After reading the first few dozen pages, I almost considered giving up on “Lolita” because I had to consult the dictionary way too often. Well, additionally, there was studying various sentence structures and references, but that’s actually interesting, although it does slow down the reading.
Then I thought, well, am I not a programmer or what. So together with ChatGPT, we created automated annotations. First off, it’s worth mentioning that “Lolita” has an annotated version with 200 pages and an extensive introduction of 100 pages. These annotations cover many topics, but they rarely clarify obscure words, assuming the reader is educated enough to understand that conspicuousness (/kənˈspɪkjuːəsnɪs/) means noticeability, thingamabob is a thingamajig, and callipygian means the same as callipygous, translating to “having perfect buttock form”. For instance, at the very start of the book, “My father was a gentle, easy-going person, a salad of racial genes: a Swiss citizen, of mixed French and Austrian descent with a dash of the Danube” — I wondered what this Danube was, and it turns out to be the river, Dunai in Russian, which in my version now appears in grey brackets after Danube.
Ultimately, in addition to the existing annotations, my script also adds translations into Russian in italic brackets, and it also includes some opinions on individual phrases and references — for this, after a sentence, something is added in brackets, which you need to click on.
With such enhancements, reading becomes much easier. And more interesting too
Hi, I'm Rauf Aliev. 