The Aviator

Translator’s Note

One of the joys of translating Eugene Vodolazkin’s work is the opportunity to correspond with him about the novels, both his original versions and my English translations. As with Laurus, Eugene answered questions about The Aviator along the way, read my translation, and offered comments and ideas, all with his usual humor and warmth. Working with him is just plain fun. Of course another joy of translating Eugene’s novels is reading them for the first time, something I did electronically for The Aviator because I simply couldn’t wait for a printed book. I hope other readers will be as surprised as I was when I learned what prompted Innokenty’s initial hospital stay.

Translating bits and pieces of quoted texts from other authors always raises the choice of either translating them myself or borrowing phrases and lines from other translators’ work. I tend to opt for the latter and acknowledge my colleagues’ translations if I find translations that fit the tone of both the original quotation and the novel I’m translating. Alan Shaw’s translation of Alexander Pushkin’s Feast During the Plague has now helped me out with two books, for which I thank him, and Bernard Guilbert Guerney’s translation of Nikolai Gogol’s Dead Souls line about fast driving felt just right, even after inserting Eugene’s parenthetical addition. Katherine Young, a poet and fellow translator, didn’t mind my borrowing a phrase from her translation of Mikhail Lermontov’s lovely poem ‘Alone, I set out on the road.’ Kate also offered her help with the stanzas of Alexander Blok’s ‘The Aviator’ that pop up in Eugene’s The Aviator. Blok is diabolically difficult to translate and I’m no poet, so it’s thanks to Kate that these English-language stanzas read like poetry. She also helped me with Nikolai Leskov’s verse.

A number of books offered me options as I searched for specialized vocabulary for aspects of Soviet prison camps in general and the camp on the Solovetsky Islands in particular. Two were especially helpful: Danzig Baldaev’s Drawings from the Gulag, translated by Polly Gannon and Ast A. Moore, and published by Fuel in a bilingual edition; and Thomas P. Whitney’s translation of Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn’s The Gulag Archipelago.

The Aviator is my third translation for Oneworld and I couldn’t be happier to work with Juliet Mabey and her team again. I’m eternally grateful for Juliet’s editorial suggestions, ongoing interest in contemporary Russian literature, and warmth. I always look forward to reading and responding to comments from copy-editor Will Atkins, whose precise and patient queries about my word choices and the sense of the Russian original push me to keep improving my translation until the very last draft. I’m also very grateful to proofreader Helen Szirtes, whose meticulous reading resulted in queries that drove me to make further changes in the text. Between production head Paul Nash and assistant editor Alyson Coombes, every person, every detail, and every deadline stays on track during the translation process.

Finally, huge thanks to my colleague Liza Prudovskaya, who read a draft of The Aviator and checked it against Eugene’s original, making numerous comments, saving me from dumb mistakes, and answering my multitude of questions about vocabulary and tone. Liza’s answers help me tremendously with individual word choices, and global decisions about translating narrators’ and characters’ voices.

Lisa Hayden