Falling out over Pushkin.

The Onegin Live site offers a free download of Pushkin's 'Eugene Onegin' read by Stephen Fry. But there is also a brief historical bibliography of over forty translations of the great Russian novel in verse. 

Much of it would be known to those who have an interest in Pushkin, but still I found this snippet thoroughly enjoyable. Nabokov and Edmund Wilson falling out over whose translation is best:

In 1963, Walter Arndt published a verse translation of Eugene Onegin preserving the rhyme schemes and metrical structure of Pushkin’s text. Vladimir Nabokov reviewed Arndt’s work in an essay entitled “On Translating Pushkin Pounding the Clavichord” that was published in The New York Review of Books. Nabokov furiously criticised Arndt’s translation; according to him, the attempt to preserve the original iambic tetrameter resulted in Arndt’s defacing Pushkin’s spirit and the literal meaning of the novel. Arndt replied with a letter “Goading the pony” that was followed by an article “The strange case of Pushkin and Nabokov” by Edmund Wilson, a critic who rose to Arndt’s defence and thus ruptured his close friendship with Nabokov.

In this clip Nabokov reads Pushkin's testament 'Exegi Monumentum' (1836) -

i

Everything is All Right, Magdalene

Easter Sunday, and Jesus Christ is Superstar again.

Here is the Russian version of ‘Everything’s All Right’ number that is often referred to as ‘Magdalene’s Lullaby’.

In the midst of the soothing singing, the fierce argument continues between Jesus and Judas. Mary is anointing Jesus with myrrh ‘to cool the fire’ in Jesus’s head. ‘Relax, think of nothing tonight,’ she says.

Apostle Judas challenges her and Jesus, 'Hey woman, your fine ointment, brand new and expensive, 

should have been saved for the poor. Why has it been wasted? We could have raised maybe three hundred silver pieces or more'.

Mary Magdalene carries on, ‘try not to get worried, try not to turn onto problems that upset you.’

Jesus seems to be annoyed by Judas’s accusation. He retorts, ‘Surely you're not saying we have the resources to save the poor from their lot. There will be poor always, pathetically struggling. Look at the good things you've got. Think, while you still have me, move, while you still see me, you’ll be lost, and you'll be sorry, when I'm gone.’

Tim Rice’s dramatic script was written in 1970s, with an emphasis on the conflict between Judas and Jesus, a conflict between a populist leader, the Messiah, and a socially minded Judas. The bells of that argument are ringing as loud today as they were then.

Curiously, the Russian version smoothes out this confrontation. And later on, when Judas is arguing with Simon about where the main thrust of Christianism should be, Simon seems to be in favour of the people’s rebellion, but Judas wants peaceful dispensation in favour of the poor and the suffering. Simon gets angry and snaps, “Несчастный либерал! Сиди и жди чудес!” — ‘You wretched liberal! Sit and wait for miracles!’ 

This anachronistic ‘liberal’, that appears in the Russian text, in the 90s and later certainly was meant to ring in the ears of the audience. In the post-Soviet period, ’liberal’ has swiftly become a swear word in Russian political parlance.

Anyway, here is the video (the 'Rock Opera' theatre, St Petersburg) —  

Anna Fischer's Russian translation resources

Anna Fischer, an American translator, compiled a list of Russian language online resources, bilingual and Russian only. It includes specialised resources like slang, phraseology, new coinages and etymology and cultural references.

The list is published in The Russian Literary Translators Group on Facebook and is open to new additions.

It is also downloadable as standalone document (link here).

Thanks, Anna!

Andrei Rublev reads Paul's message to the Corinthians.

(Easter message)

I thought I'd known 'Andrei Rublev', the great film by Andrei Tarkovsky, by heart. 

It's only this Easter, fifty years after I'd first seen the film, did I realise that Andrei's famous monologue about the essence of love is, in fact, an equally famous passage from the Bible, Chapter 13 from Paul's first message to the Corinthians (1 Corinthians 13 on Wikipedia). 

Atheistic upbringing! How much it removes! 

And now abide faith, hope, love, these three; 

but the greatest of these is love.

Here is the text as it appears in the King James Bible (from Gutenberg), where love is equal to charity: 

Though I speak with the tongues of men and of angels, and have not charity, I am become as sounding brass, or a tinkling cymbal.

And though I have the gift of prophecy, and understand all mysteries, and all knowledge; and though I have all faith, so that I could remove mountains, and have not charity, I am nothing.

And though I bestow all my goods to feed the poor, and though I give my body to be burned, and have not charity, it profiteth me nothing.

Charity suffereth long, and is kind; charity envieth not;
           charity vaunteth not itself, is not puffed up,

Doth not behave itself unseemly, seeketh not her own, is not
           easily provoked, thinketh no evil;

Rejoiceth not in iniquity, but rejoiceth in the truth;

Beareth all things, believeth all things, hopeth all things,
           endureth all things.

Charity never faileth: but whether there be prophecies, they shall fail; whether there be tongues, they shall cease; whether there be knowledge, it shall vanish away.

For we know in part, and we prophesy in part.

But when that which is perfect is come, then that which is in part shall be done away.

When I was a child, I spake as a child, I understood as a
           child, I thought as a child: but when I became a man, I put
           away childish things.

For now we see through a glass, darkly; but then face to face:
           now I know in part; but then shall I know even as also I am
           known.

