'Your Honor' translation redux

[alexpgp]

There's a new community on LJ called 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.

* * *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").

* * *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.

* * *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.

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 belochka actually came up with something).

Moreover, in reading 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...