bedja ttttr - I found the following on English wikipedia.
No sources are given for this excerpt. I wonder if someone can give the source
to me, or else, tell me whether this is correct or not :The first
"translation" was made because of Nabokov's feeling of imperfection in the
English version. Writing the book, he noted that he needed to translate his own
memories into English, and to spend a lot of time explaining things that are
well known in Russia; then he decided to re-write the book once again, in his
first native language, and after that he made the final version, Speak,
Memory.
Jansy Mello: I remember past discussions related to this
wiki sentence. I tried to find a reference in the List Archives but although I
could access the text, I found no date nor further references related to
the exchange between Alexey Sklyarenko and me.* There must be many other
references in the VN-L marking the differences between the Russian and the
English editions, including the explanation of why certain alterations
of words and popular expressions had to be made by the translator
in order to adapt the text to a Russian readership.
I tried to look through what I'd underlined in "Dear Bunny,dear Volodya"
but didn't get any closer to this exact formulation. I discovered, on p.317,
"Another thing that left me quite limp and hysterical is my
Russian version of Conclusive Evidence which is appearing serially in the
Novyi Zhurnal and will be published by the Chekhov firm in the
fall." In his note, Simon Karlinski clarifies the issue: "The
Russian version of Speak, Memory, called Other Shores, was
brought out by the Chekhov Publishing House in 1954, after portions of it were
serialized in the ´pemigré journals Optyty (Experiments) No.3 and
Novyi Zhurnal (The New Review) Nos.37 and 38, during the same
year.
I hope A.Sklyarenko can be a better help qua the source
used in the wikipedia than I was... I haven't had the opportunity to check
the various prefaces to the "Speak,Memory" editions where this information
might be present. .
.................................................................................
x x x ...........................................
* - A. Sklyarenko: I'm afraid I only succeeded in
misleading you even more with my comments. What is strange, you seem to be aware
of the passage absent from Speak, Memory but present in "Другие берега" (Chapter
Three, 5) [ ] I hope someone with better English than mine will translate
this passage for you, if it doesn't exist in English (in Conclusive Evidence).
The word шулер is implicitly present in Ada ("I have often wondered why the
Russian for it... is the same as the German for 'schoolboy' minus the umlaut..."
1.28). As you know, German for 'schoolboy' is Schüler."
JM: I hope there's a volunteer to translate the
passage you indicate, for Wiki informs me that "Speak,Memory", originally
written in English, is an imperfect "version" of the
Russian...*
..............................................
* -
"Nabokov himself translated into Russian two books that he had originally
written in English, Conclusive Evidence, and Lolita. The first "translation" was
made because of Nabokov's feeling of imperfection in the English version.
Writing the book, he noted that he needed to translate his own memories into
English, and to spend a lot of time explaining things which are well-known in
Russia; then he decided to re-write the book once again, in his first native
language, and after that he made the final version, Speak, Memory (Nabokov first
wanted to name it "Speak,
Mnemosyne")."