-------- Original Message --------
Subject: Re: Re: Robin in Pale Fire
Date: Sat, 14 Jan 2006 05:16:10 +0300
From: Alexey Sklyarenko <skylark05@mail.ru>
To: Vladimir Nabokov Forum <NABOKV-L@LISTSERV.UCSB.EDU>



     According to bird classification, 'robin' belongs to the family of thrushes, which is exactly 'drozd/' It looks like it, except that Russian drozd has no such colorful breast. But it larger than 'malinovka' and sings unlike it. Besides, a PURLY POETIC REASON: '"Robin drozd daet sdachi" sounds right as a translation of "Robin Cock fights back" (RLSK); with 'malinovka' it does not work either semantically or phonetically. S. Il'in often "drunk on his own wines", but he has a good ear. 
 
Quite right, but I'm speaking about the translation of 'robin' in Pale Fire. The avian name that Kinbote finds in his "ornithological work" should be (in translation) hard to fit to the bird (which must be drozd, an American robin) he sees. Il'in translates the name of the bird seen by Kinbote correctly, but he looses the sentence's meaning in the process (he should have translated the name that Kinbote looks up in his reference book and that is hard to fit to the bird K. sees). In that sense, VeN's 'malinovka' is here a perfect translation. 
 
Alexey