Наша честь song
10 September 2025 01:40 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
igenlodeI think this is about as good as my translation attempts at the Наша честь song ("Our Honour") are going to get; I haven't made any more changes for a week or so. So here it is.
It's a rather different challenge from Boyarsky's red horse song, partly because the metre (dactyl line endings) is just so beastly to write in English -- plus every single line is supposed to be either a rhyme or a half-rhyme -- and partly because it isn't even vaguely humorous. I need to try to get the elegaic but elevated and affirmative tone rather than sounding inadvertently like Byron's "Don Juan", and the metre really doesn't help in that respect. I have compromised and not attempted a full rhyme on any of the dactyl lines, but I have put a lot of effort into attempting at least an assonance on all of them; life would have been a good deal easier if I had not!
Original lyric (with very unsatisfactory translation): https://teksti-pesen.com/lyrics/12/Mushketery/tekst-pesni-Nasha-chest
My attempt at a literal translation:
On this little flying sphere
Off which it is impossible/forbidden to leap
We have been through quite an era
But it is not worth weeping, friends
Let success be rarely met with
And the way not paved with roses,
But all that happens in the world
Does not depend at all on us.
CHORUS:
Everything that is in the world depends
On the heavenly heights,
But our honour, but our honour
Depends on us alone.
We have had a tough time of it
And what more is to come -- God knows.
There is a single treasure in the soul,
It is called 'honour'.
It is possible [to give away] both victorious trumpets
And to give away money to the last groat,
But to the final breath, from honour
The soul cannot be parted.
(CHORUS)
My attempted 'singing translation':
I made a conscious choice, after much agonizing over the issue, to change the translated title from the literal "Our Honour", because the song isn't *about* 'our honour' (and moreover that reiterated phrase doesn't actually occur anywhere in my version of the lyric, because it doesn't fit the scansion...) It's not a song about the possession of honour, as such; it's a song about honour being the one thing within our control in a world where we have no influence over the events that happen to us. So I went for the phrase that I did use at that same point in the chorus, the repetition in my case being of "ours" rather than of "our honour".
I am *still* not happy with the translation of the chorus as a whole, but have consistently struggled to do any better :-(
(I have also, of course, deliberately chosen to translate the Russian 'soul' with the more English concept of the heart
in the context of such idioms!)
Edit: here is a better text (albeit without translation) for the ангел-хранитель song, minus the couple of transcription errors that are on the above-cited Наша честь page: https://lyricsonline.ru/36293-igor-nadzhiev-moy-angel.html
It's a rather different challenge from Boyarsky's red horse song, partly because the metre (dactyl line endings) is just so beastly to write in English -- plus every single line is supposed to be either a rhyme or a half-rhyme -- and partly because it isn't even vaguely humorous. I need to try to get the elegaic but elevated and affirmative tone rather than sounding inadvertently like Byron's "Don Juan", and the metre really doesn't help in that respect. I have compromised and not attempted a full rhyme on any of the dactyl lines, but I have put a lot of effort into attempting at least an assonance on all of them; life would have been a good deal easier if I had not!
Original lyric (with very unsatisfactory translation): https://teksti-pesen.com/lyrics/12/Mushketery/tekst-pesni-Nasha-chest
My attempt at a literal translation:
On this little flying sphere
Off which it is impossible/forbidden to leap
We have been through quite an era
But it is not worth weeping, friends
Let success be rarely met with
And the way not paved with roses,
But all that happens in the world
Does not depend at all on us.
CHORUS:
Everything that is in the world depends
On the heavenly heights,
But our honour, but our honour
Depends on us alone.
We have had a tough time of it
And what more is to come -- God knows.
There is a single treasure in the soul,
It is called 'honour'.
It is possible [to give away] both victorious trumpets
And to give away money to the last groat,
But to the final breath, from honour
The soul cannot be parted.
(CHORUS)
My attempted 'singing translation':
Honour is Ours
On this spinning globe in infinity
From which we have no way to leap
We've seen quite an era of misery,
But friends, it is useless to weep.
Success may not often encounter us
Nor roses be strewn where we stroll,
But what comes to pass on this world of ours
Is completely beyond our control.
CHORUS:
The heavens rule this earth below
And all that is upon it,
But honour's ours, and ours alone
The value we set on it...
More woes now with time have befallen us—
God only knows where it will end;
The heart holds one treasure in store for us,
And that is called "honour", my friend...
We may lose the trumpets of victory
And every last coin we possess,
But hearts are not parted so easily
From honour until our last breath.
CHORUS:
The heavens rule this earth below
And all that is upon it,
But honour's ours, and ours alone
The value we set on it!
I made a conscious choice, after much agonizing over the issue, to change the translated title from the literal "Our Honour", because the song isn't *about* 'our honour' (and moreover that reiterated phrase doesn't actually occur anywhere in my version of the lyric, because it doesn't fit the scansion...) It's not a song about the possession of honour, as such; it's a song about honour being the one thing within our control in a world where we have no influence over the events that happen to us. So I went for the phrase that I did use at that same point in the chorus, the repetition in my case being of "ours" rather than of "our honour".
I am *still* not happy with the translation of the chorus as a whole, but have consistently struggled to do any better :-(
(I have also, of course, deliberately chosen to translate the Russian 'soul' with the more English concept of the heart
in the context of such idioms!)
Edit: here is a better text (albeit without translation) for the ангел-хранитель song, minus the couple of transcription errors that are on the above-cited Наша честь page: https://lyricsonline.ru/36293-igor-nadzhiev-moy-angel.html