Grossman VSE TECHET: translating some impersonal expressions

[Nina Shevchuk]

Robert, 
why don't you replace "wail" with "howl" -- it's a more animal-associated verb, and it might highlight the contrast between "the mind" and this primordial horror in the face of one's own death. Another feature of the original's language, it seems to me, is that it's a touch more impersonal, the verbs locating the agency outside the speaker... How about this:
A howl came from the village -- it had seen its own death. The whole village howled -- not from understanding it in their minds, not from feeling it in their souls, but as leaves torn in the wind or straw creaking. It made me angry -- how do they howl so pitifully? they are not human any more, and still one pities them. You had to be made of stone to listen to this howling and eat the bread you got rationed to you. 
Not very smooth, but you get the idea.
Respectfully,
Nina Shevchuk-Murray



----- Original Message ----
From: Robert Chandler <kcf19 at DIAL.PIPEX.COM>
To: SEELANGS at BAMA.UA.EDU
Sent: Friday, June 13, 2008 12:25:45 AM
Subject: [SEELANGS] Grossman VSE TECHET: translating some impersonal expressions

Dear all,

Most of my recent questions have been about matters of fact.  This question
is not.  The meaning of the passage is entirely clear.  I am asking for help
with reproducing a particular, very un-English quality of the language.

It is late Spring 1933, the height of the Terror Famine.  The narrator was,
at the time, a Party activist, in a Ukrainian village:
  Завыло  село, увидело  свою  смерть. Всей деревней выли - не разумом, не
душой,  а как  листья  от  ветра шумят или солома скрипит. И тогда меня зло
брало - почему они так жалобно воют, уж не люди стали, а кричат так жалобно.
Надо  каменной  быть, чтобы  слушать  этот вой и свой пайковый хлеб кушать.

And here is a very poor draft:
The village began to wail; it had seen its own death.  It was the whole
village wailing – and their wails came neither from the mind nor from the
heart.  It was a noise like leaves in the wind, or creaking straw. It made
me angry.  Why did they have to wail so pitifully? They had ceased to be
people – so why were they screaming so pitifully?  You’d have to be made of
stone to carry on eating your ration of bread to the sound of that wailing.

This may be a bit better:  It was the wail of a whole village, not a wail
that came from heart or mind.

One problem with both versions is that we don’t really expect a wail to come
from the mind anyway.

Vsego dobrogo,

R.

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