Vladimir Nabokov and Translation: A Transatlantic Symposium

Standing at the crossroads of five languages and a matching number of literary traditions (English, French, German, Italian, and Russian), Vladimir Nabokov experienced translation on a level unattainable to the majority of his predecessors, presaging and influencing our modern understanding of the indispensability of linguistic and cultural interconnection.

Nabokov’s entered literature as a translator. He claimed to have retold Mayne Reid’s The Headless Horseman in French alexandrine at eleven, while his adaptation of Romain Rolland’s Colas Breugnon became the most exacting rite of passage of his career in letters. Yet while the controversy stirred by his rendition of Aleksandr Pushkin’s Eugene Onegin and the methodology of “literalism” he applied therein forever changed the way we conceive of translation today, the totality of his work in translation remains the least appreciated and understood area of Nabokov’s creative enterprise.

To address this omission, Drs. Julie Loison-Charles (University of Lille, France) and Stanislav Shvabrin (UNC – Chapel Hill) are jointly organizing a two-part transatlantic symposium (in Lille and Chapel Hill) dedicated to exploring Nabokov’s legacy as translator and translation theorist.

The symposium is co-sponsored by the UNC Institute for the Arts and Humanities, UNC Center for Slavic, East European, and Eurasian Studies, Department of Germanic and Slavic Languages and Literatures, and Chercheurs Enchantés: Société Française Vladimir Nabokov.

Symposium languages are English and French. All events are open to the public. Please contact Dr. Stanislav Shvabrin with any questions about the program. 

SYMPOSIUM PROGRAM

SATURDAY, OCTOBER 27

9:30-10:30 AM • Coffee, Registration, and Opening Remarks
Julie Loison-Charles and Stanislav Shvabrin

10:50 AM -12:20 PM PANEL I: BEYOND TRANSLATION
Chair: Stephen H. Blackwell (University of Tennessee-Knoxville)
Léopold REIGNER (Université de Rouen, France)
“On Marx’s Flaubert: Nabokov and the Art of Correction”
Paul Benedict GRANT (Memorial University, Canada)
“Howlers, Hobbes, Hubris—Nabokov’s Satirical Scholarship”
Julia TRUBIKHINA (Hunter College, CUNY)
“Translation and Performativity: Vladimir Nabokov’s Paratexts”

2:00-4:00 PM • PANEL II: TRANSLATION IN VLADIMIR NABOKOV’S OEUVRE
Chair: Carol Apollonio (Duke University)
Morgane ALLAIN-ROUSSEL (Société Française Vladimir Nabokov, France)
“Traduire le traducteur: de la représentation du traducteur embusqué dans son œuvre au style du traducteur, le cas Nabokov”
Sean DILEONARDI (UNC-Chapel Hill)
“‘Certain Elaborate Machines’: Nabokov’s Digital Contemporaries”
Tatyana GERSHKOVICH (Carnegie Mellon University)
“From Blind Intuition to Creative Compulsion: Aesthetic Transgressions in Camera Obscura and Laughter in the Dark”
Corinne SCHEINER (Colorado College)
“Brute Scoundrels and Their Evil Translators: The Willful Reshapings of Kinbote and Conmal”

4:20-5:50 PM • PANEL III: NABOKOV AND THE (UN-)TRANSLATABLE
Chair: Irene Masing-Delić (UNC-Chapel Hill)
Sophie BERNARD-LÉGER (Université de la Sorbonne, France)
“‘As a book is translated into an exotic Idiom, so was I translated into the sun…’: de Fiodor traducteur à Fiodor traduit, ou les différents plans de la traduction dans Le Don”
Julie LOISON-CHARLES (Université de Lille, France)
“Translating Nabokov’s multilingualism: a case study on Ada, chapter 38”
Susan Elizabeth SWEENEY (College of the Holy Cross)
“Lost in Translation: Nabokov and the Ineffable”
 
SUNDAY, OCTOBER 28

9:20-11:20 AM • PANEL IV: SELF-TRANSLATION AND INTERSEMIOTIC TRANSLATION
Chair: Radislav Lapushin (UNC-Chapel Hill)
Stanislas GAUTHIER (Université Bordeaux-Montaigne, France)
“Adapting Nabokov in the German Seventies: A Few Details about Fassbinder’s Despair”
Maria EMELIYANOVA (Università Ca’Foscari-Venezia, Italy)
“Nabokov’s Camera Obscura and Laughter in the Dark: Bilingual Text Translated for Cinema”
Péter TAMÁS (Eötvös Loránd University, Hungary)
“Adaptation as Expansion: Vladimir Nabokov’s Lolita: A Screenplay”
Usha NEKKALAPUDI (Krishna University, India)
“Self-Translation and Multilinguistic Competence: A Comparative Study of Vladimir Nabokov and O.V. Vijayan”

11:20 AM – 12:00 PM • Concluding Remarks