----- Original Message -----
Sent: Thursday, June 26, 2003 12:42 PM
Subject: Re: Fw: reply to Oleg
May I ask you to pass my answer on to Dmitry
Vladimirovich? - The words mentioned (ISPOD, MREYAT'...) are not just
peculiar. In Russian literature they absolutely belong to Vladimir Nabokov
- even more than a butterfly in any book from now on belongs to him. I can also
add BRIDOCHKI instead of BRETEL'KI. It is like Renoir's colours, Mozart's
harmonies, or Сhaplin's moustache-and-cane. Or bilberry spot at the bottom
of a basket. That's why constant, automatical putting them in the translations
instead of neutral words, using them ANYTIME, causes the feeling of a
forgery and of the translator's poshlost' I tried to describe.
Of course,
Dmitri Vladimirovich's suggestions are a grand-master's move in a local chess
tournament. But, alas, it is too often a forced Russian also.
The dispute is old and endless. Out some
higher and deep considerations the mentioned Frankovsky entitled Proust's
book "V poiskah ZA utrachennym vremenem". This example is the exhaustive
expression of my position. I can only guess again that the same effect in
translation may be some times reached in the other place of the period, in words
and even rythms which formally are rather far from the original.And to confirm
my strong belief that only a congenial reader may become a congenial translator.
If Muse smiles to him.
...And a collateral remark: the idea of
back-translating fails here, because the expression "UKAZIVAL, SKOL'KO OTCU
PIT'" unambiguously, exactly means in Russian "ukazyval otsu, skol'ko tot vprave
vypit' "
!
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P.S.