подарочное-5

[jetta-e]

"Эзар умрет!" из "Легенды о принце".
Перевод на английский:  Menada

11. Ezar will die!

Ezar will die!
The gossip’s screaming the worst.
He’s not immortal,
He’ll last two months at the most.
No one can hold
The crown and rule from the grave.
He’s too old
To live though life he may crave.
Serg’s no Ezar,
Does not even share his looks.
He’s just revenge
Of fate – the best it can cook.
Serg will never rule -
My word on this you can trust.
Power’s my poison,
My curse, my passion, my lust!

Jealous pride
Will be a perfect decoy,
The Prince’s too shallow
To see the trap through my ploy.
If only Vortala
Can be a lucky young lord,
He’ll grant me the throne
With just a stroke of his sword.
If Serg even wins,
His triumph indeed will be sad
The counts will see him
As heir to Yuri the Mad.
No sworn allegiance
From liegemen so aghast.
Power’s my poison,
My curse, my passion, my lust!

For Charming Serg
His future doom beats the clock,
He blocks my way,
So he will die on the block.
I’ll raise his son
To be my pawn - it’s a must.
Power’s my poison,
My curse, my passion, my lust!

@темы: на английском, опера <Легенда о принце>, Стихи

Comments

[Louie Kongreyv]

Чертовски здорово! Вообще люблю эту оперу очень. Сильная вещь!))

[Гость]

would the translator be interested in detailed feedback from a native English speaker?

[Menada]

Гость, Yes, of course! I would be grateful for grammar review as well.

[Гость]

well, first, the refrain is really good, and the first half of the first verse is quite good also, although I'd replace cry with say and gossip with whisper. The double meaning of cry is distracting and gossip doesn't fit that idiom very well. "In his lot" isn't right, that idiom doesn't stretch that far. "the die nicely cast" is also opaque - I know what you mean, but nobody would say it like that.

The second verse has some problematic lines. "Prince is too gullible" is the major one. Aside from the article thing I would not try to fit gullible into the meter. "He's too much a fool" might work as a replacement. Prince usually needs an article: "The Prince". Both times that is missing.The second half of the second verse needs work. "Yuri the Mad incarnate" is difficult for several reasons. The stress on incarnate is wrong for the meter, and the rhyme is off (it doesn't have to be perfect, but combined with the stress it makes a problem), and incarnate is also trying to steal the adjective off Yuri. It does kind of work, but I suggest sticking with "Mad Yuri", or if you do use "Yuri the Mad". don't put any words after it. There are a couple other problems too - try reworking it?

The last verse is okay, although I'd suggest not using "scaffold" if at all possible, the association with execution isn't automatic enough. If you must use scaffold, "scaffold in store" would be more recognizable idiom. I know that messes up the rest of the verse.

I played around with the first verse a bit - feel free to keep any parts you like.

Ezar will die!
They say and whisper the worst
He's not immortal
He'll last two months at the most
No one can hold
The crown and rule from the grave
He's grown too old
From death he cannot be saved

Serg's no Ezar
He hardly looks the same
Alas for my liege
the boy is destined for shame
He'll never rule
In me he should never trust
Power’s my poison,
My curse, my passion, my lust!

[Menada]

Гость, oookay - "incarnate" is my bad, i honestly believed the stress is on the last part, so i didn't even bother to check the transcription or audio in my dictionary. I'm ashamed.

For all else, please take a look:

Ezar will die!
The gossip’s screaming the worst.
He’s not immortal,
He’ll last two months at the most.
No one can hold
The crown and rule from the grave.
He’s too old
To live though life he may crave.
Serg’s no Ezar,
Does not even share his looks.
He’s fate’s revenge / He’s just revenge
On him – the best it can cook. / Of fate – the best it can cook.
Serg won’t be a ruler -
My word on this you can trust.
Power’s my poison,
My curse, my passion, my lust!

Jealous pride
Will be a perfect decoy,
The Prince’s too trusting / Serg is too shallow - (any combination)
To see the trap through my ploy.
If only Vortala
Can be a lucky young lord,
He’ll grant me the throne
By mere stroke of his sword.
If Serg even wins,
His triumph indeed will be sad:
The counts will see him
Forever as Yuri the Mad.
No sworn allegiance
From liegemen so aghast.
Power’s my poison,
My curse, my passion, my lust!