And now abideth faith, hope, charity, these three; but the
           greatest of these is charity.

(Russian text below the video)

Из Библии, Первое послание Павла коринфянам, глава 13 (1 Кор, 13, источник или здесь) —

Если я говорю языками человеческими и ангельскими, а любви не имею, то я — медь звенящая или кимвал звучащий. 

Если имею [дар] пророчества, и знаю все тайны, и имею всякое познание и всю веру, так что [могу] и горы переставлять, а не имею любви, — то я ничто. 

И если я раздам все имение мое и отдам тело мое на сожжение, а любви не имею, нет мне в том никакой пользы. 

Любовь долготерпит, милосердствует, любовь не завидует, любовь не превозносится, не гордится, 

не бесчинствует, не ищет своего, не раздражается, не мыслит зла, не радуется неправде, а сорадуется истине; 

все покрывает, всему верит, всего надеется, все переносит. 

Любовь никогда не перестает, хотя и пророчества прекратятся, и языки умолкнут, и знание упразднится. 

Ибо мы отчасти знаем, и отчасти пророчествуем; 

когда же настанет совершенное, тогда то, что отчасти, прекратится. 

Когда я был младенцем, то по-младенчески говорил, по-младенчески мыслил, по-младенчески рассуждал; а как стал мужем, то оставил младенческое. 

Теперь мы видим как бы сквозь [тусклое] стекло, гадательно, тогда же лицем к лицу; теперь знаю я отчасти, а тогда познаю, подобно как я познан. 

А теперь пребывают сии три: вера, надежда, любовь; но любовь из них больше.

(A version of this post in Russian is here)

©А.Anichkin/Тetradki.

Feeling Levin. The scythe, the swath and the hired men.

(three translations compared)

Anichkin, who had not done any mowing for a long while, and was disconcerted by the eyes fastened upon him, cut badly for the first moments... 

It then came back to me, both the technique and the enjoyment. A friend came to help with clearing the garden, he had a scythe, and I had a good go. My uncle, a forester in a small village near Pskov, taught me to mow with a scythe and explained how it worked. 

It also made me ‘feel Levin’, and I looked up the famous mowing scene (hay harvesting) in Tolstoy’s ‘Anna Karenina’, when Levin joins in with the muzhiks. (Watch the hay harvest scene in a clip from the Soviet screen version of 'Anna Karenina', 1967 at the end of this post)

This is the passage from Tolstoy:  

Тит освободил место, и Левин пошел за ним. Трава была низкая, придорожная, и Левин, давно не косивший и смущенный обращенными на себя взглядами, в первые минуты косил дурно, хотя и махал сильно. Сзади его послышались голоса:— Насажена неладно, рукоятка высока, вишь, ему сгибаться как, —сказал один.— Пяткой больше налягай, — сказал другой.— Ничего, ладно, настрыкается, — продолжал старик. — Вишь, пошел... Широк ряд берешь, умаешься... Хозяин, нельзя, для себя старается! А вишь, подрядье-то! За это нашего брата по горбу, бывало.

Same passage in Constance Garnett’s translation:

Tit made room, and Levin started behind him. The grass was short close to the road, and Levin, who had not done any mowing for a long while, and was disconcerted by the eyes fastened upon him, cut badly for the first moments, though he swung his scythe vigorously. Behind him he heard voices:"It’s not set right; handle’s too high; see how he has to stoop to it," said one."Press more on the heel," said another."Never mind, he’ll get on all right," the old man resumed."He’s made a start... You swing it too wide, you’ll tire yourself out.... The master, sure, does his best for himself! But see the grass missed out! For such work us fellows would catch it!"

Same passage in Richard Pevear / Larissa Volokhonsky’s translation:

Titus cleared his place and Levin followed him. The grass near the road was low, and Levin, who had done no mowing for a long time and was embarassed by the looks directed at him, mowed poorly for the first few minutes, though he swung strongly. Voices were heard behind him:
‘It’s not hafted right, the handle’s too long see how he had to bend,’ one voice said.‘Bear down on the heel,’ said another.‘Never mind, he’ll get himself set right,’ the old man went on. ‘See, there he goes... The swath’s too wide, you’ll get tired... He’s the owner, never fear, he’s doing his best! And look at the hired men! Our kind would get it in the neck for that.’

Same passage translated by Nathan Haskell Dole:

Sef opened the way, and Levin followed in his track. The grass was short and tough; and Levin, who had not mowed in a long time, and was confused by the watchful eyes of the men, at first made very bad work of it, though he swung the scythe energetically. Voices were heard behind him:
"He does not hold his scythe right: the sned is too high. See how he stoops like," said one. "Bears his hand on too much," said another. "No matter, it goes pretty well," said the head man. "Look, he goes at a great rate ! Cuts a wide swath! .... He'll get played out. The master is trying it for himself as hard as he can, but look at his row! For such work my brother was beaten once." 

(upd: see the Maudes' version a the end of this post, 9 Dec 2015)

Russian scythe
Photo by Vladimir Menkov

Garnett and Dole are Tolstoy’s younger contemporaries, and perhaps they could visualise the scythe and may have seen mowers at work with it. Pevear/Volokhonsky’s translation was published in 2000, when few, except a number of country dwelling aficionados would have good acquaintance with the scythe, especially with the old Russian type of the scythe. It has a long, straight, not curved, wooden shaft, a relatively narrow but long blade, longer than the modern Western garden scythe, and a V-shaped wooden handle, that grips the shaft somewhere around the middle. It can be clearly seen in this modern photo (2006, Nizhny Novgorod region on the Volga).

