Showing posts with label translations. Show all posts
Showing posts with label translations. Show all posts

Wednesday, October 31, 2018

White Clouds

This song has so much joy running through it.  Simon did a wonderful job of telling the video story as well as highlighting the words.  An interesting comment that someone wrote on his post: "I remember singing this with my grandmother."  That's why I am so excited to present this English version that fits the meter of the song.

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I am running to the distant blue horizon,
All around are fields in shining golden light;
Clouds of white rush by and sweep then over top me,
But lonely they have left me out of sight.


And the wind, the field's aroma now is breathing,
It enlivens me to fight this weary strife;
And the meadow seems to me most sweet and precious,
Like my homeland far away past this long night.


How I'd like to fly together with the white clouds,
Far away from all earth's evil, sin and strife,
To the heav'nly country where light shines eternal,
Where our Lord will pasture us in endless life!








The music:

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My theory as to where he filmed this—

West of US 97 a little north of the Columbia River in Washington.
Near the Windy Flats Wind Farm.

Why do I assume this?
  • It is close to the Merryhill Stonehenge Memorial just east of US 97 at the Columbia River.  Simon has posted other videos from that location: The Grace of Our Lord (2 Cor. 13:14).
  • In the background of the video you can see a wind farm behind him.  The shape of the hill below the wind turbines is similar to Windy Flats.
  • Google satellite view shows well-watered farm land tucked just north of Wash SR 14.
 Scene at 1' 15"---



Scene looking northeast from Wash. SR 14 at US 97 ---

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Sunday, October 28, 2018

Index to Translations of Simon's Songs












Many of Simon Khorolskiy's renditions of songs have become favorites of mine—some familiar and many previously unknown to me.  He has placed the names of the composers by a few of the songs, but many have no source nor composer listed.  I asked him about this.  He wrote back:
"All of these songs, besides the ones that have 'original songs' by them, are old Russian hymns from 50-100 years ago that were sung by our grandparents back in the Soviet Union.  I am merely just reviving them.  Thanks for kindly asking, but, you don't even need my permission to translate them. Go forth!"
Thus I have carte blanche to translate these and make them accessible to people here in the States.  It is especially sweet to think that some of these songs were sung during the darkest days of the communistic oppression.    And it increases my desire to make these available to the Body of Christ within the English-speaking world.

NOTE: There will be many songs in both categories.


NOTE:  Many new translations in the Third Section Below.

Metrical Translations —

(Fits the translation to the music)


Transliteration and Word-For-Word Translations —

(Does not fit the music)

Each line of the song will expand into 3 lines:
   1st Line:  The actual Russian (in the Cyrillic alphabet)
   2nd Line: The Russian represented by English letters
   3rd Line: The translation.
              Words that have to be supplied are in [square brackets].







Other Russian Songs Translated Word-for-Word —

 

Some words about Russian and Translating —

Russian is far different from English, even though both are Indo-European languages.  Some of the difference is superficial: Russian uses the Cyrillic alphabet, whereas English uses the Roman alphabet.  But the deep-seated differences lie in word order and what happens to words as they are showing different roles in a sentence.  I don't want to delve into the details of Russian grammar, but I want to help you appreciate some of what the Russian language is doing.

For English, the language is strongly dependent on word order:
I book a place.            OR                 I place a book.
These two sentences have vastly different meanings.  In Russian this is not possible because verbs have verb endings that reflect not only the tense (past, present, future, etc.) but also who the subject of the sentence is.  Likewise, nouns have noun endings that mark them as being a subject or an object of a verb or showing possession.  Thus Russian can move words around in ways that seem unnatural to the English mind.  This allows for flexibility in poetry, allowing the cadence to move better.  It also allows something to take focus by placing it first or in a position that highlights its role differently than you could do with English.

Other difference that show up in doing a word-for-word translation are:
  • Russian has no articles: no a, an, nor the.
  • Russian does not (usually)  use the verb to be in the present tense.
    • All you do is put the noun next to the other noun or an adjective
    • "The house is green."   Becomes word-for-word translated: "House — green."
  • Sometimes the preposition that we use in English is embedded in the noun's ending.  In other words, the Russian language does not need to say "The dog of the man."  Instead the noun "man" would be modified to show that it was possessing something: usually the noun just before it.
  • You will see a number of words that look like single consonant letters.  Eg, s, k, v.  They are stand alone words, often prepositions.  However in pronunciation, they are run together with the word that follows.  For example:
    • Бог с Тобой — transliterated:  Bog s Toboi
    • but  this would be pronounced more like Bṓg stəBṒY
    • and the Word-for-Word translation:  "God [be] with you"
  • The English letter transliterations are approximate.  For instance:
    • zh is used to represent   Ж   —  a soft French "j" sound, as in Jacque.
    • sometimes a sound becomes voiced or unvoiced depending on what letters is next to it.  In other words, making it easier to say.
      • For instance: V  voiced   is  similar to  F  unvoiced
      • Likewise:  B  voiced   is  similar to  P  unvoiced
      • etc.
    • And the consonant will become voiced or unvoiced depending on what's immediately in front or after it.
    • "Г" usually pronounced /g/ as in /good/, but sometimes is pronounced /v/ in some words that end in something like: "его"!
      • Thus его ("his") is pronounced /yevo/.

Resources:




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