Grossman VSE TECHET: translating some impersonal expressions
Laura Kline
klinela at COMCAST.NET
Fri Jun 13 14:20:40 UTC 2008
How about something like this:
It was the whole village wailing - without cognizance, without emotion, like
leaves rustling in the wind, or straw creaking.
or
It was the whole village wailing - not consciously, not emotionally, but
like leaves rustling in the wind, or straw creaking.
-----Original Message-----
From: SEELANGS: Slavic & East European Languages and Literatures list
[mailto:SEELANGS at BAMA.UA.EDU] On Behalf Of Robert Chandler
Sent: Friday, June 13, 2008 1:26 AM
To: SEELANGS at BAMA.UA.EDU
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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