Перевод письма Королеве
В продолжение темы прошения Королеве. Тут вот, за день до срока, выяснилось, что даже моё - колониальное и простолюдинское - знание английского может пригодиться в добром деле.
Your Royal Majesty,
Those common citizens of Russia who strive to coöperate toward social improvement, encounter a harsh reality of virulent corruption and miring bureaucracy. Thus we plead Your aid and participation.
We recognise, that the Russian Federation is a sovereign state, and even Your Royal Majesty may not influence the political course of our country directly. However, the very nature of the blogosphere, - a part of the global exterritorial space of the Internet, - permits one to exercise their influence across national borders. We, users of the LiveJournal blogging facility, dare to address You, for that SUP, - the establishment which oversees the Russian-language constituency of LiveJournal, - has among its governance Mr. Benjamin Wegg-Prosser, a citizen of the United Kingdom with a certain position in its ruling establishment. Until a recent time he held the director’s seat of the strategical communications unit of the former Prime Minister Tony Blair’s administration.
Besides, it was not long ago that Sir Anthony Brenton, Your Royal Majesty’s ambassador to the Russian Federation, hosted a meeting with several prominent writers of LiveJournal, and expressed his enthusiasm to partake in the development of a communion of blog writers of Russia and Great Britain. The meeting was an unprecedented event cheered by the Internet community. It has made us look to Your country as the foremost hope in our plights.
Your Royal Majesty! Such unusual addressment of our plea has another circumstance, one of a more general nature. We are cognisant of Your charitable activity, which has lasted for over a half of a century. As the Head of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, the Head of the Commonwealth of Nations and the Supreme Governor of the Church of England, You bring enlightenment and humanism that shine across all the Earth’s continents. Your moral authority is unquestionable, and Your word is regarded, perhaps unwittingly, by the ruling figures and common men of many nations, including Russia.
And so we beg Your Royal Majesty to spare Your attention to what will be described hereinafter.
Due to the persistent strictening of political freedoms, and due to the swift development of informational and communicational technology, the network of personal internet publications - blogs - is becoming an important constituent of free democratic press. The potential of this network is manifoldly greater than that of free Western radio broadcasts of the 1950s-’80s. Sadly, the opponents of freedom recognise this fact as well as its supporters.
The aforementioned company SUP and Mr. Anton Nossik, who assumed the task of representing this company in the blogging community, leads intensive commercial activity, such as graphical advertising, in the personal blogs of users of LiveJournal. Yet the spirit of our community is non-commercial, with the overwhelming majority of authors releasing their publications free of charge, on a voluntary basis. Often such publications uptake efforts comparable to those of a full working day of a professional journalist. Personal income of many of the authors is rather low, especially of those living in the Russian outlands. We deem it acceptable that SUP be leading commercial activities, yet we desire that those activities do not assume such a predatory character, and that they benefit the blogosphere’s development. For this purpose we think it advisable to establish a board of trustees that would comprise, in addition to the businessmen of SUP, some reputed and competent LiveJournalists. It would be practicable to defer a proportion of monetary income - perhaps a fifth - to charitable purposes, like the organisation of literary and artistic contests and of exhibitions, and the awarding of writers most prominent or most needy. This would stimulate the blogosphere’s self-development.
Concurrently, such a board of trustees could centralise and coördinate the collection of donations for charitable activities within LiveJournal. Presently, at the sufferance of Mr. Nossik and SUP, such collection is done with neglect of norms and rules, endorsing criminal excesses and dishonouring the very notion of charity on the Internet. There exist serious suspicions that, in this disorder, clandestine groups of swindlers operate.
Mr. Nossik’s blog issues speeches of indecorum and obscenity, offending the grace and dignity of the hundreds of thousands of blog writers, among which are many persons under age, of religious beliefs or of ecclesiastical position. The very name of Nossik’s blog in LiveJournal is an obscene word. Noteworthily, the Russian language is built on strictly hierarchical principles, and so the use of profane speech in the context of regular conversation is a provocative insult.
It grieves us even more, that such indecent behaviour results in the lack of appropriate example for the blog network’s newcomers. Rather on the contrary, the man with whose name LiveJournal is firstly associated, incites rudeness, bawdry and misbehaviour, starting at the very title of his blog. After the many decades of unfreedom of speech, our people struggle to revive the culture of public dialogue. Yet through LiveJournal the private lives of innocent writers are regularly disturbed, the blogosphere is often shaken by scandals and squabbles on social and ethnical grounds.
This latter affair needs emphasis. Many postings in the blog of Mr. Nossik are saturated with beastly hatred toward other nations and confessions, for instance, to peoples of the Near East and to the Muslim faith. Among about a million of Russian-speaking LiveJournalists, some tens of thousands are faithful Muslims, and are insulted directly by such sentiments. Insults of this kind could be forgiven in consideration of the private nature of personal blogs; but the name of Nossik is inevitably associated with the entire Russian-speaking LiveJournal. Therefore, his personal opinion, - one of a man not completely civilised and not perfectly responsible, - becomes the company’s opinion, and indirectly - the opinion of the whole blogging community. This drives the blogosphere into a rather unhealthy state.
