Dear Editor, just three observations prompted by Alexey Skylarenko's email headed 'Help with Translation!' and Ljuba Tarvi's response thereto headed.

1) Alexey Skylarenko did his best 'to prove the immortality of the human soul.' A modest aspiration then. If Alexey succeeded in his attempt perhaps the rest of humanity should know more about it? Perhaps he has pulled off something that has thwarted the rest of mankind throughout history? You heard about it first on Nabokv-L

2) Ljuba refers to her Translation Quotient. Is it possible to arrive at an objective figure which represents the fidelity or otherwise of a translation? Surely the whole business is much more subjective than that? Could I also respectfully suggest the possibility of a Genius Quotient whereby, via the use of unassailably objective criteria, by we can statistically prove that one writer is greater than another?

3) The following gave me pause for thought: "The results scored by A. Skliarenko surpass those of other tranlators by 1 percent point only, but he used the least amount of exessive tokens, 8. Probably for this reason D. Nabokov’s impression was that “the structure of his sentences and paragraphs is sometimes awkward.”"

- Did not Vladimir Nabokov himself favour an 'awkward' style ,where he deemed necessary ,when translating Eugene Onegin?

best, Michael Glynn

Dear all,

I just finished the new essay, "Ada as a mystical novel," in which I did my best to prove the immortality of human soul. "You can almost taste it," as an add of Eternity Ltd. might have said. I wrote my piece in Russian. And I need the assistance of native speakers who would help me to turn it into English. I would have published it in Russian, if I didn't know how few Russians have actually read Ada. There are hardly more Russian readers of the book than a dozen or so. Probably less. The existing Russian translations of the novel are awful, having nothing to do with the original, and my own version remains unpublished.

If you only knew what a torture it is to translate oneself into a foreign language that one knows only slightly! Even if one has to produce a rough translation to be improved by those who have a better command of English grammar and syntax. Please write directly to me if you are willing to help (skylark05@mail.ru). You will be the essay's first readers, whatever value there is in my work.

Thank you in advance,

Alexey Sklyarenko

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----- Original Message -----

From: Ljuba Tarvi

Sent: Wednesday, October 11, 2006 9:12 AM

Subject: Re: [NABOKV-L] help with translation!

In your letter to the List you write (I quote): "The existing Russian translations of the novel ("Ada") are awful, having nothing to do with the original, and my own version remains unpublished."

In my PhD thesis (2004) I compare, among other things, four translations of "Ada" into Russian, yours included. My method allows to express the distance between the original and its translation in one figure, Translation Quotient (TQ), which is the percentage of the original kept in translation (roughly speaking). The results are the following (Table 34 p. 203):

(1) Oksana Kirichenko, A.N. Girivenko, A.V. Dranov. Khronika Odnoy Semyi. Kiev: Atika / Kishinev: Koni-Veles, 1995; TQ=80%

(2) Sergei Ilyin. Ada ili Radosti Strasti. Sankt-Peterburg: Symposium, 1999; TQ= 80%

(3) Oksana Kirichenko. Ada ili Erotiada. Semeynaya Khronika. Moscka: Act / Kharkov: Folio, 2000; TQ=77%

(4) Aleksey Skliarenko. Ada ili Strast’: Semeynaya Khronika. (unpublished). TQ=81%

As you can see, your results do not seem to differ greatly from the "awful, having nothing to do with the original" translations of the other authors. Let me also give you one more citation from my thesis (the same page):

"The results scored by A. Skliarenko surpass those of other tranlators by 1 percent point only, but he used the least amount of exessive tokens, 8. Probably for this reason D. Nabokov’s impression was that “the structure of his sentences and paragraphs is sometimes awkward.”"

As a practical translator and a translation scholar, I know how easily can any translation be denounced. Such a tactic is not the best way of elbowing your way up, I presume.

Good luck to you in finding a translator for your essay. And let's hope that the resulting translation will not be "awful and having nothing to do with the original". Sometimes it happens.

Best regards,

Ljuba Tarvi

Helsinki-Tallinn