Words flow trippingly from my fingertips...

I sort of feel like saying, "Aw, man, what a time for multitran.ru to go down!" But things are nowhere near desperate, not with sentences along the lines of:

Based on existing understandings of anionic lattice disordering, it may be assumed that point defects in LaF₃ form as the result of thermal defects, primarily via the Schottky mechanism.

Although this may sound like a highly technical sentence, it's actually pretty easy to parse, if you have some experience with the lingo (and I do, courtesy of Soviet Physics - Crystallography).

Still, there are the occasional terms that I'd like to double-check, and it is something of a pain for multitran.ru to be down.

* * *This is the third day running that I've managed to exercise (walking). Yesterday's session on the Nordic Trac was the usual boring grind; I need to figure out a way - either by listening to something or by reading something - to help make the time go by faster. Today, when I took a there-and-back walk, my prescribed time slipped away almost without my noticing it, and I wasn't doing anything in particular to help the time pass.

Cheers...

(no subject)

My column from the Winter 2003 issue of The SlavFile (the quarterly of the ATA's Slavic Languages Division):

An incident from my engineering days made a very deep impression on me. It was the day after the 1984 Academy Awards and Milos Forman's film Amadeus had walked away with the Oscars for Best Picture, Best Director, and Best Actor. Exchanging morning pleasantries with my boss, I jokingly noted that there was still hope for the cultural redemption of the country.

"What do you mean?" asked my boss.

"Well, if a film about Mozart can win an Oscar, then anything is possible," I said, light-heartedly.

"Who?" asked my boss.

When it became clear that neither the name "Mozart" nor the film title Amadeus meant anything to him, I was thunderstruck, to say the least. In my world view, being out of touch with what was popular at the box office was forgivable, but it was inconceibable that one could be so narrowly focused in one's life as to not have picked up the name "Mozart" from somewhere - if only by a kind of social osmosis - and placed it in the general context of classical music (even if one never listened to the stuff).

Having a narrow focus is not a malady unique to techies, but many techies suffer from it (indeed, some even boast of it). For as long as I can remember, though, despite a natural technical inclination, I've striven to develop my "weak side." By this I mean I've worked at learning something about the nontechnical world: languages (of course), art, literature, and so on.

Not too surprisingly, this "broadening" has paid benefits to me in the interpretation and translation end of the world. (I have no doubt that some technical "rounding" would benefit many non-technical translators.)

For some time, however, I'd noticed that the "Russian" side of my life lagged behind, from both a cultural point of view (a common shortcoming among Americans, it is said) and that of non-technical vocabulary. So, early last year, I decided to do something to remedy this defect.

The first fruit of that effort was the translation of the lyrics to the song Ваше благородие from Vladimir Motyl's popular Russian film Белое солнце пустыни [White Sun of the Desert]. Those of you who attended this year's Literary Cafe at the ATA Conference in Atlanta heard me read it out loud.

An interesting piece of lore about the film is that it is an obligatory part of a cosmonaut's ritual on the eve of a trip into space. (I seem to recall someone telling me that this tradition dated back to Gagarin's flight, but as the film was shot in 1970, I have my doubts. Nonetheless, somewhere along the lines, it did become a tradition.)

When I had an opportunity to watch the film, I was struck by the melody of Ваше благородие. Unfortunately, between my deficient non-technical Russian vocabulary and my poor skills at deciphering sung lyrics in any language, the only words I could make out were those of the refrain in the last line: Не везет мне в смерти, повезет в любви! [I've no luck at dying; I'll fall in love instead!] The line intrigued me, so I resolved to get hold of the lyrics and translate them

I'll not bore you with the details of the consultations, false starts, and dead ends involved in attempting to fashion a workmanlike translation that I felt was true to the original. What I will tell you is that the experience of working outside of what you normally do makes you, in my opinion, a stronger translator.

Try it yourself. Develop your weak side. I think you'll be pleasantly surprised.

The initial discussion of the translation of the lyrics occurred over a couple of days in my LJ early last year.

Cheers...