Nabokov as self-translator of his autobiography: Features and resources.

Abstract

The present Thesis studies the characteristics of Vladimir Nabokov's self-translation of his autobiography, which he initially published in English (Conclusive Evidence), then self-translated into Russian and of which he finally published one last English version (Speak, Memory: An Autobiography Revisited), drawing from both previous texts. These successive self-translations constitute a virtually unique literary adventure, and this Thesis is aimed at identifying and categorizing Nabokov's self-translation resources in a comparative study of the three versions within a selected corpus, namely chapters one, seven and ten of the autobiography. The contribution of this Thesis is two-fold: not only does it identify, categorize and quantify Nabokov's features and resources as a self-translator of his autobiography, but it also proposes a novel method for the empirical comparative study of these three texts.This method could be used for the comparative study of other originals and their (self-)translations.It consists of a comprehensive three-step approach:firstly, the source and target text(s) are placed in a comparative table, in parallel columns, and the different modifications are conveniently highlighted; secondly, a categorized analysis is carried out for each modification resource found in the texts, providing examples with commentary; finally, quantitative data is extracted that allows, among other things, to identify the most widely-used modification resources.As for the specific findings of this Thesis regarding the characteristics of self-translation in Nabokov's autobiographical works, the modification resources found are the following: additions; deletions; lexical and phrasing changes; changes in content; syntactic restructuring; displaced content; changes in punctuation, connectors and transliteration; and changes in grammatical value. Additionally, the phenomenon of rewriting and the usage and translation of foreign words have been analyzed in two separate chapters in view of their relevance to the study of the self-translation process in Nabokov's autobiography.