A Critical Analysis of Vladimir Nabokov's Russian Translation of Lolita
Open Access
Author:
Shigaeva, Kristina Victorovna
Area of Honors:
Russian Translation
Degree:
Bachelor of Science
Document Type:
Thesis
Thesis Supervisors:
Michael Marion Naydan, Thesis Supervisor Linda J Ivanits, Thesis Honors Advisor
Keywords:
translation Lolita Russian Nabokov
Abstract:
Vladimir Nabokov was born in St. Petersburg in 1899 and grew up speaking Russian, English, and French. He spent his childhood in Russia, but spent most of his life living in Germany, France, and finally moved to the United States in the 1940s. In America, he switched from writing in Russian to writing primarily in English and found international fame with his novel Lolita, which came out in 1955. In the afterword to his novel, Nabokov wrote that the English language was “second-rate” compared to the “rich” Russian one. He decided to take on the task of translating Lolita, which was published in his native Russian language in 1967. But the author did not find the satisfaction that he was searching for with his translation, and in the postscript to the Russian version, Nabokov expressed this discontent by writing that “the story of this translation is the story of disappointment.” This thesis aims to recognize the reasons behind the author’s self-proclaimed unsuccessful translation and to directly compare the English original with the Russian translation.
