Vladimir Nabokov

NABOKV-L post 0022538, Sun, 4 Mar 2012 12:16:52 -0300

Subject
Malapropisms and Errata in Lolita - PS (a second Brazilian
translation and a commentary, and more)
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PS: I checked into another translation of Lolita. This time I had an exchange with Jorio Dauster, who penned it.
He writes: "Simplifiquei bastante: "Lolita, ou A confissão de um viúvo de cor branca: era esse o duplo título das estranhas páginas recebidas pelo autor da presente nota." Mas fui pelo duplo título, induzido pelo "or" do original."

Repassing it into English: (I) simplified it a lot: "Lolita or A confession by a white-skinned widower: this was the double title of the strange pages received by the author of the present note." But I folowed the double title, induced by the "or" in the original..
Jorio Dauster's choice is grammatically perfect and the "auto-referencial" innuendo disappears.

There's a third translation, by S.Flaksman, and it's a very recent one. Let's see what came out:
"Lolita, ou A confissão de um viúvo branco, esses foram os dois títulos sob os quais o autor da presente nota recebeu as estranhas páginas que ela prefacia" (Lolita, or The confession of a white widower, these were the two titles under which the author of the present note received the strange pages that it prefaciates." ("prefaciate" doesn't sound incorrect in Portuguese, but "preambulate" does!)

Maurice Couturier and Jorio Dauster solved another issue that Bruce Stone pointed out*: in their translation they favored "double title" instead of "two titles".Jorio Dauster advanced a perfectly simple explanation for his choice.

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* Bruce Stone " ... the sentence contains numerous stylistic peculiarities-the strained syntax, the dubious reference to "two titles" (is there not only one title, with two parts?), the too-precious and antiquated verb "preambulates"-the comical impropriety hinges on the humble pronoun "it", which has an ambiguous referent."

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