk!”) to
retain the look’n’feel of “kvunko.”
We are left with the open question: how best to convey VN’s intentions?
He is conjuring with English sounds and associations.
Non-Anglophone readers are not that
deaf to “foreign” (i.e., English!) words and can handle the fact that
“lovely” in English happens to resonate with “dove” and “velvet” in the
mind of an English-speaking narrator.
As we say in Scouse: there’s more ways of skinning a moggie ...
PS: Re-yr
I
understand that the irreverent reference to "Olga Olegovna Orlova — an
egg-like alliteration which it would have been a pity to withhold." also indicates the name of a Russian
aristocrat saint.
I’m sure everyone gets the naughty “leg over” (coital euphemism) and
the less obvious (?) coitus interruptus hint in “all over” (cf the
parody of the song “Jealousy”: “’Twas all over my best settee, the
night that he came over me ...”)
Estou com imensa pressa! Vou aqui mesmo no lado comprar cigarros e uma
lata de tabaco! (Which proves how ancient my phrase book is!!)
Stan Kelly-Bootle.