Dětská fantasie

Čím je zajímavé překládání dětské literatury?
Přečtěte si následující kapitolu z knihy A. A. Milna Medvídek Pú, jako byste ji četli dítěti. Co je asi upoutá? Co zaujme dospělého?
Pak teprve začněte uvažovat o tom jaký přístup k překladu zvolíte.



Over the years, Pooh has had, or earned, a number of names including: Edward Bear, Pooh Bear, Winnie-ther-Pooh, F.O.P. (Friend of Piglets), R.C. (Rabbit's Companion), P.D. (Pole Discoverer), E.C. and T.F. (Eeyore's Comforter and Tail Finder), Bear of Very Little Brain, and 1st Mate.

A. A. Milne: Winnie-The-Pooh - Chapter 4

...IN WHICH EEYORE LOSES A TAIL AND POOH FINDS ONE 

The Old Grey Donkey, Eeyore, stood by himself in a thistly corner of the forest, his front feet well apart, his head on one side, and thought about things.Sometimes he thought sadly to himself, "Why?" and sometimes he thought,"Wherefore?" and sometimes he thought, "Inasmuch as which?"--and sometimes he didn't quite know what he was thinking about. So when Winnie-the-Pooh came stumping along, Eeyore was very glad to be able to stop thinking for a little, in order to say "How do you do?" in a gloomy manner to him.

"And how are you?" said Winnie-the-Pooh.

Eeyore shook his head from side to side.

"Not very how," he said. "I don't seem to have felt at all how for a long time."

"Dear, dear," said Pooh, "I'm sorry about that. Let's have a look at you." So Eeyore stood there, gazing sadly at the ground, and Winnie-the-Pooh walked all round him once.

"Why, what's happened to your tail?" he said in surprise.

"What has happened to it?" said Eeyore.

"It isn't there!"

"Are you sure?"

"Well, either a tail is there or it isn't there You can't make a mistake about it. And yours isn't there!"

"Then what is?"

"Nothing."

"Let's have a look," said Eeyore, and he turned slowly round to the place where his tail had been a little while ago, and then, finding that he couldn't catch it up, he turned round the other way, until he came back to where he was at first, and then he put his head down and looked between his front legs, and at last he said, with a long, sad sigh, "I believe you're right"

"Of course I'm right," said Pooh

"That accounts for a Good Deal," said Eeyore gloomily. "It explains Everything. No Wonder."

"You must have left it somewhere," said Winnie-the-Pooh.

"Somebody must have taken it," said Eeyore.

"How Like Them," he added, after a long silence. Pooh felt that he ought to say something helpful about it, but didn't quite know what. So he decided to do something helpful instead.

"Eeyore," he said solemnly, "I, Winnie-the-Pooh, will find your tail for you."

"Thank you, Pooh," answered Eeyore. "You're a real friend," said he. "Not like Some," he said.

So Winnie-the-Pooh went off to find Eeyore's tail.

It was a fine spring morning in the forest as he started out. Little soft clouds played happily in a blue sky, skipping from time to time in front of the sun as if they had come to put it out, and then sliding away suddenly so that the next might have his turn. Through them and between them the sun shone bravely, and a copse which had worn its firs all the year round seemed old and dowdy now beside the new green lace which the beeches had put on so prettily. Through copse and spinney marched Bear; down open slopes of gorse and heather, over rocky beds of streams, up steep banks of sandstone into the heather again; and so at last, tired and hungry, to the Hundred Acre Wood. For it was in the Hundred Acre Wood that Owl lived.

"And if anyone knows anything about anything," said Bear to himself, "it's Owl who knows something about something," he said, "or my name's not Winnie-the-Pooh," he said. "Which it is," he added. "So there you are."

Owl lived at The Chestnuts, and old-world residence of great charm, which was grander than anybody else's, or seemed so to Bear, because it had both a knocker and a bell-pull. Underneath the knocker there was a notice which said:

PLES RING IF AN RNSER IS REQIRD.

Underneath the bell-pull there was a notice which said:

PLEZ CNOKE IF AN RNSR IS NOT REQID.

These notices had been written by Christopher Robin, who was the only one in the forest who could spell; for Owl, wise though he was in many ways, able to read and write and spell his own name WOL, yet somehow went all to pieces over delicate words like MEASLES and BUTTEREDTOAST.