The V-shaped grip was tightened by a piece of rope, or leather, or sometimes with strips of fresh soft bark, as my uncle did. The trick was to adjust the handle on the shaft, higher or lower, in such a way that you could hold your back practically straight while making the right-left, left-right swaying movements, keeping the ‘heel’ (the place where the blade is attached to the shaft) as low to the ground as possible and stepping forward step by step. The grass would fall neatly in a row to your left. A team of mowers would move across the field in a staggered formation, leaving the rows across the whole harvested area. Now, these rows are called подрядье - podrYAdye. (Подрядье: ср. Край скошенной полосы, ряда. Толковый словарь Ефремовой. Т. Ф. Ефремова. 2000.), i.e a swath, edge of the line of mowed grass or crop. A swath is also, of course, the width of grass that the mower catches in one swing, which in Russian in this sense is ряд, same as row. The muzhiks are criticising the messiness, untidiness of the swaths that Levin is leaving behind him. 

As you see, the two Tolstoy contemporaries caught his meaning regarding the set-up of the scythe and the mowing techniques, while the modern duo of Pevear/Volokhonsky completely missed both. From their translation it appears that they took the scythe to be hafted incorrectly and its shaft too long, while in fact it was just the V-shaped grip for the right hand (рукоятка), that apparently wasn’t adjusted to suit Levin’s height. It also shows in the incorrectly ‘corrected’ word that Tolstoy uses: рукоятка высока — the handle’s too long, instead of the correct translation in two other versions: handle’s too high (Garnett) and the sned is too high (Dole), though the latter uses a rarer word (Collins’ definition here).

Dole stumbles on придорожная grass, omitting this detail and adding ‘tough’ unnecessarily, while Garnett understands Tolstoy’s meaning — near the road. And in Dole’s, there is a really funny misunderstanding of the phrase ‘наш брат’ at the end of the passage. The expression is quite common and simply means ‘our lot’ (compare ‘all men are brothers’), not our or my brother.

Pevear/Volokhonsky boldly translate подрядье (swath) as ‘hired men.’ They were probably thrown off by the previous sentence ‘He’s the owner, never fear, he’s doing his best!’ (for himself as opposed to the hired mowers). Подряд (podryad) means contract, so the translators must have read подрядье as a collective noun for ‘men on contract’ without suspecting that there may be another meaning.

Out of the three, based on this passage, the winner is Garnett. Apart from being correct, to my, admittedly non-native ear, her translation flows more naturally, has a rhythm resembling Tolstoy’s. But that, of course, is a matter or taste.

Add. 9 Dec. 2015 (read a short analysis on Tetradki here):

And here is the corresponding passage by Louise and Aylmer Maude (from the Oxford University Press / Humphrey Milford edition, the World's Classics, 1926):

Titus made room for Levin, and Levin followed him. By the roadside the grass was short and tough, and Levin, who had not done any mowing for a long time and was confused by so many eyes upon him, mowed badly for the first ten minutes, though he swung his scythe with much vigour. He heard voices behind him:
'It's not properly adjusted, the grip is not right. See how he has to stoop!' said one.
'Hold the heel lower,' said another.
'Never mind! It's all right: he'll get into it,' said the old man. 'There he goes...'
'You are taking too wide a swath, you'll get knocked up.' ... 'He's the master, he must work; he's working for himself!'... 'But look how uneven! ... 'That's what the likes of us used to get a thump on the back for.'

Hay harvest scene from 'Anna Karenina', 1967 —

Eugene Onegin in English.

In case you missed it, 'Eugene Onegin', the great Russian novel in verse by Alexander Pushkin, is now available in audio book format. Stephen Fry (the voice of Harry Potter) reads it in James Falen's translation (1995). 

To download the full audio book go to Fry Reads Onegin.

Here is sonnet (stanza) 6 from Chapter 1 of 'Eugene Onegin':

6.

The Latin vogue today is waning, 

And yet I'll say on his behalf, 

He had sufficient Latin training 

To gloss a common epigraph, 

Cite Juvenal in conversation, 

Put vale in a salutation; 

And he recalled, at least in part, 

A line or two of Virgil's art. 

He lacked, it's true, all predilection 

For rooting in the ancient dust 

Of history's annals full of must, 

But knew by heart a fine collection 

Of anecdotes of ages past: 

From Romulus to Tuesday last. 

VI 

Латынь из моды вышла ныне: 

Так, если правду вам сказать, 

Он знал довольно по-латыне, 

Чтоб эпиграфы разбирать, 

Потолковать об Ювенале, 

В конце письма поставить vale, 

Да помнил, хоть не без греха, 

Из Энеиды два стиха. 

Он рыться не имел охоты

В хронологической пыли

Бытописания земли: 

Но дней минувших анекдоты

От Ромула до наших дней

Хранил он в памяти своей. 

Arseny Tarkovsky Compass Awards.

Арсений Тарковский 
(1907-1989, photo mid 30s)

Cardinal Points Journal is holding their Arseny Tarkovsky translations awards ceremony and readings in New York this Saturday  (Poets House, at 4 pm.). Cardinal Points has had Russian poetry translation contests for several years now, each devoted to one particular poet. Last year's contest was dedicated to Arseny Tarkovsky, father of the film director Andrey. (wikipedia about Arseny and a portrait gallery of him.)

