Author Topic: the big request for HELP from Russia!  (Read 47330 times)

Offline Front-Ranger

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Offline JackFromMoscow

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Re: great request for HELP from Russian fan!
« Reply #41 on: February 08, 2015, 07:38:51 am »
Front-Ranger, thank you very very much for information! Your explanations really do help me, now I should change my translations a bit, to be them very exact. I've got some extra questions, but first I'll read everything you've sent and re-read my whole topic again for better understanding. I really appreciate your help!
THANK YOU VERY MUCH!
An unsatisfactory situation with translation into Russian.

Offline JackFromMoscow

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Re: great request for HELP from Russian fan!
« Reply #42 on: February 08, 2015, 09:41:35 am »
Well, reading this forum, I feel like I am as dummy as a child who asks such questions as why there's a rainbow appears in the sky or why it rains, etc. I feel awful bad about my English level, many questions I ask are not what is the story about, but how should I translate or understand this or that phrase. These are the problems that native English speaker would barely have.
We got here Russian-laguage forum about BBM as well, but its main difference to BetterMost is its content. You have more opportunities to discuss both book and movie moments, but the first thing ever WE should do here, is translating into Russian. So our forum here contains pretty big topic of how would we translate different phrases and moments, so the moments we are talking about could have totally different meanings.

The problem is, there are so many languages BBM could be translated into, that there's no BetterMostian who could help everybody out to translate the text into their own language. So here, Front-Ranger and Southendmd, I really appreciate your help you give me, 'cuz there could be hundreds of people like me from different countries, who need help with translations (considering that help like you've been given me (oh these tenses; I mean, you started to help me the time I created topic and you are still helping me, I s'pose I should use Perfect Progressive tense here :)) could take 5 pages as it have already taken for now, and more pages, having further discussions and explanations).

So, well. There is a topic on our forum, where a sentence is discussed... The sentence is: And maybe, he thought, they'd never got much farther than that. Let be, let be.

The conclusion we have come to, analyzing this sentence, is that their dozy embrace happened before (!) their first tent scene. Because Ennis didn't want to look at Jack's face - that's why he hugged him from his back; and a little extra detail, that they felt some kind of unsexual (!) hunger for each other. These aren't accurate quotes, but I hope it is understandable.

That's what we have to discuss here. Translations and all, instead of what BetterMostians discuss here.
An unsatisfactory situation with translation into Russian.

Offline JackFromMoscow

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Re: great request for HELP from Russian fan!
« Reply #43 on: February 08, 2015, 09:52:41 am »
and there's another moment I want to notice: this forum is really amazing, because I often read the post that have been written in 2006 by several members (yeh, Front-Ranger, for example)... and after all this time, after NINE years these members are still here and discussing BBM!
An unsatisfactory situation with translation into Russian.

Offline Front-Ranger

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Re: the big request for HELP from Russia!
« Reply #44 on: February 08, 2015, 04:18:45 pm »
You're very welcome, JfM. Our pleasure. Speaking for myself, I love discussing this movie as well as the book and I haven't found anything in the last 9 years that comes close!
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Offline coffeedrinkintexan

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Re: the big request for HELP from Russia!
« Reply #45 on: February 11, 2015, 02:58:01 pm »
I have loved reading this whole discussion. Language is such a fascinating thing to me....how it affects and is affected by the culture around it.

And, I have massive admiration for you, JfM, for working so hard on getting all nuances so perfectly correct. Much of this movie is country-people English. Both sides of my family are country people, so it was fine for me, but this doesn't always translate well into other languages - or sometimes not even into proper English! :)

Anyway, I just kind of wanted to touch on this statement to add to what's already been said.:
Quote
13)
Quote
Barman: You ever try calf roping?
Jack: Do I look like I can afford a f*cking roping horse?
I've read something about rodeo, and I found out what exactly is calf roping. But what is Jack talking about? Can't afford? He means, such horses are expensive? If yes, it means that a rider should have his own horse, yeah?
When Jack says he 'can't afford a f*cking ropin' horse', it literally means he does not have enough money for it. You're right in saying a calf roper would have to have his own horse. He'd also have to be able to feed it, keep it in shoes, keep it healthy, have a reliable truck and trailer to carry it between events, and pay for it to be stabled when not rodeoing. For someone like Jack not earning a lot of cash and barely feeding himself, it's going to be near impossible to maintain a horse.

