They translated me into Russian
3 October 2025 07:30 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
igenlodeI have been watching the excellent (and moving; it starts off as romantic comedy and acquires considerable thought and depth) 2020 film "Elsa's Land", probably Veniamin Smekhov's final screen role -- unless someone else comes up with a project sufficiently compelling to entice him away from his own preferred pursuits -- and so far as I can see very probably, at the age of 79, his debut as romantic lead ;-)
I think I originally learned of the film's existence when YouTube started showing me its (subtitled) trailer:
But unlike the effectively orphaned Soviet films, this is a recent production that isn't freely available/pirated on YouTube, and I didn't think I was ever likely to be able to see it. When a Web search threw up a Russian-language streaming site in response to my search for the YouTube summary of Moschettieri del re, it occured to me belatedly that they might just possibly have "Elsa's Land" there... and to my surprise, they did, and even with English subtitles.
(The site seemed dodgy enough that I actually went to the lengths of checking online to see if it was either safe or legitimate, but came to the conclusion that it probably was genuine, albeit plagued by intrusive ads which are presumably the way they fund their existence.)
Of course, if I had actually looked the film up on the Internet Movie Database I would have seen that there is a link there to watch it on the presumably much more official Tubi TV site, minus the novelty overlaid advertising graphics (drawn *across* the image and superimposed on the soundtrack as it runs? seriously?)
https://tubitv.com/movies/100009915/elsa-s-land
But I had no idea of that option and seized eagerly upon what I was given, being sufficiently enchanted by the film to enjoy it greatly despite the various intrusions. Surprisingly, in addition to allowing you to watch without a signed-up account, the site also allows you to review, and I was feeling sufficiently moved to do so on the spot -- taking care to copy my text out onto the clipboard before attempting to submit it! It duly disappeared, to the accompaniment of a notice in Russian which seemed to say something along the lines of 'your submission will be reviewed by our editors and posted if approved', and I went off to the Internet Movie Database to post a suitably edited version of my text -- sans advert criticism! -- on the site there, where I proved to be the only reviewer.
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt11872836/review/rw10844066/?ref_=tturv_perm_1
But I went back the next day to see whether Kinoflux.cc had, in fact, approved my original review. And I was very surprised and a little amused to discover that it had indeed appeared... *in Russian*! (Giving the impression of enormous fluency on my part where I had perforce submitted my comments in English, my Russian composition skills being limited to about a dozen words at a time.) Somebody or something had translated the entire thing for the benefit of the site's Russian-speaking audience, which was rather surreal to read back...
Interestingly, they had not however attempted so much as to transliterate my name, which might well have been tricky ;-)
But it really was very odd to see my own writing in Russian, as it were -- and because I had posted virtually the same text subsequently on the IMDb I had the opportunity to do a side-by-side comparison.
http://kinoflux.cc/75913-zemjla-jelzy-2020.html
My Russian isn't anything like good enough to tell whether this is a machine translation or not; I assume it probably is, because they've done things like replicate the bracket I accidentally forgot to close, and the default sex of the past-tense verbs and adjectives referring to the author of the text -- not of course an issue that arises in English -- seems inconsistent, although it's interesting that the default assumption appears to be that the reviewer is female! But they have translated some pretty complex constructions using what is clearly a non-literal idiom: "in stalwart support as" is rendered in the form "steadfastly supporting her" and "I must give full praise where it is due" becomes the elegantly succinct Я должен отдать долженое, "obliged to give what is obligatory". (And they even manage the randomly non-English "tour de force": "outstanding talent"!)
Something weird (and therefore not mechanical?) clearly did happen to the last sentence, however, where a random full stop appeared in the middle of the expression "I am even more delighted to be able to say that", turning it into "I [male] was even more delighted. I am able to say that I [female]" :-P
I think I originally learned of the film's existence when YouTube started showing me its (subtitled) trailer:
But unlike the effectively orphaned Soviet films, this is a recent production that isn't freely available/pirated on YouTube, and I didn't think I was ever likely to be able to see it. When a Web search threw up a Russian-language streaming site in response to my search for the YouTube summary of Moschettieri del re, it occured to me belatedly that they might just possibly have "Elsa's Land" there... and to my surprise, they did, and even with English subtitles.
(The site seemed dodgy enough that I actually went to the lengths of checking online to see if it was either safe or legitimate, but came to the conclusion that it probably was genuine, albeit plagued by intrusive ads which are presumably the way they fund their existence.)
Of course, if I had actually looked the film up on the Internet Movie Database I would have seen that there is a link there to watch it on the presumably much more official Tubi TV site, minus the novelty overlaid advertising graphics (drawn *across* the image and superimposed on the soundtrack as it runs? seriously?)
https://tubitv.com/movies/100009915/elsa-s-land
But I had no idea of that option and seized eagerly upon what I was given, being sufficiently enchanted by the film to enjoy it greatly despite the various intrusions. Surprisingly, in addition to allowing you to watch without a signed-up account, the site also allows you to review, and I was feeling sufficiently moved to do so on the spot -- taking care to copy my text out onto the clipboard before attempting to submit it! It duly disappeared, to the accompaniment of a notice in Russian which seemed to say something along the lines of 'your submission will be reviewed by our editors and posted if approved', and I went off to the Internet Movie Database to post a suitably edited version of my text -- sans advert criticism! -- on the site there, where I proved to be the only reviewer.
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt11872836/review/rw10844066/?ref_=tturv_perm_1
But I went back the next day to see whether Kinoflux.cc had, in fact, approved my original review. And I was very surprised and a little amused to discover that it had indeed appeared... *in Russian*! (Giving the impression of enormous fluency on my part where I had perforce submitted my comments in English, my Russian composition skills being limited to about a dozen words at a time.) Somebody or something had translated the entire thing for the benefit of the site's Russian-speaking audience, which was rather surreal to read back...
Interestingly, they had not however attempted so much as to transliterate my name, which might well have been tricky ;-)
But it really was very odd to see my own writing in Russian, as it were -- and because I had posted virtually the same text subsequently on the IMDb I had the opportunity to do a side-by-side comparison.
http://kinoflux.cc/75913-zemjla-jelzy-2020.html
My Russian isn't anything like good enough to tell whether this is a machine translation or not; I assume it probably is, because they've done things like replicate the bracket I accidentally forgot to close, and the default sex of the past-tense verbs and adjectives referring to the author of the text -- not of course an issue that arises in English -- seems inconsistent, although it's interesting that the default assumption appears to be that the reviewer is female! But they have translated some pretty complex constructions using what is clearly a non-literal idiom: "in stalwart support as" is rendered in the form "steadfastly supporting her" and "I must give full praise where it is due" becomes the elegantly succinct Я должен отдать долженое, "obliged to give what is obligatory". (And they even manage the randomly non-English "tour de force": "outstanding talent"!)
Something weird (and therefore not mechanical?) clearly did happen to the last sentence, however, where a random full stop appeared in the middle of the expression "I am even more delighted to be able to say that", turning it into "I [male] was even more delighted. I am able to say that I [female]" :-P