Requerimiento mensual de energía térmica para calefacción

Hoyt’s book has a contents page where all the components of the publication are listed. It includes a Foreword, i.e. Hoyt’s introductory remarks, which are not as extensive as are the prefaces of other contemporary translations. There is evidence in the Foreword that Nabokov and his work on the Pushkin novel were highly regarded by Hoyt. It looks as if Hoyt’s intention is to revitalize Nabokov’s text and move it forward into the milieu of the 21st _{century. On the other hand, the Foreword can be interpreted differently, as if} Hoyt were creating a case for his own translation. As a lawyer, Hoyt, firstly, applies his knowledge and experience of law in order to claim legitimacy for his translation. Secondly, by providing detailed references to Nabokov’s ‘sacred’ work, Hoyt legitimises his own translation. Thirdly, he engages with copyright issues and creates a list of all Nabokov’s lines, and lines that originate from Nabokov’s translation but are adjusted by Hoyt in his own version; this information is included in his Appendix 1. This is Hoyt’s understanding of legacy: accuracy and equivalence.

Cultural issues play an essential part in the original text; Nabokov dedicates two volumes of his work on Eugene Onegin to discussing them. Hoyt, however, does not deal with them on his own account. Moreover, the authority of Nabokov over Hoyt is paramount. Thus Hoyt does not expand Nabokov’s commentaries: he simply relies upon them. The translator, however, does decide to deal with the issue of culture, and he offers some basic information on the Cyrillic alphabet to his readers. This is a little strange as Hoyt’s publication is bilingual, even though he does not classify his work as such. Instead, he calls his work ‘this joint publication of the original and its English translation’ (2008:

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175). It is unclear why he provides a descriptive name rather than classifies his work by using the established term for his type of translation, i.e. bilingual.

This issue becomes even more difficult to understand when Hoyt decides to provide some basic facts about the Cyrillic alphabet. Appendix 2, at the very end of the book, consists of the alphabet, its phonetic explanations, examples of identical and similar letters in English and Russian, and the transliteration of Russian letters into their Roman equivalents. From the start it looks as if the whole work is aimed at readers who have some knowledge of Russian, but at the end it appears that it might be more focused towards audiences who are completely unfamiliar with all foreign languages.

Like Nabokov’s, Hoyt’s translation uses the same metre as Pushkin’s Eugene Onegin, i.e. it is equimetric, but it does not reproduce the rhymes, and he underlines this fact in his introduction. Overall, Hoyt’s stanza does not reproduce the ending pattern of the Onegin stanza. However, he is trying from time to time to use masculine and feminine rhymes, which are characteristics of Pushkin’s poetic style. However, Hoyt does not go beyond this. His agenda is different, since for him, it is again the issue of equivalence that seems to determine his approach.

Hoyt understands his task to maintain equivalence in the same way that Nabokov does. For both, Eugene Onegin is a Bible. Firstly, in their view, the translator has a huge responsibility and honour to be in charge of the Pushkin text and to produce a true copy of the original. Secondly, the text has absolute authority over the translator. Ideally, what comes out of his or her pen should be an authorized copy of the sacred script. Meanwhile, Hoyt does not have the same depth of knowledge and authority as does Nabokov. He believes that decades dedicated to translating and to consulting with specialists are necessary to cover the gaps in his own expertise in translation and to produce a translated text of Eugene Onegin of the highest quality. Hoyt thanks all those people who contributed to his translation. He also acknowledges Pushkin for the immortal part he played in Hoyt’s experience with Eugene Onegin. His Acknowledgements appear as a special separate chapter in his publication after a brief introduction. He uses this space to add some personal and emotional observations.

Before proceeding to the actual text of the novel, Hoyt decides to add one more note. This is the Translator’s Note, in which his ideas on how he dealt with Pushkin’s Onegin in a poetic form are described. It is accompanied by the second title On Translating “Eugene Onegin” with two quotes from Coleridge and Wordsworth. The note is written in the

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Onegin stanza, in “the fourteen-line scheme of the sonnet” with its own special pattern of rhymes, endings and metre (2008: 1). Here, while demonstrating that it is possible to use the Onegin stanza in English, Hoyt does not forget to stress that rhyming translations are “poor approximations”.

Details provided in Hoyt’s additional chapters indicate his intention to revitalise Nabokov’s style of translation seen in his Eugene Onegin. In theory, his style demands an equivalent translation, but, in practice, it provides opportunities to produce a version of the original which has significant personal inputs from the translator, in particular his or her understanding of textual particularities. Somehow this is lost in Hoyt’s work. Hoyt’s work also reduces the level of foreignization and translator visibility achieved by Nabokov in his translation of Eugene Onegin: dealing with cultural issues is not Hoyt’s aim.