Winning translations will appear on the Cardinal Points website and in the 5th volume of the almanac scheduled to come out in a few months.

Cardinal Points website is here and direct link to Tarkovsky contest page is here, for additional information mail Compass (compass at StoSvet dot net) or go to their facebook page. 

This translation by Laurence Bogoslaw (USA) won the first prize. 

In autumn’s final weeks, on the decline 

Of bitter life,

Filled to the brim with wistfulness, I walked

Into a leafless, nameless wood.

It was engulfed from edge to edge in milk-

White fog like frosted glass. Its hoary branches

Dripped tears distilled like those

That only trees weep on the eve

Of winter that drains everything of color.

And then a miracle occurred: at sunset

Out of a raincloud peeked a gleam of blue,

A ray of light broke through, as bright as June,

A weightless spear of birdsong cast 

From future days back to my past.

And now the trees stood weeping on the eve

Of noble works and festive offerings

Of cheerful whirlwinds luffing in the azure;

And bluebirds started dancing in a ring

Like hands upon a keyboard, rising measures

From earth to the highest notes the air can sing.

In the first video, Arseny Tarkovsky reads First Encounters ("Первые свидания") in Andrey Tarkovsky's The Mirror. It is this poem that ends with the haunting lines: 'When fate was stalking us like madman, with razor blade in hand.' In the second video Arseny Tarkovsky reads 'Blurring Sight' ("Меркнет зрение"):

Corporal Widow.

Nikolay Gogol.
(Daguerrotype photo, 1845)

Russian Foreign Ministry reacted angrily to the new extension of the EU sanctions with the head of the FSB security service and the president of Chechnya now on the list. (TASS report in Russian here, smoothed out English version here, BBC, without the colourful expressions, here)

The language of the MID comments is so flowery that it comes close to Nikita Khrushchev's legendary Mother of Kouzma, or Kuzkina mat' ("кузькина мать").

In one paragraph the diplomatic riposte uses a very slangy drug-world expression сесть на иглу, literally 'to sit on the needle', meaning to become addicted to intravenous drugs. This is used to describe the EU's seeming willingness to take as truthful the information coming from the US and Kiev.

Even more confusing might be a reference to "унтер-офицерская вдова", the non-commissioned officer's widow, or the sergeant's widow. It is a well-known Russian phrase, "унтер-офицерская вдова сама себя высекла" — 'the sergeant's widow flogged her herself.' It comes originally from Gogol's The Inspector-General, the 1836 satirical comedy describing corrupt and inept officials in a provincial town.

In the play, a lying Governor suggests that a complaining NCO's widow lies herself and improbably claims that it wasn't him who ordered her flogged but the woman flogged her herself. As often happens with quotes it became detached from the original and is now used in the meaning 'to punish oneself.'

Here is the original quote from The Inspector-General:

Гоголь, "Ревизор", Действие IV, Явление XV:

Городничий. Унтер-офицерша налгала вам, будто бы я ее высек; она врет, ей-богу, врет. Она сама себя высекла.

(The Government Inspector, Act IV, Scene XIV, translated by Arthur A Sykes, 1892)

GOVERNOR. The sergeant's wife lied when she told you I flogged her—it's 

false, yei Bohu, it's false. Why, she flogged herself ! 

(The Inspector-General, translated by Thomas Seltzer)

GOVERNOR. The officer's widow lied to you when she said I flogged her. She lied, upon my word, she lied. She flogged herself.

(Le Révizor, traduction par Marc Semenoff)

LE GOUVERNEUR. — La femme du sous-officier vous a menti, menti, j'ai ne l'ai pas faire fouetter. Elle s'est fouettée elle-même.

Read the Russian version of this post here.

The Interpreter Viktor Sukhodrev. RIP.

Sukhodrev interprets Brezhnev and Nixon in 1973. 

Viktor Sukhodrev, the legendary Russian interpreter, who worked with Soviet leaders from Khruschev to Gorbachev, passed away on 16 May 2014.

This excerpt from an article on Russiapedia explains one 'untranslatable' idiom that Khrushchev used during the 'kitchen debate' with Richard Nixon in 1959:

As the conversation progressed, Khrushchev unexpectedly passed onto the international affairs and Soviet-American relations, warning Nixon, that “We are giants, too. If you want to threaten us, we’ll respond with another threat.” It was at that moment that Khrushchev promised to show the United States “Kuzkina mat’”, or “Kuzma's mother” in English, introducing the most famous collocation of the Cold War vocabulary, which for years remained an enigmatic and obscure threat for the US and a turmoil for interpreters. 

As Viktor Sukhodrev, Khrushchev’s personal interpreter recalls, his colleague was confused and translated the expression as Kuzka's mother as “Kuzma’s mother” throwing off the entire American delegation. Later, the American interpreter having just as hard a time, finally decided to interpret it as “we’ll show you what is what, “ which was close, but still not true. Sukhodrev confessed that Khrushchev did explain what he had in mind, on their trip to Los-Angeles, “…I am starting to translate, when Khrushchev suddenly interrupts me, ‘When I was at the exhibition with Nixon, the translation of this phrase was wrong. And it’s really easy. We will show you something you had never seen before.’ I froze for a moment; no dictionary had such meaning for this expression. In other words, ‘We’ll catch up with you and overtake you, and astound you with something you’d never seen before.’”