Winnie-the-Pooh read the two notices very carefully, first from left to right, and afterwards, in case he had missed some of it, from right to left. Then, to make quite sure, he knocked and pulled the knocker, and he pulled and knocked the bell-rope, and he called out in a very loud voice, "Owl! I require an answer! It's Bear speaking." And the door opened, and Owl looked out.

"Hallo, Pooh," he said. "How's things?"

"Terrible and Sad," said Pooh, "because Eeyore, who is a friend of mine, has lost his tail. And he's Moping about it. So could you very kindly tell me how to find it for him?"

"Well," said Owl, "the customary procedure in such cases is as follows."

"What does Crustimoney Proseedcake mean?" said Pooh. "For I am a Bear of Very Little Brain, and long words Bother me."

"It means the Thing to Do."

"As long as it means that, I don't mind," said Pooh humbly.

"The thing to do is as follows. First, Issue a Reward. Then--"

"Just a moment," said Pooh, holding up his paw. "What do we do to this--what you were saying? You sneezed just as you were going to tell me."

"I didn't sneeze."

"Yes, you did, Owl."

"Excuse me, Pooh, I didn't. You can't sneeze without knowing it."

"Well, you can't know it without something having been sneezed."

"What I said was, 'First Issue a Reward'."

"You're doing it again," said Pooh sadly.

"A Reward!" said Owl very loudly. "We write a notice to say that we will give a large something to anybody who finds Eeyore's tail."

"I see, I see," said Pooh, nodding his head. "Talking about large somethings," he went on dreamily, "I generally have a small something about now--about this time in the morning," and he looked wistfully at the cupboard in the corner of Owl's parlour; "just a mouthful of condensed milk or whatnot, with perhaps a lick of honey--"

"Well, then," said Owl, "we write out this notice, and we put it up all over the Forest."

"A lick of honey," murmured Bear to himself, "or--or not, as the case may be." And he gave a deep sigh, and tried very hard to listen to what Owl was saying.

But Owl went on and on, using longer and longer words, until at last he came back to where he started, and he explained that the person to write out this notice was Christopher Robin.

"It was he who wrote the ones on my front door for me. Did you see them, Pooh?" For some time now Pooh had been saying "Yes" and "No" in turn, with his eyes shut, to all that Owl was saying, and having said, "Yes, yes," last time, he said "No, not at all," now, without really knowing what Owl was talking about?

"Didn't you see them?" said Owl, a little surprised. "Come and look at them

now."

So they went outside. And Pooh looked at the knocker and the notice below it, and he looked at the bell-rope and the notice below it, and the more he looked at the bell-rope, the more he felt that he had seen something like it, somewhere else, sometime before.

"Handsome bell-rope, isn't it?" said Owl.

Pooh nodded.

"It reminds me of something," he said, "but I can't think what. Where did you get it?"

"I just came across it in the Forest. It was hanging over a bush, and I thought at first somebody lived there, so I rang it, and nothing happened, and then I rang it again very loudly, and it came off in my hand, and as nobody seemed to want it, I took it home, and"

"Owl," said Pooh solemnly, "you made a mistake. Somebody did want it."

"Who?"

"Eeyore. My dear friend Eeyore. He was--he was fond of it."

"Fond of it?"

"Attached to it," said Winnie-the-Pooh sadly.

So with these words he unhooked it, and carried it back to Eeyore; and when

Christopher Robin had nailed it on its right place again, Eeyore frisked about the forest, waving his tail so happily that Winnie-the-Pooh came over all funny, and had to hurry home for a little snack of something to sustain him. And wiping his mouth half an hour afterwards, he sang to himself proudly:

Who found the Tail?

"I," said Pooh,

"At a quarter to two

(Only it was quarter to eleven really),

I found the Tail!"

Klasická britská detektivka

Agatha Christie, Dorothy L. Sayersová, P.D. Jamesová: toto trojhvězdí autorek proslavilo klasickou britskou detektivku po celém světě. Podívejme se dnes na text tak typicky aristokratický a britský, že tato jeho charakteristika musí zůstat zachována i v českém překladu.
Amatérský detektiv lord Petr Wimsey právě vstupuje do příběhu... nebo spíš příběh vstupuje do jeho života paira a tak trochu londýnského dandyho.

Přečtěte si nejprve celou ukázku. Soustřeďte se na charakteristiku jednajících osob. Berte v úvahu, že se děj odehrává na počátku třicátých let.

______________________________________________________________

Dorothy L. Sayersová: Whose body?