For Charming Serg
His future doom beats the clock,
He blocks my way,
So he will die on the block.
I’ll raise his son
Into my match - it’s a must.
Power’s my poison,
My curse, my passion, my lust!

And thank you very much! You are a great help!

jetta-e, ничего, что мы тут устроили творческую лабораторию?

[jetta-e]

Menada, напротив, это прекрасно, что устроили!

[Гость]

hmm... well, some of that is better and some is worse. Don't stress on incarnate, the rhyme was less of an issue than how it interacted with 'Yuri the mad'. Word and phrase choice is so hard and so critical in English poetry (and many native speakers are quite bad at poetry ). You're obviously quite fluent, your rhyme is quite good, your meter is there, the meaning's there. All these things are very difficult. But the word choice is not working for me. This is a problem with English vocabulary - there's often six different words that mean the same thing but only one will work. Appropriate word usage and vocabulary for characters is a connected issue.

(it is interesting to me that you and edik_lyudoedik seem to have quite different strengths and weaknesses in English)

[Гость]

For line 2, I'd suggest either my previous suggestion or "The rumors all say the worst"(preferred). Because "the worst" is a little unnatural as it is, there's a lot of constructions that won't work with it.

For line 7 and 8, the previous suggestion again. My line 8 is not perfect, but I think it's a little better than either version you came up with. Your first version line 8 would work well for a young man going to die in battle but is iffy for a geezer.

line 10 is difficult. Too many of the appropriate words and phrases don't fit the meter. Either my previous suggestion, or you could play with "they don't look alike at all".

I generally prefer the lines 11-14 I posted above to what you have. The "cook" lines don't work at all. Your 14 would be okay with the right preceding lines to support it. I think it's important to segue gracefully into the refrain.

17: "His jealous pride"? "Possessive pride"? This is mostly a meter issue, the line needs at least 4 syllables.
18: "will drive him into my trap" works perfectly fine and seems to fit the Russian better. "perfect decoy" is dubious, it needs more surrounding metaphorical support.
19: "He trusts me too much"
20: with 18,19, "he's really the perfect sap"? <-not perfect, but acceptable "He can't find his ass with a map"? <--joke
22: I dislike "lucky" here for aesthetic reasons. The song meter also gets weird here. It might or might not be good to stick to the established meter of the first verse instead of following the Russian exactly.
24: "With just a stroke of his sword" is better idiom
25-26: the slang meaning of 'sad' detracts from this. "His triumph will not be glad"? <-- not great either
28: "as true heir to Yuri the Mad"
29-30: these two lines don't work

33: 'handsome' is much better than 'charming' but both are iffy.
34: very awkward
36: I would actually discard the block rhyme. aesthetic reasons again. Something with sword?
38: match has mild romantic vibes that I think are not intended. "To be my twin, it's a must?"

[Menada]

Гость, thank you, I'll get back to work on it further.

it is interesting to me that you and edik_lyudoedik seem to have quite different strengths and weaknesses
Well, naturally - we are two different people after all. I suspect she has more experience with lyrics in English, and I am not a fan of English classical poetry at all. I noticed that to compose any text in foreign language adequately one has to read texts of the same style regularly and achive a certain sense of familiarity with them.

To your second post - and here I thought that it was almost finished..... (joke)

[Menada]

Гость, please, elaborate.
for line 10. What phrase will be appropriate (not rhymed)? Serg is opposite to his father, and Grishnov almost condescendingly remarks that even his appearance is different.

14. What do you mean by right preceding lines to support it?

17-20. Verbatim:
Jealousy and pride will drive Serg into the steel trap
The Prince believes [the words] too easily, he won't detect/identify/recognize/sense the deception/trickery/fraud
What combinations are acceptable?

26.the slang meaning of 'sad' detracts from this I can't quite catch your meaning here

29-30: these two lines don't work Why?

33. I tried to give the impression of your fairy-tale Prince Charming, actually (who's not so charming a person as far as Shrek goes )
It is a mistery to me, why English has no specific noun for beautiful, gorgeous male or female ("a beauty" somehow seems lesser).
Is "dandy" the closest term for a man in this case?