Later, as the nuclear program was thriving, the Soviet nuclear physicists named the newly-developed a 100-megaton atomic bomb, the only one in history, and named it “Kuz’kina mat’”. With this new notion, the expression started to make concrete sense.

Watch a longish TV interview with Sukhodrev here. Among other things he explains Khrushchev's famous phrase 'we will bury you' and says that 'nothing is untranslatable.'

Photo: Robert L. Knudsen.

A Simple Matter.

 (Translating Crime and Punishment)

Dostoyevsky by Perov, 1872.

A simple matter of checking one phrase in the Pevear/Volokhonskaya’s translation of Dostoyevsky’s Crime and Punishment left me doubting whether they are as good as publishers and reviewers tell us. 

Zdenka Pregelj's Russia Past and Present published an excerpt from the glowing review of Pevear/Volokhonskaya’s version in Humanities magazine (full text here):

"

"In Crime and Punishment, there is a sentence that goes like this: ‘It was a very simple matter and there was nothing complicated about it.’” Richard Pevear lets the words hang in the air, along with a note of faint bafflement. From his Paris apartment, one half of the world’s only celebrity translation team is recollecting some of the knotty, cross-lingual jumbles that he has spent his working life trying to untangle.

“I came running to Larissa”—Larissa Volokhonsky, Pevear’s wife of thirty years and collaborator on twenty-one works of Russian-to-English translation—“and said, ‘Can that be? Is that what he said?’ And she checked and said yes. ‘It was a very simple matter and there was nothing complicated about  it.’” Reassured, if still skeptical, he jotted it down and moved on to Dostoyevsky’s next syntax-warping creation.

"

After this dramatic opening, the whole review dances around this ‘simple’ phrase. 

Why was Pevear baffled? Because of the apparent repetitiveness of the phrase? I thought there was something suspicious about it. It can’t be that Dostoyevsky is as repetitive as this. His style is different from the beautifully succinct Turgenev, or the elaborately detailed, thoroughly explorative Tolstoy. Dostoyevsky writes in a semi-colloquial, almost chatty way, as though he is sitting at a tea table and telling a story to a group of friends. At times, it is sloppy, or seems so.

I searched the Russian text of Crime and Punishment to find the phrase that baffled Pevear. (See 'Dostoyevsky on one page') This is how it goes (from Part I, beginning of Chapter VI):

Дело было самое обыкновенное и не заключало в себе ничего такого особенного.

It's not repetitive at all, it's a perfectly normal phrase. I'd translate it something like this:

[It turned out that] It was quite simple and there was nothing unusual about it. 

My wife, a native English speaker, thinks that 'and' is better replaced with a semi-colon. She suggested: 

In fact it was perfectly simple; there was nothing out of the ordinary about it.

You can argue about the first part of the sentence, whether 'the matter' is needed there. It appears in phrases like 

“В чём дело?” - ‘What’s the matter?’

“Это не ваше дело!” - ‘It’s none of your business’

“Я к вам по делу” - ‘I have business to discuss’.

“Дело [оказалось] серьезное”. - ‘It’s a serious matter.’

But the second part is definitely wrong. That's why it sounds repetitive in English.

"Ничего особенного" can mean 'nothing complicated.' For example, when you ask ‘Is it a difficult problem?’, you can get an answer ‘Nothing complicated.’ But here, in Dostoyevsky’s context it's definitely 'nothing extraordinary, nothing unusual, nothing suspicious'. 

When you read the Humanities article between the lines, you can see that every time Pevear, who has 'only a basic Russian' as the author mentions, has doubts, Volokhonskaya bullies him into accepting her version.

Publishers have built such a juggernaut of PV's translations, probably because of 'live' copyright, it's unstoppable now.

You can get a Redmolotov t-shirt with the opening line of Crime and Punishment in Garnett's translation: 'On an exceptionally hot evening early in July...' Click on the image.

The full paragraph from Crime and Punishment in Russian (from Lib.ru/Классика):

"

Впоследствии Раскольникову случилось как-то узнать, зачем именно мещанин и баба приглашали к себе Лизавету. Дело было самое обыкновенное и не заключало в себе ничего такого особенного. Приезжее и забедневшее семейство продавало вещи, платье и проч., всё женское. Так как на рынке продавать невыгодно, то и искали торговку, а Лизавета этим занималась: брала комиссии, ходила по делам и имела большую практику, потому что была очень честна и всегда говорила крайнюю цену: какую цену скажет, так тому и быть. Говорила же вообще мало, и как уже сказано, была такая смиренная и пугливая...

"

The same paragraph, in Garnett’s translation (from Gutenberg): 

"

Later on Raskolnikov happened to find out why the huckster and his wife had invited Lizaveta. It was a very ordinary matter and there was nothing exceptional about it. A family who had come to the town and been reduced to poverty were selling their household goods and clothes, all women's things. As the things would have fetched little in the market, they were looking for a dealer. This was Lizaveta's business. She undertook such jobs and was frequently employed, as she was very honest and always fixed a fair price and stuck to it. She spoke as a rule little and, as we have said already, she was very submissive and timid.

"

Update: It turns out that the phrase quoted in Humanities article didn't even make into P/V published translation. The actual sentence in the book runs like this: 'It was a most ordinary matter, and there was nothing very special about it.' Thanks to Anatoly Vorobey who found it on Google Books here. Which makes the Simple Matter even more baffling. See Languagehat's post and discussion of the phrase.

