Translating the poem "Moonshadow"

Once Max had saved a girl from a group of street thugs. He took her to safety and told her she didn’t owe him anything and was free to go anywhere she wanted. What did the girl, Edna, choose? She chose to go with him. Later, Max became so obsessed with protecting Edna that his obsession eclipsed his original mission. That didn’t end well…

In this poem, Max recalls the night when he saved Edna. He walked through the dark city, his disfigured face hidden under a hood. There was a full moon in the sky. The event happened after his recovery at the swamp. The last stanza hints at the beginning of his obsession that ended up standing in the way of his initial mission.

“Summoned by you” means that Edna cried for help. “Came to you by my own will” means that he chose to help her and wasn’t forced to. That’s important because, as a cultist raised with a specific purpose in mind, Max wasn’t allowed to make many choices of his own.

The original Russian text:

Я помню, как стоял к луне спиною –
Под капюшоном не было лица.
Из древней тьмы я вызван был тобою,
Хотя пришел к тебе я все же сам.

Пришел сквозь темный город, сквозь болото,
Сквозь трудности, угодные судьбе...
Как глуп я был, ища в пути чего-то,
Еще не зная, что иду к тебе!


My rough translation

I remember standing with my back to the Moon,
There was no face (seen) under my hood.
Summoned by you from the ancient darkness,
I came to you by my own will.

I walked through the dark city, through the swamp,
Through the hardships life/destiny threw at me…
How stupid I was, looking for something on this way,
Not knowing yet that I would come to you!


Alan Jackson's translation:

Moonshadow

I remember
The moon, full behind me,
My hood’s moonshadow
Safely concealing
My ravaged face,

I heard
Your call, invoking me
From the old darkness,
My choosing to answer,
My choosing to come.

I walked
Through the marshes,
Through the dark city,
Through all the harms
That life did to me.

A stupid fool
Staring around,
Thinking of the journey,
Never of the end,
Never of the purpose
Why I journeyed,

Never of you.

[The original used consonant sounds – especially k/g/kh – to structure the piece, and to emphasise the ‘stupid fool’ – ‘Как глуп’ – as the kernel of the poem. The translation tries to use ‘oo’ sounds for the same purpose, aided by repeated words: ‘moon’, ‘choosing’, ‘through’. It is a long way from the original in form, but I think it preserves the edgy feel of the original, and this form emphasises the ‘oo’ words even more.]

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About the project:
My scifi and fantasy novels have a lot of poems in them that can not be removed without destroying the plot. Alas, my English in not good enough for translating poetry. Alan Jackson helps me translate the poems. It makes the translation of my novels possible.

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Random stuff

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Antisocial personality disorder is indeed a super interesting (and at the same time scary) subject. I thing humanity should put more effort in trying to understand it. There are therapies for helping sociopaths, but they are not effective enough at the moment.
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I'll tell you a secret: we, authors, need you, readers, much more than you need us. There would be no point to tell stories if there were no one to listen. And sharing our imaginary worlds with other people is a great joy. For some of us, the only joy in life, because we're often depressed and lonely. Thank you for reading :)
McColl34:
Faith and Hope are fairly common English names. Love is not used as a name as often. It is not unheard of, but not as common. The trio of names first appeared in the Bible (I assume it was first appearance, the letters to the Corinthians were written about 1,900 years ago). Specifically, in First Corinthians 13:13, "And now these three remain: faith, hope and love. But the greatest of these is love." In the original Greek, they would be "πιστις" (pistis), "ελπις" (elpis) and "αγαπη" (agape).
Norns (Wyrd, Vernandi, and Skuld) come from North mythology, but there are similar mystical creatures (three women - old, middle aged, and young - having something to do with fate) in many different cultures, including Greek.
Aprillen:
The Norns were indeed Fates -- Urd means "fate", Verdandi means "in the making" and Skuld means "future". They would sit at the foot of the World Tree and measure out peoples lives and destinies. (Urd=Wyrd; I'm used to the modernised Norse variants of the names since I'm Scandinavian.)
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I'm a cruel author. Not George Martin style cruel, but still...
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Jude Wilkins:
Many greenhouses, at least the larger better ones will have fans that will mimic breezes that come on at night for air circulation and to toughen the plants like a wind does.
(discussing cat names of different countries)
McColl34:
Smoky Is a common name for grey or greyish cats. Socks is also fairly common for cats with different color fur on their feet.