34-36. It is either a block or a scaffold, literally - it's a penalty for duelling, figuratively - it's a set of unescapable deathtraps. Actually I thought it was a good pun, to die on the block for blocking one's way
Is there some synonym for "ignominious, inglorious" (word or idiom or expression)?

38. I’ll raise his son
As I see fit - it’s a must. - Any mistakes in verb forms?


Please, can I have your nickname?
And do you actually speak Russian?

[Гость]

This is Tel (it usually is, here). I don't write Russian, but I do a lot of translating for jetta-e and others so my deciphering skills are pretty good. My first instinct is to rewrite things that strike me as off. This makes me a decent translator but a somewhat tyrannical beta reader, so feel free to tell me to go soak my head. A lot of the lines have nothing formally wrong with them, they just sound stilted (as we would say). Or they don't poetically fit the meter.

[Гость]

10: fitting things into the meter without awkwardness is the problem. I think a slight variation on your first try would work: "He's different even in looks" (different is 2 syllables), or, more naturally, "he hardly looks the same"/"they hardly look the same"

14 is fine if the preceding lines are fixed. 13 isn't in meter. Suggest "He'll never rule"

17: same problem as 13. It's a pure meter issue. The stress is in the wrong place to sing it.

18: the specific type of trap is usually "bear trap" in English, but no bears on Barrayar. "trap" will work. Or, for 18, 20 "will be the bane of the boy"/"to see the trap in my ploy"

19: like 13, 17, still meter. The stress and number of syllables need to be close to "Ezar will die". The stress on the first syllable in Ezar is stronger in English. "He's too much a fool" would work fine here.

20: sad has a slang meaning of pathetic, incompetent, inferior in certain contexts. The way you're using it evokes that. It's not the right kind of slang for Grishnov to use.

29-30: I don't think the grammar's right, the rhyme's off, and the meter's definitely wrong for 29 again. "They'd(they'll?) never swear/allegiance without disgust"? <--this is a weaker statement than the Russian and not great. But singable.

34-36: "die on the block" is OK, I just don't like the rhymes you've found for it. "die in disgrace" is an idiom you could possibly use. Or "headsman" for executioner. Scaffold is associated more with construction or execution by hanging.

38: as I see fit is OK. It's a must is OK. Together they don't work too well. "Into my pawn as I must"? "Into a pawn I can trust"? Repeating the trust rhyme wouldn't be ideal.

[Menada]

Гость, thank you, Tel, I'll see what I can do. I think part of the problem with the meter is that I didn't formally write the meter, but was trying to follow the original song, where it often goes astray too. Yesterday I actually torn the original verses apart to count the syllables and the stress, and found 4 to 5 syllables in short lines and 6 to 8 syllables in long lines with almost unpredictable sequence)))

Have you listened to the song itself?

[Menada]

jetta-e, поправьте, плз, пока очевидные ошибки, чувствуется, до окончательного варианта ещё долго.

Ezar will die!
The gossip’s screaming the worst.
He’s not immortal,
He’ll last two months at the most.
No one can hold
The crown and rule from the grave.
He’s too old
To live though life he may crave.
Serg’s no Ezar,
Does not even share his looks.
He’s just revenge
Of fate – the best it can cook.
Serg will never rule -
My word on this you can trust.
Power’s my poison,
My curse, my passion, my lust!

Jealous pride
Will be a perfect decoy,
The Prince’s too shallow
To see the trap through my ploy.
If only Vortala
Can be a lucky young lord,
He’ll grant me the throne
With just a stroke of his sword.
If Serg even wins,
His triumph indeed will be sad
The counts will see him
As heir to Yuri the Mad.
No sworn allegiance
From liegemen so aghast.
Power’s my poison,
My curse, my passion, my lust!

For Charming Serg
His future doom beats the clock,
He blocks my way,
So he will die on the block.
I’ll raise his son
To be my pawn - it’s a must.
Power’s my poison,
My curse, my passion, my lust!

[Гость]

Yes, I have (repeatedly). I've been trying to follow along and sing the song in my head the way it would be sung in English. The short lines have a particular beat in English. Sometimes you can add an extra syllable and sometimes you can't, but you need the beat there. I'm doing this by ear.

Good examples of what I'm looking for include:
Ezar will die!
No one can hold
Serg's no Ezar
I'll raise his son

[jetta-e]

ща загоню в основное тело записи поправленный вариант!