Update two: In David Magarschak's translation, which I have, the sentence reads: 

It was a most ordinary sort of business, and there was nothing at all remarkable about it.

Disclosure: Tetradki is an affiliate of Redmolotov.com. Every time you buy a Redmolotov t-shirt, Tetradki gets a small commission.

Scrambled Eggs, or Why the Russian Revolution Happened.

Fried eggs - яичница-глазунья.
Design by ©A.Anichkin.

I wrote about Maugham's Christmas Holiday here. Another of his Russian novels is Ashenden.

In a series of novellas Maugham recalls, through his alter-ego Ashenden, how while in the service of the British foreign intelligence he was tasked with preventing the bolshevik takeover in 1917.

Ashenden sets everything in motion to stop the revolution but in the end fails, as we know from history.

It turns out that scrambled eggs were, at least partly, to blame. The passage below describes the falling out between Ashenden and Anastasia, the Russian woman, on whom he later had to rely in St.Petersburg.

There is an awkward translation point here. The Russian translator Victor Veber (see the passage on my Russian blog post here) uses the word омлет  — omelette — for scrambled eggs.

It may be a mistake but could also be a deliberate choice to avoid readers' confusion. Fried eggs in Russian is яичница, or to be more precise, яичница-глазунья — fried eggs with eyes, as in my photo above. Scrambled eggs is also called яичница but with a different extension, яичница-болтушка — whipped, stirred or scrambled fried eggs. To build the growing antagonism between Ashenden and Anastasia on the differences between глазунья and болтушка could distract the reader from the humour of the original, the translator may have thought.

On the other hand he may have missed an opportunity to introduce a play on words: болтушка has another meaning — chatter-box, which is exactly what is Anastasia. See for yourself and enjoy the passage. It's tickling when you think what the world could have been in the past Century had it not been for Maugham-Ashenden's dislike for scrambled eggs.

I also recommend a short review of Ashenden on Tolstoy is My Cat blog.

(English text quoted from here)

Ashenden asked Anastasia Alexandrovna what she would have for breakfast.

'Scrambled eggs,' she said.

She ate heartily. Ashenden had already noticed that she had a healthy appetite. He supposed it was a Russian trait; you could not picture Anna Karenina making her midday meal off a bath-bun and a cup of coffee, could you?

After breakfast they went to the Louvre and in the afternoon they went to the Luxembourg. They dined early in order to go to the Comedie Francaise; then they went to a Russian cabaret where they danced. When next morning at eight-thirty they took their places in the dining-room and Ashenden asked Anastasia Alexandrovna what she fancied, her reply was:

'Scrambled eggs.'

'But we had scrambled eggs yesterday,' he expostulated.

'Let's have them again today,' she smiled.

'All right.'

They spent the day in the same manner except that they went to the Carnavalet instead of the Louvre and the Musee Guimet instead of the Luxembourg. But when the morning after in answer to Ashenden's inquiry Anastasia Alexandrovna again asked for scrambled eggs, his heart sank.

'But we had scrambled eggs yesterday and the day before,' he said.

'Don't you think that's a very good reason to have them again today?'

'No, I don't.'

'Is it possible that your sense of humour is a little deficient this morning?' she asked. 'I eat scrambled eggs every day. It's the only way I like them.'

'Oh, very well. In that case of course we'll have scrambled eggs.'

But the following morning he could not face them.

'Will you have scrambled eggs as usual?' he asked her.

'Of course,' she smiled affectionately, showing him two rows of large square teeth.

'All right, I'll order them for you; I shall have mine fried.’

The smile vanished from her lips.

'Oh?' She paused a moment. 'Don't you think that's rather inconsiderate? Do you think it's fair to give the cook unnecessary work? You English, you're all the same, you look upon servants as machines. Does it occur to you that they have hearts like yours, the same feelings and the same emotions? How can you be surprised that the proletariat are seething with discontent when the bourgeoisie like you are so monstrously selfish?'

'Do you really think that there'll be a revolution in England if I have my eggs in Paris fried rather than scrambled?'

She tossed her pretty head in indignation.

'You don't understand. It's the principle of the thing. You think it's a jest, of course I know you're being funny, I can laugh at a joke as well as anyone, Chekhov was well-known in Russia as a humorist; but don't you see what is involved? Your whole attitude is wrong. It's a lack of feeling. You wouldn't talk like that if you had been through the events of 1905 in Petersburg. When I think of the crowds in front of the Winter Palace kneeling in the snow while the Cossacks charged them, women and children! No, no, no.'

Her eyes filled with tears and her face was all twisted with pain. She took Ashenden's hand.

'I know you have a good heart. It was just thoughtless on your part and we won't say anything more about it. You have imagination. You're very sensitive. I know. You'll have your eggs done in the same way as mine, won't you?'

'Of course," said Ashenden.

He ate scrambled eggs for breakfast every morning after that. The waiter said:' Monsieur aime les oeufs brouillés.' At the end of the week they returned to London. He held Anastasia Alexandrovna in his arms, her head resting on his shoulder, from Paris to Calais and again from Dover to London. He reflected that the journey from New York to San Francisco took five days. When they arrived at Victoria and stood on the platform waiting for a cab she looked at him with her round, shining, and slightly protuberant eyes.

