The table below was my starting point where I started to translate my aphorism "Unelma" into Russian. It is from my second poem collection, "Paljon on meneillään", published in 1994, ISBN 951-97103-0-2. As you can see that I haven't conjugated Russian verbs neither inflected nouns.
|
Russian |
Pronunciation |
Finnish |
English |
|
мечта |
mitšta |
Unelma |
dream, |
|
который не |
katoryj ne |
joka ei |
which don't |
|
летать |
litetj |
lennä, |
fly, |
|
носить |
nasitj |
kantaa |
carry |
|
моя жизнь, f |
maja žyznj |
elämääni. |
my life |
|
мечта, © Yelling Rosa
|
This is the result which i have got from using dictionaries, grammar books, Google translator and search. |
Unelma, |
The dream, |
Even though there are a few unsolved questions. Firstly, I’m not sure does the word “мечта» mean both “unelma” (dream) and “haave” (dream). In Finnish these words have different meanings. “Unelma” is something which can be realized but “haave” is a castle in the air. Perhaps this is the case in Russian as well.
Secondly, I am not sure if I have conjugated the feminine word “жизнь” (life) correctly. The Google search gave me the sentence: Я читал газету. = I read my newspaper => This tells me that nominative is not the same than accusative at least when we talk about the feminine word “газета” (newspaper).
On the other hand, I found the video “Юрий Антонов Несёт меня течение” where the accusative of the word “течение” (current) is the same as the nominative. Perhaps this is the case with the word the жизнь (life).
If I had a good luck everything is in order, otherwise not. I feel that i have at least 55 % chance to have a correct translation. I would appreciate if there is someone who could give more information on this. In this case I can speak about the translation because the text runs without figure of speech and has no idiomatic language. The birds fly everywhere in a same way and we carry things in only one way. Still, even I say it myself, this aphorism has a message. In fact, it was my style to hide a surprise inside the most common phrases. Many people, who have read the book, say that the method works. I am not saying this in order to show off, but to tell the original idea of the expression. Sometimes any kind of translation is impossible from one language into another.
Moreover, perhaps the English version doesn’t work. I have mostly written my English poems using English because translating is a dangerous business.
