Igenlode Wordsmith

I was absolutely astonished to discover (from reading the YouTube comments) that Episode 10 of the Let's get to know one another 1980s TV broadcast, which I had just been watching, actually features Veniamin Smekhov in the lead role of the University Professor -- completely transformed not only by the traditional method of beard and glasses, but in voice and body language as well :-D (Well, that confirms that they were putting a good deal of behind-the-scenes talent into these teaching broadcasts; unfortunately dates on the programmes in this series seem to vary from 1977 to 1981, so I don't know whether it was the serious actor in experimental theatre or the fan-idol 'noble Athos' who was being employed to voice the lead character for this little educational film. A year or two either way would have made a good deal of difference at that particular juncture!)( Read more... )

( Corrections to New Year's duet )

As I wrote the last time I was foolish enough to do this, "I have, provisionally at least, *finished* my song translation... and have no intention of doing any more for the foreseeable future" :-D

( A narrative ballad )

Original lyrics: https://meddiator.ru/rasskaz-podvypivshego-bombardira.html

( Translations )

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 ;-)

Archiving in their current form the verses that I've got so far, mainly because I've been carrying them around so much that the pencilled translations are starting to wear off (and for some irrational reason I find myself still reluctant to write over the various versions in ink...)
( Read more... )

I cycled 24 miles today, and by the time I got back I could barely stand after dismounting from the bike, let alone manage the stairs... I am a sturdy and sanguine city cyclist, unconcerned by heavy traffic (which is often moving more slowly than a bicycle anyhow), but I am *not* a seasoned long-distance rider.

I have put on a syrup and ginger suet pudding to boil, which I feel is what is required to Feed The Inner Man under such circumstances :-p (I have to cycle another twelve miles tomorrow morning...)

However the good news is that I managed to finalise the third verse of my ballad translation during the journey; cycling is hopeless for working on manuscripts but quite good for verse ;-)

I 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:

( Read more... )

( Translation completed )
I'm currently quite pleased with the way it came out, which I think gets across the flavour and shape of the original lyrics while providing a pretty close translation -- *and* fitting back into the tune provided ;-)

Original lyrics: https://lyricsonline.ru/36293-igor-nadzhiev-moy-angel.html

---

( Literal translation )
( Verse translation )

I managed to get the first four lines of the second verse of All Shall Be Well today relatively easily, compared to my extreme struggles with the second half of the first verse (and I'm still not entirely happy with the outcome of that one, looking back on it). But the next quatrain came fairly quickly once I'd worked out that I could rhyme "sombre note" with "underfoot" -- which is frankly no more approximate than some of the rhymes in the original and sounds perfectly fine in the context of the music. And unsurprisingly it's very much easier to work backwards from the rhyming ends of lines than forwards (as in the previous verse) by translating the meaning of the entire line and then trying to fill in the spare syllables with something that rhymes and doesn't mangle the sense...

I had some trouble with the first line, not least because I'm still not quite clear about the function of Пусть there -- *not*, I think, the "Let it be so" that it normally represents, but more along the lines of "what if"/"even if". At any rate I have chosen to use 'poetic licence' to treat it as such!

First attempt at the first line:
"Though seemingly existence nears its ending"
Subsequently improved to
"Though life may seem upon the point of ending", which is a nice example of how you can translate the same thing twice in the same metre using the same rhyme-scheme and come up with multiple differing versions :-)

Had a panic when I thought that first my computer and then my monitor and then my remote-controlled power socket had failed -- but in fact everything seems to be working now, so I don't know what had happened while I was out. (The power socket was definitely lighting up and the display definitely wasn't showing anything...)

Possibly a brief power cut to which the monitor objected by shutting itself down.

The kale is still being stripped by caterpillars; I have caught three or four so far, but they are almost impossible to find until they are already big and juicy with leaf.

On a more cheerful note, I have however succeeded in translating the first four lines of the first verse of the 'guardian angel' song (breaking with tradition by starting at the beginning this time) -- only another twelve lines to go!

More fun with auto-translations: French translated via Russian into English somehow ends up rendering the Club parisien de la chanson d'auteur into the Suicide Song Club, which had me doing a double-take :-D
(I still do not understand how the auto-translate managed to get it so wrong, given that the Russian (human) translation was simply "the club of do-it-yourself songs"; I can only assume that самодеятельный has some kind of slang connotations that even online dictionaries [amateur/self-employed] don't seem to know about...)
https://www.helloasso.com/associations/club-parisien-de-la-chanson-d-auteur/evenements/spectacle-de-veniamin-smekhov