Seeking Beta Reader for Translation from Russian

[hhimring]

Dear Silm fans, especially fans of Maedhros and Fingon,

There is an excellent Silm novel out there, Tengwa Malta, by Sky Langolin (sky_swallow). Unfortunately for non-speakers of Russian, it is written in Russian and has not been translated into English so far. I became aware of this novel when I came across a lovely drawing of Fingon by gwailome on DeviantArt which is based on a scene in the novel. Gwai and I had begun a project of translating the novel, with the consent of the author, Gwai translating from Russian and myself beta-reading her translation. Sadly, I find that under my present circumstances, I've bitten off more than I can chew with this, so I am seeking someone who might be willing to take over that part of the project, at least for the time being.

The novel is partly set in present-day Russia, partly in the First Age. The parts set in present-day Russia are narrated in the first person. Scenes I've read so far (in Gwai's translation), include a hilarious meeting between the narrator and Maedhros on the Moscow underground and moving scenes between Maedhros and Fingon, both in Valinor and Mithrim. They are intense, heart-felt and vivid. (The novel is not slash.)

Knowledge of Russian is not required. Gwai's English is fluent, but she does need real help with idioms, etc., so this is definitely a  beta job, not a mere proof read, although the novel itself, of course, is finished.  But it is a really worthwhile beta job and I very much regret that I haven't been able to continue working on it! If you are interested, please PM Gwailome (or myself).

Links to English extract and other relevant links:

Illustration by Gwailome (Fingon) and extract in Russian and English: http://gwailome.deviantart.com/gallery/28094193#/d3it1ig
Illustration by Sky and Gwailome (Maedhros): http://gwailome.deviantart.com/#/d5jgiak
Russian text of the Tengwa malta: http://www.proza.ru/2011/02/26/610
Sky's DeviantArt account: http://skylangolin.deviantart.com/

Comments

[gwailome.livejournal.com]

Well, I'm not surprised because contacts have tendency to lose their currency. And to translate this text was a pleasure to me)

Yeah, I undestand, but nevertheless I think that for every writer it's a stirring moment to see his text getting a reflection in a whole new mentality)

As for the grammatical issue. Tell me, is there only grammatical or some semantic nicety? I got only the former
And as for Russian, one cannot mistake the pronouns there, they're too obvious even for a child, so I played with prepositions) in Russian we have two ways (the same as in English, as far as I know) to say that something is done according to some feeling or emotion. It's close to "do smth out of" and "do smth for" and sometimes these variants can be interchanged. But not when we talk about marriage. So in Russian text Finyo says "But I thought we should marry OUT OF love" and Feanaro corrects him "FOR love"
Ah, it's so cool to analyse and compare the ways of languages and culture^^

[oloriel.livejournal.com]

Everyone's a winner then! :)

Stirring is the right word. You're the second person who has told me that she translated something of mine into Russian, and it makes me feel so proud and accomplished! So, thank you for doing that, and thank you for letting me know!

It really is a grammatical problem. Actually, I wouldn't quite know how to translate it into my native language. In German, we have the subject case "who", which is wer, and then we have two object cases, the dative case wem and the accusative case wen (both of which translate to "whom" in English), and nobody would confuse the subject case with the object case. I guess a child might confuse wem and wen, though. But it's kind of impossible to translate that mix-up back into English then. Oh dear!
I think you solved that problem very cleverly. Yes, it's absolutely fascinating to see how these things can be rendered in different languages! And damn, now I wish I knew Russian! XD