"Oh, damn!" said Lord Peter Wimsey at Piccadilly Circus. "Hi, driver!"
The taxi man, irritated at receiving this appeal while negotiating the intricacies of turning into Lower Regent Street across the route of a 19 'bus, a 38-B and a bicycle, bent an unwilling ear.
"I've left the catalogue behind," said Lord Peter deprecatingly, "uncommonly careless of me. D'you mind puttin' back to where we came from?"
"To the Savile Club, sir?"
"No--110 Piccadilly--just beyond--thank you."
"Thought you was in a hurry," said the man, overcome with a sense of injury.
"I'm afraid it's an awkward place to turn in," said Lord Peter, answering the thought rather than the words. His long, amiable face looked as if it had generated spontaneously from his top hat, as white maggots breed from Gorgonzola.
The taxi, under the severe eye of a policeman, revolved by slow jerks, with a noise like the grinding of teeth.
The block of new, perfect and expensive flats in which Lord Peter dwelt upon the second floor, stood directly opposite the Green Park, in a spot for many years occupied by the skeleton of a frustrate commercial enterprise. As Lord Peter let himself in he heard his man's voice in the library, uplifted in that throttled stridency peculiar to well-trained persons using the telephone.
"I believe that's his lordship just coming in again--if your Grace would kindly hold the line a moment."
"What is it, Bunter?"
"Her Grace has just called up from Denver, my lord. I was just saying your lordship had gone to the sale when I heard your lordship's latchkey."
"Thanks," said Lord Peter; "and you might find me my catalogue, would you? I think I must have left it in my bedroom, or on the desk."
He sat down to the telephone with an air of leisurely courtesy, as though it were an acquaintance dropped in for a chat.
"Hullo, Mother--that you?"
"Oh, there you are, dear," replied the voice of the Dowager Duchess. "I was afraid I'd just missed you."
"Well, you had, as a matter of fact. I'd just started off to Brocklebury's sale to pick up a book or two, but I had to come back for the catalogue. What's up?"
"Such a quaint thing," said the Duchess. "I thought I'd tell you. You know little Mr. Thipps?"
"Thipps?" said Lord Peter. "Thipps? Oh, yes, the little architect man who's doing the church roof. Yes. What about him?"
"Mrs. Throgmorton's just been in, in quite a state of mind."
"Sorry, Mother, I can't hear. Mrs. Who?"
"Throgmorton--Throgmorton--the vicar's wife."
"Oh, Throgmorton, yes?"
"Mr. Thipps rang them up this morning. It was his day to come down, you know."
"Yes?"
"He rang them up to say he couldn't. He was so upset, poor little man. He'd found a dead body in his bath."
"Sorry, Mother, I can't hear; found what, where?"
"A dead body, dear, in his bath."
"What?--no, no, we haven't finished. Please don't cut us off. Hullo! Hullo! Is that you, Mother?
Hullo!--Mother!--Oh, yes--sorry, the girl was trying to cut us off. What sort of body?"
"A dead man, dear, with nothing on but a pair of pince-nez. Mrs. Throgmorton positively blushed when she was telling me. I'm afraid people do get a little narrow-minded in country vicarages."
"Well, it sounds a bit unusual. Was it anybody he knew?"
"No, dear, I don't think so, but, of course, he couldn't give her many details. She said he sounded quite distracted. He's such a respectable little man--and having the police in the house and so on, really worried him."
"Poor little Thipps! Uncommonly awkward for him. Let's see, he lives in Battersea, doesn't he?"
"Yes, dear; 59 Queen Caroline Mansions; opposite the Park. That big block just around the corner from the Hospital. I thought perhaps you'd like to run round and see him and ask if there's anything we can do. I always thought him a nice little man."
"Oh, quite," said Lord Peter, grinning at the telephone. The Duchess was always of the greatest assistance to his hobby of criminal investigation, though she never alluded to it, and maintained a polite fiction of its non-existence.
"What time did it happen, Mother?"
"I think he found it early this morning, but, of course, he didn't think of telling the Throgmortons just at first. She came up to me just before lunch--so tiresome, I had to ask her to stay. Fortunately, I was alone. I don't mind being bored myself, but I hate having my guests bored."
"Poor old Mother! Well, thanks awfully for tellin' me. I think I'll send Bunter to the sale and toddle round to Battersea now an' try and console the poor little beast. So-long."
"Good-bye, dear."
"Bunter!"
"Yes, my lord."
"Her Grace tells me that a respectable Battersea architect has discovered a dead man in his bath."
"Indeed, my lord? That's very gratifying."
"Very, Bunter. Your choice of words is unerring. I wish Eton and Balliol had done as much for me. Have you found the catalogue?"
"Here it is, my lord."
"Thanks. I am going to Battersea at once. I want you to attend the sale for me. Don't lose time--I don't want to miss the Folio Dante* nor the de Voragine--here you are--see? 'Golden Legend'--Wynkyn de Worde, 1493--got that?--and, I say, make a special effort for the Caxton folio of the 'Four Sons of Aymon'--it's the 1489 folio and unique. Look! I've marked the lots I want, and put my outside offer against each. Do your best for me. I shall be back to dinner."
"Very good, my lord."
"Take my cab and tell him to hurry. He may for you; he doesn't like me very much. Can I," said Lord Peter, looking at himself in the eighteenth-century mirror over the mantelpiece, "can I have the heart to fluster the flustered Thipps further--that's very difficult to say quickly--by appearing in a top-hat and frock-coat? I think not. Ten to one he will overlook my trousers and mistake me for the undertaker. A grey suit, I fancy, neat but not gaudy, with a hat to tone, suits my other self better. Exit the amateur of first editions; new motif introduced by solo bassoon; enter Sherlock Holmes, disguised as a walking gentleman. There goes Bunter. Invaluable fellow--never offers to do his job when you've told him to do somethin' else. Hope he doesn't miss the 'Four Sons of Aymon.' Still, there is another copy of that--in the Vatican.** It might become available, you never know--if the Church of Rome went to pot or Switzerland invaded Italy--whereas a strange corpse doesn't turn up in a suburban bathroom more than once in a lifetime--at least, I should think not--at any rate, the number of times it's happened, with a pince-nez, might be counted on the fingers of one hand, I imagine. Dear me! it's a dreadful mistake to ride two hobbies at once."
He had drifted across the passage into his bedroom, and was changing with a rapidity one might not have expected from a man of his mannerisms. He selected a dark-green tie to match his socks and tied it accurately without hesitation or the slightest compression of his lips; substituted a pair of brown shoes for his black ones, slipped a monocle into a breast pocket, and took up a beautiful Malacca walking-stick with a heavy silver knob.
"That's all, I think," he murmured to himself. "Stay--I may as well have you--you may come in useful--one never knows." He added a flat silver matchbox to his equipment, glanced at his watch, and seeing that it was already a quarter to three, ran briskly downstairs, and, hailing a taxi, was carried to Battersea Park.

