Ballad complete?

Right, I think I've actually unexpectedly finished my ballad translation, or at least the main draft of it; there are still several passages with multiple variations pencilled in, but at least I *have* rival versions to choose between! I was very thoroughly stuck on the final chorus up to about 1am this evening, and then things laboriously started to come together.

I'm afraid it's not as accurate translation of that stanza as I should like ("blessed" for "happy", "love him still" for "can't help but love him", "mad love has hold of me" for "at my wits' end with love"), but the general story line is there, and I was grateful to get anything to fit at all. The final verse-variation, which has to be basically the same as the first verse with a couple of lines changed, proved to be much easier than I'd expected, since I managed to find an effective way to represent the untranslatable concept of it must have been тоска which also turned out to be relatively easy to rhyme with ;-)

English extra

I have just noticed another passage added(?) by the English translator into his version of "Twenty Years After", apparently in order to clarify d'Artagnan's line of thought (unless it comes from a different source edition...)

( In England we were beaten )

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Edit: yes, it is clearly a case of different editions!( Read more... )