CHECK IN: DAY 22

[igenlode]

The longest night is over! Time for things to get moving again...
How is it going?

Comments

[igenlode]

Despite my previous stuck-ness (and accidentally losing my folded sheets of transcript under a pile of business post), I actually managed to *finish* the main draft of my ballad translation before Christmas!
(Pity it's not actually a Christmas present for anybody...)

There are still quite a lot of variant readings pencilled in, and at least two points in these two stanzas where I deliberately ignored what the Russian text actually says in favour of an idiom that seemed equivalent and more native to English, but technically speaking it is now singable. I just have to try playing it back against the recording(s) a few times.

(CHORUS)
So may our ship/sail fair and free!/But this mad love/has hold of me --
I beg you pardon/my deceit -- I/meant no evil.
Now may the captain's/ life be blessed; I'll love him still/ when gone to rest
Up there above/ or if I'm sent down/ to the Devil.

(FIRST VERSE REPEAT)
Our captain said time and again that all women were blighted,
Let just one on board, and some doom for the sailors would come,
With Luck the sole lady to whom his allegiance was plighted;
That day he drank deep and then wept -- it was doubtless the rum...

[fleetsparrow]

Extremely cool!!

[igenlode]

I don't think "some doom for the sailors would come" quite works (already amended from "the sailors' doom surely would come"); the literal translation is simply "downfall sailors" -- the noun and its related verb allude to a literal or figurative precipice-- but in English we don't have a verb "to downfall [oneself]"...

Maybe I need to drop the doom and find some more natural-sounding phrasing. It sounded fine in my head but looks a bit off when put onto paper :-(

[fleetsparrow]

It sounded fine in my head but looks a bit off when put onto paper :-(

Oh gosh, I feel this! And then the more you look at it the more off it seems. 😔

It won't help, of course, but I think we SHOULD have a verb "to downfall [oneself]" in English! I can think of some situations where it would come in handy.

[igenlode]

It won't help, of course, but I think we SHOULD have a verb "to downfall [oneself]" in English! I can think of some situations where it would come in handy.

Well, it doesn't actually mean self-sabotage (although I'm sure Russian does in fact have some complex portmanteau word for that) -- as a verb, it just means that something bad has happened, or in this case will/would happen, presumably by analogy with the noun...
https://www.wordhippo.com/what-is/the-meaning-of/russian-word-d9035b8cb7c093cbc171ba39fa7bd4a2864da5b5.html

And it's a sufficient fix for the line simply to write "Let just one on board, and then doom for the sailors would come", as opposed to "and some doom", I think; it avoids the temptation to treat the 'some' as a stressed syllable, and the Russian isn't specifying multiple possiilities of 'some doom or other' anyway -- it's just saying that if you have even a single [woman] on board then the sailors will be done for :-)

[fleetsparrow]

I thought about stories (none of the ones I have due dates for, naturally), most of which were really just terrible jokes with the occasional brainstorming of a potential Christmas universe of worldbuilding (built up around the fact that there are a lot of songs between the '20s-'60s that introduce a lot of fun ideas and characters that society has forgotten about under the "No Fun" rule of 1986 or something).

Did I write any of them down? No.

Well, OK, I did post one of my terrible jokes, but that's barely writing since I do that anyway.

[igenlode]

There's a lot of potential for a cheesy Christmas song mashup universe :-D