Channelling... Pushkin!

I decided to take a 15-minute break after translating 2500 words of the other item on my plate, and was drawn to translating stanza 6 of canto 1 of Pushkin's Eugene Onegin.

Bad move on my part, in spades and diamonds, as it's not an easy thing to put down; the 15 minutes has turned into an hour.

It's the stanza that starts:

Латынь из моды вышла ныне:
Так, если правду вам сказать,
Он знал довольно по-латыни,
Чтоб эпиграфы разбирать,
Потолковать об Ювенале,
В конце письма поставить vale,
Да помнил, хоть не без греха,
Из Энеиды два стиха.

In this stanza, having noted Onegin's ability to elicit smiles from women with unexpected wit, the narrator segues to a description of Onegin's skill in Latin.

My translation of the above fragment:

Now, Latin has from favor fallen,
And if I were the truth to tell,
He had sufficient stock of Latin
To translate witty sayings well;
To speak at length of Juvenal
And sign his messages with vale;
And though not perfectly, recall
Aenid verses - two in all.

I hope this post gets whatever it is out of my system. I need to "turn to" on the next "slug" of the large project for today, of about 3000 words!

Cheers...

Oops...

This huge document I'm working on talks about missile launchers, among other things, and at one point makes reference to a "параллелограммное устройство" on such devices, so naturally (and automatically) I just Googled

missile launcher parallelogram

which returned some hits referring to a "parallelogram structure" or "parallelogram mount."

You learn something new every day on this job. <grin>

That said, here's hoping my choice of search terms does not come back to bite me in the future! <wink>

Cheers...

Pushkin, continued...

No sooner had I completed my slug of work on the big job than that itch - the compulsion that resulted in this post earlier today - made itself apparent again.

Here, then, is all of stanza 6, canto 1, of Eugene Onegin:

Латынь из моды вышла ныне:
Так, если правду вам сказать,
Он знал довольно по-латыни,
Чтоб эпиграфы разбирать,
Потолковать об Ювенале,
В конце письма поставить vale,
Да помнил, хоть не без греха,
Из Энеиды два стиха.
Он рыться не имел охоты
В хронологической пыли
Бытописания земли;
Но дней минувших анекдоты
От Ромула до наших дней
Хранил он в памяти своей.

My translation:

Now, Latin has from favor fallen,
And if the truth I were to tell,
He had sufficient stock of Latin
To translate witty sayings well;
To speak at length of Juvenal
And sign his messages with vale;
And though not perfectly, recall
Aenid verses - two in all.
He had no wish to go explore
Through chronological debris
And excavate life's potpourri;
But funny jokes from days of yore
From Romulus through history
Committed he to memory.

Yeah, I know, it's not exactly Pushkin and may set a new standard for "lost in translation," but the product is mine own, so I think it's shiny!

Anyway, dinner calls. This concludes my career as a translator of classical Russian literature, most certainly for now. Had this been a more complete translation, it likely would have been published and critically acclaimed. <grin>

Cheers...