I think that whole exchange between Jack and the barman is symbolic as well as literal, but there are probably a thousand other symbolism threads for that conversation.


« Last Edit: February 11, 2015, 06:02:48 pm by coffeedrinkintexan »
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Offline JackFromMoscow

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Re: the big request for HELP from Russia!
« Reply #46 on: February 13, 2015, 07:39:31 pm »
thx a lot, coffeedrinkintexan, for your explanations!

dear Brokie fellas, the more I work on the translations, the more questions appears! in this respect I won't write such big messages as the upper ones, ok? it takes much time, but I want to be more productive.

But the herder, he's gonna pitch a pup tent on the QT with the sheep and he's gonna sleep there.

so,
pup tent maens little tent, not big one;
on the QT = at night (or on the space of time when forestry stops checking the territory snooping around)
Everything I've written above is correct, isn't it?
An unsatisfactory situation with translation into Russian.

Offline coffeedrinkintexan

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Re: the big request for HELP from Russia!
« Reply #47 on: February 13, 2015, 07:54:45 pm »
But the herder, he's gonna pitch a pup tent on the QT with the sheep and he's gonna sleep there.

pup tent maens little tent, not big one;
Generally a pup tent is a small tent, yes. Specifically, one that's easily put up/taken down. It's meant to be a very temporary shelter (and not usually even a very good one) unlike the big tent the boys slept in at the base camp. Not a place I'd want to spend many nights, let alone EVERY night.

Quote
on the QT = at night (or on the space of time when forestry stops checking the territory snooping around)
On the QT = on the quiet. Don't tell anyone, don't be obvious about it, don't leave any sign you did it.
Aguirre knew he was asking them to do something illegal so he didn't want them (or himself) to be found out.

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Offline JackFromMoscow

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Re: great request for HELP from Russian fan!
« Reply #48 on: February 13, 2015, 08:01:41 pm »
Quote from: southendmd
...the "trade-off" means he has traded time off now (May), and August cannot happen.

So my variant of his phrase would be like this:
It was hard enough getting this time. (probably May) So there's nothing to say about August. (Nothing to say about something — in Russian language it means that the something is certainly not going to happen in any case — just want you to feel the sense I put in the phrase)
I suppose it would sound good.

So guys, trade-off was August -- it means here, that Ennis could get August time, BUT ONLY instead of their presumable May, right? Would my quoted translation sound good? Are there any missings of sence?

It was hard to get time off this time [May], so there's nothing to say about August!

P.S. Writing this very post, I have found sence missing. But it's very little, I s'pose, yea?
Instead of saying Ennis could get May time OR August time (but he already HAS got May time as we see), I will say in my translation: as they already HAD had their May meeting, the next one can not be in August. It was in the first place: Ennis had had to choose between May and August.
It seems that he was asking his boss about May and August, but boss said he could only choose between those months. Not to take both times.

... Oh boy, it is so hard for me. Please, if everything above seems to be a piece of unintelligible, incomprehensible, strange, odd, obscure sh*t (I got those word from the dictionary), ask me to rewrite it.
An unsatisfactory situation with translation into Russian.

Offline JackFromMoscow

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Re: the big request for HELP from Russia!
« Reply #49 on: February 13, 2015, 08:04:46 pm »
Quote
On the QT = on the quiet. Don't tell anyone, don't be obvious about it, don't leave any sign you did it.

Yes! Now I know my translation is good. I mean, It implies everything you've listed. But I needed to know, 'cuz if QT was kind of quiet time, I would have had to rewrite translations.
An unsatisfactory situation with translation into Russian.