We also are scorned by an artificial hierarchy that is imposed in LiveJournal, a one that leads a small minority of tysiachniki (writers of most popular blogs) to form an isolated caste, while the bulk of bloggers are deprived of fair competition, and can win the top positions of ratings only through technical trickery. It seems that the reduction of Live Journals to lifeless, faceless machines might be the secret true goal of SUP.
Most respectfully we beseech Your Royal Majesty to show favour to exercise Your highest moral authority, so to encourage, in the given political circumstances, the changing of LiveJournal from a secret police’s playhouse for undecorous propaganda, political provocation and unlawful offenses, into a highly cultured informational facility that would inevitably become a citadel of freedom of speech, democracy and tolerance.
We would like to express a humblest hope, that this letter of ours will be announced and reproduced in British press; for example, in The Guardian magazine, which has employed Mr. Wegg-Prosser in the past. In this manner our plights will be subjected to the liberal discussion of the global community. Some of us - those who are perhaps overly optimistic - hope for Your personal participation in the bettering of the Russian blogosphere, at least in a way of moral condolence.
To You our predicaments may seem laughable, and from outside we may seem like a dwarfish people from an imaginary realm of Lewis Carroll’s fable. But over a million of persons now have blogs in our country. The nature of the blogosphere will soon make this turn into ten million, which will be drawn from the most educated and enterprising of our people of one hundred and forty million. Great Britain has long succeded to combine reasonable conservatism with scientific foresight and bold social experiment. The twenty-first century is to bring us new media of communication, new orders of government and new forms of political activity. This is happening before our eyes.
May Your Royal Majesty accept our most sincere reassurance of our deepest respect.
Signed
Надо перечитать: в частности, выправить возможные переменки ize/ise. Уточнить звание Проссера у Блэра. Проверить пропуски (я при письме часто перескакиваю через слова.) (найдено 2 пропуска.) Расставить курсивы на названиях (я из ответа у Галковского перенёс не подумавши.)
А вообще, опасаюсь, что Её Королевское Величество не усвоят всех этих интернетов и блогов. Надо писать письмо Чарлзу, Гарри и Вильяму.
P. S. Перечитал, доволен. Четвёрка, хотя и неуверенная.
P. P. S. Перечитал, нашёл 3 чудовищные ошибки (и 2 возможных; лень репу чесать), учёл 2 совета от volodymir_k
Your Royal Majesty,
Those common citizens of Russia who strive to coöperate toward social improvement, encounter a harsh reality of virulent corruption and miring bureaucracy. Thus we plead Your aid and participation.
We recognise, that the Russian Federation is a sovereign state, and even Your Royal Majesty may not influence the political course of our country directly. However, the very nature of the blogosphere, - a part of the global exterritorial space of the Internet, - permits one to exercise their influence across national borders. We, users of the LiveJournal blogging facility, dare to address You, for that SUP, - the establishment which oversees the Russian-language constituency of LiveJournal, - has among its governance Mr. Benjamin Wegg-Prosser, a citizen of the United Kingdom with a certain position in its ruling establishment. Until a recent time he held the director’s seat of the strategical communications unit of the former Prime Minister Tony Blair’s administration.
Besides, it was not long ago that Sir Anthony Brenton, Your Royal Majesty’s ambassador to the Russian Federation, hosted a meeting with several prominent writers of LiveJournal, and expressed his enthusiasm to partake in the development of a communion of blog writers of Russia and Great Britain. The meeting was an unprecedented event cheered by the Internet community. It has made us look to Your country as the foremost hope in our plights.
Your Royal Majesty! Such unusual addressment of our plea has another circumstance, one of a more general nature. We are cognisant of Your charitable activity, which has lasted for over a half of a century. As the Head of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, the Head of the Commonwealth of Nations and the Supreme Governor of the Church of England, You bring enlightenment and humanism that shine across all the Earth’s continents. Your moral authority is unquestionable, and Your word is regarded, perhaps unwittingly, by the ruling figures and common men of many nations, including Russia.
And so we beg Your Royal Majesty to spare Your attention to what will be described hereinafter.
Due to the persistent strictening of political freedoms, and due to the swift development of informational and communicational technology, the network of personal internet publications - blogs - is becoming an important constituent of free democratic press. The potential of this network is manifoldly greater than that of free Western radio broadcasts of the 1950s-’80s. Sadly, the opponents of freedom recognise this fact as well as its supporters.
