On toasts, and things...

[alexpgp]

One of the highlights (for me) of the annual ATA Conference is the dinner for members of the association's Slavic Language Division. Some of these events have been memorably, um, mediocre, while others (last year's dinner in L.A., for example) have been excellent get-togethers.

It occurred to me, at the SLD dinner last year, that nobody was proposing toasts along the lines of the toasts one might hear at a gathering of Russian trainers, specialists and cosmonauts in Houston. Try as I might, I could not remember any... at least not well enough to be sure of myself on my feet in front of forty or so of my colleagues.

Happily, I recently ran across a couple of books of toasts and anecdotes that I acquired during one of my trips to Moscow. They may give me some ideas.

In fact, on the first page of one of the books is an apparent translation of the "Selkirk grace," which is a short piece often attributed to Robert Burns (though almost certainly not composed by him). In English, it goes as follows:

Some have meat and cannot eat
Some cannot eat that want it
But we have meat and we can eat
Sae let the Lord be thankit

Here's what's in the book:

У которых есть, что есть, -- те подчас не могут есть,
А другие могут есть, да сидят без хлеба.
А у нас есть, что есть, да при этом есть, чем есть, --
Значит, нам благодарить остается небо!

Personally, I think the Russian translation tries too hard to be cute, with its repetitive use of the verb "есть," which means both "to eat" and is a form of the verb "to be" (as in there is, there are).

Cheers...

Comments

[ex-ilyavinar899.livejournal.com]

It must be Samuil Marshak, mustn't it?

Now, do you know, by any chance, the English original of Marshak's "Одному философу"?

"Мир, - учил он, - мое представленье".
А когда ему в стул под сиденье
Сын булавку воткнул,
Он вскричал: "Караул!
Как ужасно мое представленье!"

[alexpgp.livejournal.com]

I don't know. The book is not very scholarly, and only attributes the toast to Burns.

Cheers...