Feb. 10th, 2002

alexpgp: (Default)
There's a new community on LJ called [livejournal.com profile] ru_translate, which is intended for the discussion of any and all language translation questions (and not just those where one of the languages is Russian). After posting my translation of Ваше благородие yesterday, I posted a request for suggestions/criticisms in the community. This post is a summary of the state of affairs thus far.

* * *
[livejournal.com profile] avva suggested that I had misunderstood the line that I'd translated as:

A bullet in the heart, wait! don’t call me yet...

The line, he said, means something along the lines of "don't call for a bullet to strike my heart" (my interpretation of his words). In retrospect, I think that's what I had in the back of my mind with "don't call me yet," except that such words are best addressed to the Grim Reaper, not to Mistress Fortune (who, by the way, was immediately renamed to the familiar "Lady Luck").

* * *
[livejournal.com profile] yan suggested that my line

You favor some with kindness and leave others chewing dirt.

was too explicit, sounding like too much of a whine that didn't fit the character of the song. Perhaps I'm not literary enough to grok the character of the song, but I agree that the line sounds a little rough.

* * *
[livejournal.com profile] belochka took issue with my use of the title "Mistress," suggesting that all these ladies be addressed as, well, "Ladies." I agree, more because "lady" does not sound as aggressive (sinister?) as "mistress" than because "mistress" may convey the wrong impression (but there is something to that, too). She also suggested "I'm no good at dying..." instead of my "I'm unlucky at dying...," which I also agreed with, on the basis of being able to lose that aggressive "k" sound.

[livejournal.com profile] belochka then took the time to play with the material and came up with the following:
Please accept my compliments, Lady Separation
But your touch is cold to me* /- /- /-(vacation? sensation?)
/-/-/-- /- /- /-
I’m no good at dying, I’ll have luck in love

Please accept my compliments, darling Lady Luck
You’re so kind to some of us others you just ----**,
/-/-/-- /- /- /-
I’m no good at dying, I’ll have luck in love

Please accept my compliments, Lady Foreign Lands!
Passion there was plenty, but loveless were your hands
/-/-/-- /- /- /-
I’m no good at dying, I’ll have luck in love

Please accept my compliments, Lady Victory!
/- /- /--/-/-/
/-/-/-- /- /- /-
I’m no good at dying, I’ll have luck in love

*I like the internal rhyme of compliments = cold to me

**Joke, joke, I couldn’t resist :) :) :)
I really liked the replacement of my literal "Your Honor..." (which few would understand and most would associate with, say, a traffic ticket) with "Please accept my compliments..." (during the day, the idea of losing "Your Honor" and replacing it with something [a] more understandable, and [b] more in line with the original meter had occurred to me, too, but [livejournal.com profile] belochka actually came up with something).

Moreover, in reading [livejournal.com profile] belochka's post, I was intrigued by the idea of composing stanzas where the couplets actually rhymed and which were stated in the meter of the original.

* * *
I made some changes, based both on the suggestions and my own weird mind. I abandoned the second half of the refrain (about being lucky or having luck in love) and replaced it with "...I'll be lucky in bed!" mostly because "bed" offers better opportunities for rhyming than does "love." On the flip side, being "lucky in bed" is a tad less, um, innocent than being "lucky in love" (or is that simply my imagination?). With that change, I lost all connection to the "unlucky in cards, lucky in love" formula that blared loudly in my ears while translating that line.

Finally, a couple of the other "ladies" were renamed, also for the sake of rhyme. The latest/greatest version is this:

Please accept my compliments...

Please accept my compliments, Lady Fare-You-Well!
Though your touch is cold to me, I'm still caught in your spell.
Hold on, there, oh, please don't tear that letter, it's not read...
I'm no good at dying, I'll be lucky in bed!

Please accept my compliments, dearest Lady Luck!
You favor some with kindness, the rest of us are stuck.
Please don't let me catch a slug that leaves me cold and dead...
I'm no good at dying, I'll be lucky in bed!

Please accept my compliments, Lady Foreign Shores!
You embraced me with great passion but the love, it wasn't yours.
Please don't let me fall into the silken web you've spread...
I'm no good at dying, I'll be lucky in bed!

Please accept my compliments, Lady Victory!
This means my song's not sung out yet; I'm sure you will agree.
Stop, you devils, swearing oaths over which you've bled...
I'm no good at dying, I'll be lucky in bed!
Cheers...

Toolin'...

Feb. 10th, 2002 03:43 am
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Almost halfway through tonight's shift, and I've only just poured my first cup of coffee!

The MSR facility at the MCC looks like your typical room inside the control center except, of course, for the decorations.



The photo shows a corner of the main room, with a poster of a bemedaled Yuri Gagarin resplendent in the corner. The sign over the desk translates as, basically, "Well done, guys!" and is autographed by the Russian members of the first station crew, Sergei Krikalev and Yuri Gidzenko.

The top of the photo shows the bottom half of the Russian flag. The flag is a tricolor of three horizontal stripes. The top stripe is white, which leads Russians to relate the colors we know as "red, white, and blue" as: "white, blue, and red."

* * *
I stopped off at the local Einstein bagel place after "yesterday's" shift and ordered their 'traditional' bagel with lox and cream cheese. Unfortunately, it seems that each time I order one, the technique used to put the order together degrades.

In any event, I got home around 10 am and went to sleep, rising at 1:15 pm. I did some chores and then watched an old version of The Avengers, which became one of my favorite shows only after it had largely finished its run. I had no idea that the character of John Steed (actually, John Wickham Gascone Berresford Steed) originally worked solo, only to be joined by Honor Blackman as "Mrs. Cathy Gale" a year or so later. I noticed the series way after Blackman had gone on to her role as Pussy Galore opposite Sean Connery in Goldfinger, replaced by the dreamy Diana Rigg as "Mrs. Emma Peel." Afterward, I played around with the translation that is the subject of my previous post and did some cooking.

A dinner and dog walk later, I again went to bed (at 8 pm) with the alarm set for 10:45 pm.

Life can be reasonably pleasant when you don't have to zoom around at Mach 3 with your hair on fire, trying to make a deadline.

Cheers...

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