Lo-lee-ta: the tip of the tongue taking a trip of three steps down the palate to tap, at three, on the teeth. Lo, Lee, Ta.
洛一丽一塔：舌尖向上，分三步，从上颚往下轻轻落在齿间。洛。丽。塔。
She was Lo, plain Lo, in the morning, standing four feet ten in one sock. She was Lola in slacks. She was Dolly at school. She was Dolores on the dotted line. But in my arms she was always Lolita.
Did she have a precursor? She did, indeed she did. In point of fact, there might have been no Lolita at all I not loved, one summer, a certain initial girl-child. In a princedom by the sea. Oh when? About as many years before Lolita was born as my age was that summer. You can always count on a murderer for a fancy prose style.
"That was my Lo," she said, "and these are my lilies."
“那是我的洛，”她说，“这些是我的百合花。”
"Yes, "I said, "yes. They are beautiful, beautiful, beautiful."
“是的，”我说。“是的，它们看上去很美，很美，很美。”
I looked and looked at her and I knew, as clearly as I know that I will die, that I loved her more than anything I'd ever seen or imagined on earth. She was only dead leaf echo of the nymphet from from long ago... but I loved her, this Lolita, pale and polluted and big with another man's child. She could fade and wither. I didn't care. I would still go mad with tenderness at the mere sight other face.
What I heard then was the melody of children at play. Nothing but that. And I knew that the hopelessly poignant thing was not Lolita's absence from my side, but the absence of her voice from that chorus.
最后我听到了一群儿童的欢笑声，使我悲哀的不是我的身边没有洛丽塔，而是在这欢笑声中没有她。
I'm thinking of bison and angels, paint enduring secret prophetic sonnets, the refuge of art. This is what I think of, I can share with you forever, my Lolita.