Mildegard:
Blackie would be Chernysh in Russian (cherny = black). I had a black cat with that name. We have a cat name similar to Smoky. Dymok (dym = smoke). And I remember the name Socks... there was a movie where a man tamed a wolf and named him Socks. So I thought it was a dog name.
Jourell:
On the other side of the Sociopathy/empathy coin we have something like Jan and Rhoda from the film The Bad Seed. She's a high functioning sociopath but uses that knowledge and the fact shes an angelic faced little girl to manipulate people and hide her tendencies. At the time the time the movie was made, sociopathy wasn't well understood and it touches on some interesting discussion on whether someone can be "born bad". If you do see it, i recommend the 1950s version, the recent remake is lousy.
Jourell:
What we think of as fairy tales and folk tales were originally a lot darker and didn't always have a happy ending. Children weren't necessarily considered different, they had to be taught lessons in a world that was generally a lot harder than it was today. there were often morals yes, but they were as much warnings of things that could happen. For example Hansel and Gretal was about the dangers of trusting strangers, particularly if they deliberately tried to attract children to them. Red Riding hood had sexual undertones and was a warning against rapists. In Cinderella one of the ugly stepsisters cuts off part of her foot to try to fit inside the shoe and the blood gives her away.
By the 19th century attitudes towards kids were starting to change. The Brothers Grimm collected these folk tales and "cleaned them up" to something that was considered more acceptable to society at the time. But even then, many of their versions of these tales wouldn't be considered "kid friendly" today. Since then as morals and attitudes have changed these tales have become more and more "sanitized".
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Jude Wilkins:
Was there a Norn before Faith? Otherwise how do the embryos get implanted a woman in each generation? Thinking that since Hope is 24, Faith is likely around twice as old. So wouldn't Faith surrogate mother still be around or is the life expectancy shortened because of all that happened?

Mildegard:
Yes, there were many Norns before Faith. They go in and out of cryosleep as the situation demands and take shifts. Three are awake at every given time, but it's not always the same three.
Jude Wilkins:
I'm curious to see what size Faith is compared to Nolan. If Hope is 24 years old, she's an adult but she's so small compared to Nolan plus she looks childlike still. Is Nolan larger than the people being grown from the embryo stage or is this something that you'll explain later?

Mildegard:
Nolan is tall, but not extraordinary tall. Just about 190 cm (no more than 40 cm taller than Hope).
Hope looks childlike just like I look childlike. I'm 34, but it's not rare for strangers to think I'm a 13 year old boy or that my husband (who is 5 years younger than me) is my father. It's just my face and the lack of makeup.
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Normally: we have a virus that makes the person's immune system go into cytokine storm. We use the drug to stop the storm, then we deal with the virus or wait for the body to deal with it. Once the virus is gone the patient no longer needs the drug. Problem solved.
Nolan's case: he no longer carries the virus and his immune system is mad at his own body cells. We can give him the drug and it might work, but once we remove it the effect won't last long. The drug will have to be present in his bloodstream every minute of his life (hello side effects and a deadly overdose!) just like the nanites he survived on. In theory, we can prolong his life for some days/weeks with the said drug but it will be torture and not really a solution. The solution is reprogramming his immune system so it wouldn't see him as an enemy anymore.
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GWI is a black and white comic, but I color the pages occasionally, mostly the ones my Patrons choose. If you support me by becoming my Patron of buying me a Ko-fi you can choose one too.
I make GWI sketches and contours in PainToolSai, add basic colors and gradients in FireAlpaca, do shading and add details in SAI again, and then add effects, text, and bubbles in Photoshop CS3. I usually make pages in packs (3-4 at once).
Makeshift cableways and ziplines similar to those in the comic (with hooks, wheels, ropes, and brakes) are used in many rural areas of the world, often by kids, to get to school. Surprisingly, it's quite safe.
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No donation is too small. Where I live 1$ can buy me a tasty protein-rich lunch or two bus tickets.
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See a typo or a badly translated phrase? Tell me about it and I'll fix it as soon as I can.
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Remember the ammonite shelf in Tim's room? Yep, some ancient ammonoides were that large. I bet they wouldn't mind eating a human if we lived at the same time.
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"Gifts of wandering ice" has a Discord channel. You can chat with me and the other readers there.
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Jan
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Jan
"The world is so real it hurts".
Elie
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Что случилось с русской версией комикса "Дары бродячих льдов"?
Комикс Дары бродячих льдов перезапущен в новом формате на сайте mildegard.ru
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GWI has a bookstore with 1$ books! Check it out :)
Everything is better with a cat.
My main hobby is telling stories but I also have another hobby: I play the ocarina (a ceramic flute). If you're curious, here's a video of me playing an Irish folk song in a Russian forest.