The aforementioned company SUP and Mr. Anton Nossik, who assumed the task of representing this company in the blogging community, leads intensive commercial activity, such as graphical advertising, in the personal blogs of users of LiveJournal. Yet the spirit of our community is non-commercial, with the overwhelming majority of authors releasing their publications free of charge, on a voluntary basis. Often such publications uptake efforts comparable to those of a full working day of a professional journalist. Personal income of many of the authors is rather low, especially of those living in the Russian outlands. We deem it acceptable that SUP be leading commercial activities, yet we desire that those activities do not assume such a predatory character, and that they benefit the blogosphere’s development. For this purpose we think it advisable to establish a board of trustees that would comprise, in addition to the businessmen of SUP, some reputed and competent LiveJournalists. It would be practicable to defer a proportion of monetary income - perhaps a fifth - to charitable purposes, like the organisation of literary and artistic contests and of exhibitions, and the awarding of writers most prominent or most needy. This would stimulate the blogosphere’s self-development.
Concurrently, such a board of trustees could centralise and coördinate the collection of donations for charitable activities within LiveJournal. Presently, at the sufferance of Mr. Nossik and SUP, such collection is done with neglect of norms and rules, endorsing criminal excesses and dishonouring the very notion of charity on the Internet. There exist serious suspicions that, in this disorder, clandestine groups of swindlers operate.
Mr. Nossik’s blog issues speeches of indecorum and obscenity, offending the grace and dignity of the hundreds of thousands of blog writers, among which are many persons under age, of religious beliefs or of ecclesiastical position. The very name of Nossik’s blog in LiveJournal is an obscene word. Noteworthily, the Russian language is built on strictly hierarchical principles, and so the use of profane speech in the context of regular conversation is a provocative insult.
It grieves us even more, that such indecent behaviour results in the lack of appropriate example for the blog network’s newcomers. Rather on the contrary, the man with whose name LiveJournal is firstly associated, incites rudeness, bawdry and misbehaviour, starting at the very title of his blog. After the many decades of unfreedom of speech, our people struggle to revive the culture of public dialogue. Yet through LiveJournal the private lives of innocent writers are regularly disturbed, the blogosphere is often shaken by scandals and squabbles on social and ethnical grounds.
This latter affair needs emphasis. Many postings in the blog of Mr. Nossik are saturated with beastly hatred toward other nations and confessions, for instance, to peoples of the Near East and to the Muslim faith. Among about a million of Russian-speaking LiveJournalists, some tens of thousands are faithful Muslims, and are insulted directly by such sentiments. Insults of this kind could be forgiven in consideration of the private nature of personal blogs; but the name of Nossik is inevitably associated with the entire Russian-speaking LiveJournal. Therefore, his personal opinion, - one of a man not completely civilised and not perfectly responsible, - becomes the company’s opinion, and indirectly - the opinion of the whole blogging community. This drives the blogosphere into a rather unhealthy state.
We also are scorned by an artificial hierarchy that is imposed in LiveJournal, a one that leads a small minority of tysiachniki (writers of most popular blogs) to form an isolated caste, while the bulk of bloggers are deprived of fair competition, and can win the top positions of ratings only through technical trickery. It seems that the reduction of Live Journals to lifeless, faceless machines might be the secret true goal of SUP.
Most respectfully we beseech Your Royal Majesty to show favour to exercise Your highest moral authority, so to encourage, in the given political circumstances, the changing of LiveJournal from a secret police’s playhouse for undecorous propaganda, political provocation and unlawful offenses, into a highly cultured informational facility that would inevitably become a citadel of freedom of speech, democracy and tolerance.
We would like to express a humblest hope, that this letter of ours will be announced and reproduced in British press; for example, in The Guardian magazine, which has employed Mr. Wegg-Prosser in the past. In this manner our plights will be subjected to the liberal discussion of the global community. Some of us - those who are perhaps overly optimistic - hope for Your personal participation in the bettering of the Russian blogosphere, at least in a way of moral condolence.
To You our predicaments may seem laughable, and from outside we may seem like a dwarfish people from an imaginary realm of Lewis Carroll’s fable. But over a million of persons now have blogs in our country. The nature of the blogosphere will soon make this turn into ten million, which will be drawn from the most educated and enterprising of our people of one hundred and forty million. Great Britain has long succeded to combine reasonable conservatism with scientific foresight and bold social experiment. The twenty-first century is to bring us new media of communication, new orders of government and new forms of political activity. This is happening before our eyes.
May Your Royal Majesty accept our most sincere reassurance of our deepest respect.
Signed
Надо перечитать: в частности, выправить возможные переменки ize/ise. Уточнить звание Проссера у Блэра. Проверить пропуски (я при письме часто перескакиваю через слова.) (найдено 2 пропуска.) Расставить курсивы на названиях (я из ответа у Галковского перенёс не подумавши.)
А вообще, опасаюсь, что Её Королевское Величество не усвоят всех этих интернетов и блогов. Надо писать письмо Чарлзу, Гарри и Вильяму.
P. S. Перечитал, доволен. Четвёрка, хотя и неуверенная.
P. P. S. Перечитал, нашёл 3 чудовищные ошибки (и 2 возможных; лень репу чесать), учёл 2 совета от volodymir_k