I don't really believe in poetry translations ( Read more... )

I swear there should be a day of the week called 'Approximate Wednesday', for me to post my reading lists ( Read more... )

I have been reading and rereading the latest poem by Dmitry Bykov (and reading it out loud to myself). The one about the Malaysian airliner, except that it's not. I kinda regret that it's an English-language blog that I am having here and I can't post it here too ( Read more... )

http://firecat.dreamwidth.org/791082.html - comparison table for four translations of the same poem. Which led me to look whether I can find how it sounds in Polish, to feel which rhythm is better, and, when I couldn't find it, to try and read the original myself (stupid idea ( Read more... )

Apparently there is a monument in Saint Petersburg to a French Canadian poet Emile Nelligan. I wonder why... (I grew unused to reading poetry in translation - I went and checked his poems and they sound quite lovely but I can't help wondering how accurate the translation is)

This entry was originally posted at http://taelle.dreamwidth.org/51605. ( Read more... )

By a complicated route usual for websurfing I came to listen James Earl Jones reading The Raven by Edgar Poe... and I like it, but something keeps being off for me in his intonation, and I can't figure out what it is. The best I can formulate is that his tone of voice seems to me a bit more monotonous than I'm used to, less amplitude. Is it that ( Read more... )

Russian folk ditties ("chastushki"), translated into English by Sergei Ushakin
Crossposted from snorapp.livejournal.com/299372.html

( Not particularly polite language but, imho, funny and well-translated )

Vladimir Nabokov. An Evening of Russian Poetry

'…seems to be the best train. Miss Ethel Winter
of the Department of English will meet you at the station and…'

From a letter addressed to the visiting speaker The subject chosen for tonight's discussion ( Read more... )

In celebration of the Bard's birthday, I've been rereading the sonnets both in English and in the classic Russian translation by Samuil Marshak. I used to love those translations very much, but lately I've gone off them... as translations. They're lovely as poems, but for my taste they sound way too classicist for Shakespeare. I think he does Burns ( Read more... )

... Если выпало в империи родиться,
Лучше жить в глухой провинции у моря...