Hudba a text

Poválečná populární hudba, to bylo v padesátých a šedesátých letech především zázračné "rádio laxemberg," z něhož později čerpaly stále četnější české adaptace americké hudby. Ovšem poklesle kapitalistický anglický text byl v pokrokovém socialistickém státě nepřijatelný a nepřípustný! Od šedesátých let 20. století se tak intenzivně rozvíjela česká překladová textařina, a často bojovala s nesmyslnou cenzurou (v textu se například nesmělo objevit slovo bible - tak vznikla záhadná řádka z textu skupiny Spirituál kvintet "Ten starý příběh z knížky vám tu vykládám").
V současnosti má většina světových písní pop music anglické texty, bez ohledu na národnost autorů a interpretů. Ani ty, které posloucháme česky, nemusejí pocházet z domácí produkce - často čeští interpreti převezmou světový hit a dodají mu český text. Byznys je byznys!

Česká tradice písňových překladů sahá hluboko do historie.

Divotvorný hrnec
U nás doma (How Are Things In Glocca Morra): Burton Lane, V+W
Zpívá Soňa Červená, mluví Václav Trégl
Karel Vlach se svým orchestrem
ULTRAPHON C 15130, mat. 45770, rec. PRAHA 23.4.1948

Americký muzikál Finian´s Rainbow (Divotvorný hrnec) napsal Burton Lane na text E. Y. Harburga. Hudbu přepsal z původních gramofonových desek natočených 30.3. a 3,7,10.4. 1947 v New Yorku Zdeněk Petr, který hudbu i aranžoval. Pražské provedení bylo první v Evropě.

Ukázka ze slavné filmové verze


1. Znáte nějaké české verze původně anglických písní? Uveďte příklady v komentáři k blogu!


2. A jak se přeložené dílko proměňuje? Porovnejte:

Red river
Červená řeka

Three Ravens - A. Scholl
Three Ravens - Djazia
Three Ravens - vocal
Válka růží

L'important C'est la rose
Podívej, kvete růže

Všimněte si, jak se proměnilo i hudební provedení.

