I am working on the first draft pages of D-items, that is, Nabokov books translated by others. Over the next several months I will first post all D-item drafts by the languages in which the translations were done. Later, I will post the same D-items by the A-items from which they were derived, by the countries of publication, and by the dates of publication. Books that are compilations of translations of different Nabokov A-items will be handled separately later as M-items.

D-item entries parallel A-item entries in designation and format. Here is a sample entry for a translation of Mashen’ka into Albanian and published in Albania in 1999.

The key elements are:

• The general D-item number, D8, paralleling the A-item number, A8, from which it is derived.
• The general title of the A-item number, Машенька / Mary, the Russian and English titles of the A-item book.
• The specific D-item number, D8.sq.1.1, a compression of four key pieces of information:
  • the general D-item number, D8;
  • the standard international two-letter code, sq, for the language, here, Albanian. sq is derived from the native name for the language, gjuha shqipe;
  • the translation number, 1, here, the first translation of Mash’enka in Albanian;
  • the edition number of that translation, 1 here, the first edition of the first translation.
• Under the specific D-item number, additional information: the standard international two-letter code for the country, al and the year of publication, 1995.
• In the next column, the translation heading, First Albanian translation, referring here to the translation language, Albanian, and not the country.
• The edition heading, First Albanian edition, referring here to the country in which the translation was published.
• In parentheses, the publisher, Apollonia.
• Some information is presented, when possible, in the language’s native orthography (be it Arabic or Chinese, for example): the book title, Nabokov’s name, the translator’s name, and the works in the book, all transliterated and translated.
• The city of publication is transliterated and/or Americanized. For example, Tirana instead of Tiranë, or Beijing instead of 北京.
• The publisher name is transliterated when necessary.

In designing this format, I have tried to balance readability with scanability and fullness of information with compression of information. I would like to receive your feedback on the layout.

I would also like to hear from anyone who can help me track down translations in any of the 45 languages into which Nabokov has been translated. For instance, I have been able to track down copies of or information on only five editions in Albanian (with four others scheduled for this year). One is of Mashen’ka and four are of Lolita. I am sure that there are more.