"Na miru i smert' krasna"

[Robert Chandler]

Dear Kim and all,

What a sadly puritanical approach - the examples are such a joy to read.
And as for practical benefit, a well-chosen example does help us to remember
something!

R. 

> 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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