My recent post on blind translations has inspired a blog dedicated to retranslating the Spanish translation of Lolita into English, blind. It starts:
Lolita Lou, stay my vitals, forgo them strangers. Oh my peccadillo, ah my white. Lo-li-ta: the poon-tardy lollygagger by way of the Jedi, able ho hasty pussy on the terse dented boards: Lo. Li. Ta.
Here Lo, sensual-mental Lo, poor lamental Lo Aucoin, does stab derecho with her metered-oak wintry-chawed stature. Sober and pine for Daddy, and call Satan. Here’s Lo Aucoin leaving applestains on pants, here’s Dolly to scale, here’s Dolores Aucoin firmbaby.
Fun!
Update (June 2024). Clicking on the link now gets “This journal has been deleted and purged.” Why do people do this? If you’re tired of it, just stop doing it, but leave it there for others to enjoy! And no, it’s not in the Internet Archive. Bah.
I think even Nabokov would appreciate the beauty and phrasing of
“the poon-tardy lollygagger ”
Magnificent!
In a similar vein, here’s a blog (http://tamiltransliterations.blogspot.com/) that does blind transliterations of Tamil proverbs.
riverrun, past Eve and Adams, from swerve of shore to bend of bay, brings us by a commodius vicus of recirculation back to Howth, Castle and Environs.
The result is strikingly similar to a schizophrenic’s word salad. I’m met people who have talked like this with no poetic ambitions.
How horrible.
Rather good!