Why is Lolita barefoot and other translation puzzles

I’ve read the opening paragraphs of Lolita many times. I started reading it in Spanish because I had the idea of reading Russian literature in Spanish which is just as good as reading it in the English translation and Spanish leaves more room in my imagination to wonder about the text. Maybe I will get back to beginners mind and see English in a new way someday but right now it is a lot easier to appreciate prose in Spanish. I didn’t think there was anything by Dostoyevski short enough and then I thought of Lolita but then oh I realised Lolita was written in English though English was not Nabokov’s first language and Spanish is not mine so it works! Why not read his words in Spanish then and maybe see them in a different way?

I feel like my comprehension when I read in Spanish is sometimes much greater than when I read in English and my ability to imagine what is going on is greater, too. Nabokov says what Lolita is actually about somewhere at some point but I don’t remember. I think it would be easier to get beyond the surface interpretations and see the book in a new way if I read it in Spanish. If I read it in Spanish my experience of it would be unique, to say the least, and already in the first couple paragraphs the experience of it is so much more vivid. Something is lost in translation

but something is gained, too. The way the syllables Lo-li-ta are formed in the mouth is such a different experience in Spanish…

“Lolita, luz de mi vida, fuego de mis entrañas. Pecado mío, alma mía. Lo-lita: la punta de la lengua emprende un viaje de tres pasos desde el borde del paladar para apoyarse, en el tercero, en el borde de los dientes. Lo.li.ta.

Era Lo, sencillamente Lo, por la mañana, un metro cuarenta y ocho de estatura con pies descalzos. Era Lola con pantalones. Era Dolly en la escuela. Era Dolores cuando firmaba. Pero en mis brazos era siempre Lolita.”

It reads in the Spanish like, “She was Lo, simply Lo, in the morning, a meter forty eight centimeters barefoot. She was Lola with pants. She was Dolly at school. She was Dolores when she signed. But in my arms she was always Lolita.” That is my translation back to English. (The original English: “She was Lo, plain Lo, in the morning, standing four feet ten in one sock. She was Lola in slacks. She was Dolly at school. She was Dolores on the dotted line. But in my arms she was always Lolita.”)

I didn’t even realize that ‘on the dotted line’ meant ‘when she signed’ until I read it in Spanish because I don’t usually sign things on dotted lines myself. ‘Cuando firmaba’ made that so much more direct. I concur with that translation. I don’t know why she is barefoot in the Spanish but wearing one sock in English but it is an interesting difference because when you say she is barefoot that totally changes not only what she was wearing but the meaning of the sentence. It simply implies she would be taller wearing shoes and taller still wearing platform shoes.

It makes sense that someone would be shorter barefoot than with shoes and that is the basic meaning the Spanish translation conveys but Nabakov is saying what her height is in one sock and it really makes no difference to her height whether she is wearing one sock none but the narrator points out how tall she is in one sock. Why? What is the difference between Lolita standing a meter forty eight barefoot and a meter forty right in one sock? I’d say it is a lot, and says a lot about what the narrator is thinking about at the least, so why did the Spanish translator remove that layer of meaning by making it a sentence about plain measurement? In English the two ideas, Lo’s height and her wearing one sock, are not logically connected, but in Spanish there is a logical connection as the sentence just says how tall she is barefoot.

The most visual image I have of ‘plain Lo’ is of her in one sock and part of what makes that image so effective is it has nothing to do with measurement, he is just noticing her getting dressed. She is plain Lo in one sock. But that idea doesn’t really come across in Spanish at all. I like though how in Spanish there is a clearer idea of: she was Lo barefoot, Lola in pamts. In English the idea of her height in one sock kind of takes away the simplicity of that flow.

Is ‘sencillamente’ the best Spanish word that could be used to convey the idea of ‘plain’? What did Nabakov mean exactly when he called her ‘plain Lo’ in the morning? I like that line. It gives her personality. But ‘sencillamente’ doesn’t quite seem to be an adequate replacement for ‘plain’. She wasn’t ‘simply Lo’, she was ‘plain Lo’, in Nabakov’s original, and since every word a writer uses matters, why did he say she was ‘plain Lo’ in the morning and not ‘simply Lo’? The word ‘plain’ makes me think of the way a person wakes up in the morning with no pretenses and gradually puts on clothes and takes on a form; it makes me think if the contrast of plain to beautiful or elegant.

She was plain Lo before she put on pants but when she did she became Lola. Her name transformed depending on where she was and what she was doing, and the narrator seems to want to make clear, Lo may be plain, but Lolita is the farthest thing from it in the world. Of course, though, there might be difficulty finding a better way to translate ‘plain’ into Spanish than ‘sencillamente’. If you tried to say she was ‘plain Lo’ in a different way in Spanish it might get confusing because in English the phrase ‘plain Lo’ refers to her name but I think a Spanish word with the same connotation would call attention to the meaning of the Spanish word lo, maybe? Now, in Spanish sencillo can mean homely and plain in many of the ways plain is used in English but the directness of Nabakov’s voice here, where the narrator says, plain Lo, feels kind of lost with the translation sencillamente, because there is nothing from the context of the Spanish, I don’t think, to suggest that ‘sencillamente’ should mean anything but ‘simply’. But in English it is clear that Nanakov means with this word far more than just ‘simply’, he wants to contrast plain Lo with… Lo-li-ta.