Check-In, Day 09

[mistressofmuses]

Happy Tuesday!

Poll #33935

Open to: Registered Users, detailed results viewable to: All, participants: 5

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Where are you in working on your WIP at the moment?

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Working on pre-writing: research, planning, outlining, etc.!
1 (20.0%)

Writing!
0 (0.0%)

Editing!
0 (0.0%)

Working on something other than my intended WIP!
2 (40.0%)

Not working on anything/taking a break!
3 (60.0%)

Something else!
0 (0.0%)

Comments

[igenlode]

I managed to crack the verse that I was stuck on yesterday (albeit using the rather elastic rhyme-scheme; some of the Russian rhymes are pretty approximate too, including the one at that point :-p)

Our captain was there in the thick of it -- no-one could touch him,
For Luck was his Lady, and each to the other was true.
He duelled with three, then a foe from behind with a musket
Decided to send him a gift from three steps out of view...

(literal: Our captain was in the thickest [place]: as for getting the better of him -- not a hope!
He and Fortune really were faithful to one another.
He was sword-fighting with three [opponents], when someone there with a musket
Decided to give him a treat from three steps behind his back.)

Sadly I now have a 'chorus', which are much harder (because requiring extra sub-rhymes, and having a different and difficult rhythm). And I have worked out that there is literally *no* place at any point in the final line where the words 'cabin boy' (i.e. a stressed syllable followed by two unstressed syllables) can be used; there are only three stress positions and each and every one of them is followed by a single syllable alone..!
Presumably he will have to be abbreviated to simply 'the boy' -- I can't take the word up into the preceding line as I did with the 'from behind', because the whole point of that verse is the last-line reveal as to the identity of the un-named substitute...

[mistressofmuses]

Trying to sort things like this out in translation is SUCH a skill!

(I really like the bit you have there: it seems to capture the original meaning well, while flowing nicely in English.)

[igenlode]

I think the cabin boy is probably going to end up as 'the youngest', although there are still going to be problems with the metre versus the meaning, a.k.a. getting it all into the space of that single last line while fitting the existing stress-pattern (and it's got to fit, or you can't sing along to the original using the new lyric!)

(I really like the bit you have there: it seems to capture the original meaning well, while flowing nicely in English.)

Thanks! It doesn't flow quite as well as I'd like, especially that last line, but it was such a struggle to get anything to work at all that I reckoned that was about as good as I was going to get.

And while my Russian is lamentably weak, I *can* write English verse and make it sound decently natural :-)

(The first part I translated was the second line of the verse, and I think that shows; everything else was then fitted in around it!)