"Na miru i smert' krasna"

[Kim Braithwaite]

Dear Bob and all -

Puritanical? Hmm. Well, no. More like philistine.

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

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Robert Chandler" <kcf19 at DIAL.PIPEX.COM>
To: <SEELANGS at BAMA.UA.EDU>
Sent: Wednesday, June 04, 2008 11:08 PM
Subject: Re: [SEELANGS] "Na miru i smert' krasna"


> 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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