'We've had a wonderful time, haven't we?' she said.

‘Wonderful.’

'I've quite made up my mind. The experiment has justified itself. I'm willing to marry you whenever you like.'

But Ashenden saw himself eating scrambled eggs every morning for the rest of his life. When he had put her in a cab, he called another for himself, went to the Cunard office, and took a berth on the first ship that was going to America. No immigrant, eager for freedom and a new life, ever looked upon the statue of Liberty with more heartfelt thankfulness than did Ashenden, when on that bright and sunny morning his ship steamed into the harbour of New York.

Sponge Blues. (Mochalkin Blues)

Jamie Olsen posted in The Flaxen Wave about Chukovsky’s children’s classic “Moydodyr” (had Chukovsky ever had anything non-classic?) with a parallel analysis of Timur Kibirov’s parody. It’s illuminating and fun, and I highly recommend the analysis.

Here, a small and — hopefully — amusing point on the meaning of the word мочалка (mochalka - a scrubber, a loofah or luffa, or a sponge). In Russian it has long had a slang meaning, i.e. a girl who wants fun and is not much interested in anything else.

Don’t ask me to explain the etymology. I’ll just say that a traditional Russian ‘mochalka’ is a mop of stringy thin strips of the underlay of lime-tree bark used to scrub yourself clean in a steam-house, a banya.

In Sergei Soloviev’s 1980s cult film “ASSA” there is a song “Mochalkin Blues”, which plays on exactly that meaning of the word. 

The illustration above is a 'footnote' from "ASSA" explaining the meaning of 'mochalka'. Here’s a video from the film with Sergei 'Afrika' Bugayev singing:

Later on, the young ‘mochalka’ falls for the young singer nicknamed Afrika.  

Fiscal Cliff. (current vocabulary.)

In case you're looking for a Russian version of 'fiscal cliff', Alexei Mikheev has just posted a suggestion that I second:

фискальный обрыв [fisk´al'ny obr´yv]

Обрыв is another word for cliff with the added meaning of 'sheer drop.' So it fits just right with what is in the centre of the news from America.

Tetradki have already recommended Mikheev's Dictionaries of the XXI Century site and the Dictionary  of the Year page on Facebook. (read here). 

Achtung, or Why job-is-done sounds offensive (Russian office slang).

Read Russian version of this article here.

Earlier this year I was commissioned to write the blog “Как в Европе” (As in Europe) on the Russian business website BFM.ru, the news and analysis portal for a major radio network in the country. 

Business writing, naturally, has its own jargon. To keep up with current business Russian I’ve been reading up BFM and other publications with a focus on economy. A recent article by Dmitri Mungalov and Yekaterina Tropova  gives an excellent overview and a glossary of some of the words and phrases – not all of them ‘Runglish’ – used by office workers.

Slang, of course, is slang, it may disappear quickly but some words and phrases may go into mainstream language. 

Here are a few gems from the article.

Ахтунг – from German Achtung (attention, alert). Russians know this word from war movies and jokes. In office parlance it means something completely different. It’s used for a company conference or meeting where sloppy workers are given a show thrashing by the bosses. Declines as a Russian noun: на ахтунге.

Хурал - khural, from Mongolian for council, assembly. The word has long been used in Russian as a synonym for a large meeting, especially an unruly one. In office slang it is used, according to BFM writers, for general assembly. 

Фуй - fui, from FYI (for your information) read phonetically, with the English ‘y’ read as the similarly looking “у” [u, or u:]. This one is wonderful, because ‘fui’ is not only a slightly archaic interjection of disapproval or disgust, but also a mask-word for the very powerful, unprintable swear-word “хуй” (khui - cock). BFM says фуй is widely used in office correspondence.

Асап - [asʌp] from English abbreviation ASAP (as soon as possible). It has acquired verbal forms (проасапить - to do smth asap) and has become part of a paraphrase of the Russian proverb “поспешишь – людей насмешишь” (haste and make yourself a laughing stock, close to ‘no haste, no waste’) – “ноу асап – ноу факап” (no asap – no fuckup). The rhyming here comes from phonetic pronunciation of asap.

Факап - from ‘fuck-up’, was one of the most often cited words that are used in office slang, with verbal form профакапить (profakapit’ - to fail a project).

Жопиздан [zhɔpizdɑn] - from ‘job is done’, is another monster because it includes two strong invectives: zhópa - ass, stronger in Russian than in English, and pizdá, an ‘unprintable’ maternoye Russian word for ‘cunt’. It is said to be used, though, in the same meaning as in English – finishing a project.

The next two examples are interesting in that the first one shows how borrowings are adapted to Russian phonetic norms and the second how English borrowings commonly change pronunciation when one or more letters are deliberately read as the similar looking Russian letters.

Чипово - сhipovo - adverb, from ‘cheap’, meaning, in PR or advertising, an unacceptably cheap look. Though authors don’t indicate how it is pronounced, I assume it follows the pattern “хренóво” (bad, bad state, bad quality) and has the stress on the first ‘o’ – chipóvo. 

Лахари - lakhari, from English ‘luxury’. Russian letter ‘x’ represents the sound ‘kh’, a hard sound in Russian, close to Welsh or German ‘ch’. ‘Luxury target [audience]’ becomes “лахари таргет”.

Some common brand names are also phonetically transformed. 

Майкрософт интернет испортил - from Microsoft Internet Explorer. Explorer becomes ‘isportil’ - spoiled, destroyed – Microsoft spoiled the Internet. 

