Self-translation in Vladimir Nabokov’s work. From Kamera Obskura to Laughter in the Dark: a case-study

Abstract

Vladimir Nabokov’s literary production has been widely studied by scholars of American and Russian literature. The present work is focused on the writer’s activity as a bilingual self-translator: once considered a marginal phenomenon, self-translation has attracted in recent years a significant amount of attention among Translation theorists. In the present study, Nabokov’s approach to self-translation was analysed in light of the most recent research in Translation Theory and contextualised within the existing bibliography about Nabokov as a writer and as a translator. The core of this work presents the results of a word-for-word comparative analysis of three texts: Nabokov’s Russian novel "Camera Obscura", its first English translation made by an external translator and rejected by Nabokov, and the author’s self-translation "Laughter in the Dark". This case is therefore particularly interesting, because it allows us to compare the work of a standard translator with the subsequent rewriting made by the author-translator. The comparative approach used in this work allows the reader of the bilingual text to view it in its completeness and simultaneous belonging to two linguistic and cultural systems. The information acquired from this study can be of interest both for a Nabokovian scholar and for a translation theorist, because it allows us to shed a light on the writer’s early self-translation methodology, and enrich our knowledge of the phenomenon of self-translation per se.