"Na miru i smert' krasna"

[Kim Braithwaite]

I agree - Lubensky is the very best, useful every day. Inspirational in 
fact.

One thing I would like to see is a new (or supplementary) streamlined 
edition that leaves out the original and translated literary sources. Lovely 
as they are, I very seldom look at them in the course of my work. The 
syntactic formulation and array of equivalents at the beginning of each 
entry tell me all I need to know. Leaving the literary material out would 
greatly reduce the bulkiness, which forces me to leave it behind when I take 
my work to another city.

Mr Kim Braithwaite, Translator
"Good is better than Evil, because it's nicer" - Mammy Yokum (Al Capp)

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Paul B. Gallagher" <paulbg at PBG-TRANSLATIONS.COM>
To: <SEELANGS at BAMA.UA.EDU>
Sent: Wednesday, June 04, 2008 3:06 PM
Subject: Re: [SEELANGS] "Na miru i smert' krasna"


> Robert A. Rothstein wrote:
>
>> Sophia Lubensky, in her Russian-English Dictionary of Idioms, explains 
>> the proverb as follows: "misfortunes are easier to bear when a person has 
>> his friends around him, or when he is with people who share a similar 
>> fate (formerly referred specifically to death)."
>>
>> In addition to the translations already suggested (by Alina and Alfia) 
>> there's also "Troubles shared are troubles halved" and two French 
>> versions: "Chagrin partagé, chagrin diminué" (Shared trouble/sorrow is 
>> diminished trouble/sorrow) and "Malheur partagé, n'est malheur qu'à demi" 
>> (Shared misfortune is only half a misfortune).
>>
>> These remind me (by rather free association) of the very different 
>> sentiment expressed in one of the late historian Kamil Dziewanowski's 
>> favorite quotations, François de la Rouchefoucault's Maxim 19: "Nous 
>> avons tous assez de force pour supporter les maux d'autrui/" /(We all 
>> have strength enough to endure the misfortunes of others).
>
> The "right answer" used to be "misery loves company," but lately it seems 
> that the phrase has been reinterpreted to mean that if you're miserable, 
> you want others to be miserable as well.
>
> As for Lubensky's dictionary, I agree wholeheartedly wiht the views 
> expressed here and elsewhere in the thread -- it's a real gem. I could 
> spend hours just thumbing through it, and not many dictionaries meet that 
> high standard.
>
> -- 
> War doesn't determine who's right, just who's left.
> --
> Paul B. Gallagher
> pbg translations, inc.
> "Russian Translations That Read Like Originals"
> http://pbg-translations.com
>
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