Aрбуз - arbuz - watermelon, for Airbus.

Бобик - bobik - common word or name for a small dog, for Boeing.

Mамба - mamba - a snake, for MMВБ, the major Moscow exchange.

Дохлики - dokhliki - dead ones, waifs, for DHL.

Read the full article and the glossary on BFM.ru, some additional examples are in comments.

Picture by Tetradki/A.Anichkin.

Gumilev's 'As we were leaving Southampton' (Titanic Premonition)

Titanic leaves Southamptom

The sinking of the Titanic a hundred years ago this week was a powerful blow to the prevailing self-assured mood of the time, the feeling that nature is finally conquered and the human is king. The largest man-made moving object, the unsinkable ship was destroyed by the forces of the unforgiving nature.

For many, it was also an omen for more tragedies to come in the new century. Two years later the first world war started and empires fell.

The feeling was shared by the great Russian poet of the time Nicolay Gumilev. In the middle of 1917, after the collapse of Russian monarchy but before the bolshevik takeover in October, he wrote this poem, sometimes published under the title 'The Omen'.

As we were leaving Southampton
The depths of the sea were blue.

But as we approached Le Havre

Its colours had darkened to black.

Oh yes, I believe in omens

As I do in waking dreams.

Lord, show mercy, save our souls.

Disaster, it's coming our way.

Translated by A.Anichkin

Gumilev took part in an officers' anti-Soviet conspiracy and was shot by the Bolsheviks in 1921. His wife, the poet Anna Akhmatova, and son, the historian Lev Gumilev survived. The poem was not published until 1950s but is now widely known in russophonia – the Russian-speaking world.

In Russian:

Предзнаменование

Мы покидали Соутгемптон,

И море было голубым,

Когда же мы пристали к Гавру,

То чёрным сделалось оно.

Я верю в предзнаменованья,

Как верю в утренние сны.

Господь, помилуй наши души:

Большая нам грозит беда.

Titanic actually sailed from Southampton to Cherbourg in France, not Le Havre, then to Queenstown in Ireland and then across the Atlantic.

Gumilev's text from here. 

Photo from Wikimedia.

Gavrilov Translation

Andrei Gavrilov

This is a video with Andrei Gavrilov (Андрей Юрьевич Гаврилов) talking about translation.  Gavrilov is a legendary figure in Russia. He dubbed an endless number of English, French and Japanese-language films on video, beginning from 1980s when the flood of Western cinema started to break through the walls of the Soviet Union on VHS cassettes. The films were voiced-over in Russian by a handful of translators who had a knack for a fast-paced, practically simultaneous translation in good intelligible Russian.

Gavrilov, usually uncredited, became one of the best known of them. To the point where the technique of voice-over, when the whole film is dubbed by one translator and his voice is heard a few split seconds after the actors' voices, had become known in Russia as 'Gavrilov translation' – "перевод Гаврилова".



Gavrilov is a professional journalist, fluent in French and English (he translated Japanese films via English subtitles). I worked with him in the European section of TASS news agency in the early eighties where I remember him as the fastest-working, practically faultless editor and writer of news despatches. Which allowed him to carve out time for writing on the side – additional stories, sometimes political, but often on Western culture. He wrote numerous introductory articles on musical record jackets.

Gavrilov stumbled into translating films almost by chance. When a regular translator at an important viewing for Soviet bosses didn't show up, a desperate manager grabbed Gavrilov and put him behind the mike.

His big love has always been music, classical, rock and especially jazz. Gavrilov now runs one of the top quality music companies in Russia, Solyd Records.

In the clip, one interesting observation by Gavrilov is on translating English-language invectives into Russian. He argues that Russian 'mat' (sexually based expletives) have a stronger offensive power than in English. That difference, he says, should be taken into account by a translator. In most cases English swear words shouldn't be translated literally, as Russian mat, but a milder, more acceptable phrasing should be used.

The Undeserted Island

One of the most optimistic sci-fi novels by the famous Russian duo Arkady and Boris Strugatsky has the title "Обитаемый остров", literally the Inhabited Island.

Max Kammerer, a member of the future Earth's space probing 'Free Search Group' is stranded on a planet which strikingly resembles today's Earth. He quickly realises that things have to be changed on the planet, his Desert Island, and with some help of the local resistance stages a revolution there. Not realising that an undercover agent of the Earth's Committee of Galactic Security (KGB) had been already working for years there to ensure a more painless transition from a totalitarian society to the utopian Earth-like democracy.

The English translation of the book, the first in a trilogy, is called Prisoners of Power. 

The title is different because of the untranslatable Russian pun – обитаемый-inhabited vs необитаемый-desert (island).

The difficulty in the pun is that a 'desert island' invokes desolation, being stranded, while 'uninhabited' or 'inhabited' is simply a geographical note, though in Robinson Crusoe's original title it was just that – 'un-inhabited island'. Max is stranded like Crusoe, except that his island is a planet. In Russian a 'desert island' is 'neobitayemy ostrov', so the title 'Obitayemy Ostrov' (inhabited, non-desert or undeserted) is immediately recognisable as the opposite of 'desert island', practically as an oxymoron, while the English 'inhabited island' is not.

Thanks to Languagehat for the original discussion of Strugatskys and to commenters Mockba and AJP Crown for additional probing on the subject.