Další inspirace z oblasti téměř zlidovělé české popové klasiky zde - Ivo Fišer
http://www.casopisfolk.cz/Textari/textari-fischer_ivo0610.htm


I díla českých písničkářů jasně dokazují, že dobrý a vtipný text je silnou stránkou naší hudební scény.
Zuzana Navarová - Marie
Karel Kryl - Karavana mraků
Karel Plíhal - Nosorožec

Michal Tučný, Rattlesnake Annie - Good Bye to Rivers

My čekali jaro
... a zatím přišel mráz
Oh, dem golden slippers - parodie (info - WIKI)


3. Naším úkolem bude OTEXTOVAT píseň s původně anglickým textem. Nejsme nijak vázáni obsahem originálu, rozhoduje jedině forma, zpívatelnost - slovní a hudební přízvuky se musí překrývat. Zvolte si styl - a držte se ho, ať už to bude drama, lyrika nebo ostrá parodie.

Vyberte si buď jednu z níže uvedených tří skladeb, nebo si zvolte jinou dle vlastní preference - v tom případě ale musíte k přeloženému textu do komentáře k blogu uvést i odkaz na originální audiozáznam, nejlépe na youtube.

I See Fire (Ed Sheran)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5TgiH5Rr3M0

Wind of Change (Scorpions)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ohOtDA3dTAA

Mrs. Robinson (Simon&Garfunkel)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QeY9cnsgNYs


4. Že nepoznáte přízvuk ani v textu, natož v hudbě?

Zkuste si polohlasně zarecitovat a označit přízvučné slabiky:

Je to chůze po tom světě -
kam se noha šine:
sotva přejdeš jedny hory,
hned se najdou jiné.

Je to život na tom světě -
že by člověk utek:
ještě nezažil jsi jeden,
máš tu druhý smutek.

A teď si poslechněte zhudebněnou verzi - přízvuky jsou v ní patrné daleko lépe:
Pocestný

Délky slabik také hrají svou roli:
. . - - . . - -
. . - - . .
. . - - . . - -
. . - - . .

Poesie? je spletí hlásek

Citát z Rostandova Cyrana otevírá nové téma.
Jak překládat poezii?  A překládat ji vůbec? Má přednost forma či obsah? Dají se na překlad poesie aplikovat pravidla, o kterých jsme mluvili?


1. Stáhněte si z capsy soubor s různými verzemi překladu Shakespearova sonetu.
Shakespeare_Sonet66_13prekladu.doc

Která verze se vám nejvíc líbí? Proč? Napište svůj názor do komentáře k tomuto blogu. Uvažujete nad formou a obsahem nebo více nasloucháte svým pocitům?

Sonet 66 English
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4MWBW_c7Fsw

Sonet 66 Hilský
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SJw5BQba7zQ



_______________________________________________________

What's in a name? That which we call a rose by any other name would smell as sweet.
Co je po jméně? Co růží zvou, i zváno jinak vonělo by stejně.

https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/adventures-in-old-age/201001/was-shakespeare-wrong-would-rose-any-other-name-smell-sweet
 _______________________________________________________


2. Přečtěte si pomalu a klidně následující sonet. Vnímejte rytmus a zvukomalbu textu, při druhém čtení se teprve víc soustřeďte na obsah.

SONNET 18

Shall I compare thee to a summer's day?

Thou art more lovely and more temperate:

Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May,

And summer's lease hath all too short a date:

Sometime too hot the eye of heaven shines,

And often is his gold complexion dimm'd;

And every fair from fair sometime declines,

By chance, or nature's changing course, untrimm'd;

But thy eternal summer shall not fade

Nor lose possession of that fair thou ow'st;

Nor shall Death brag thou wander'st in his shade,

When in eternal lines to time thou grow'st;

So long as men can breathe or eyes can see,

So long lives this, and this gives life to thee.

Pokuste se přeložit jedno ze tří čtyřverší + poslání.
Rozmyslete si, jak budete postupovat. 

_______________________

Domácí úkol:
Vyhledejte jakýkoli český překlad své oblíbené básně a  anglický originál spolu s českou verzí vlože do komentáře k tomuto blogu.
Naučte se alespoň 8 řádek zpaměti - česky i anglicky. Zkuste si recitaci před zrcadlem, vnímejte rytmus básně, porovnávejte básnické prostředky použité v originále a v překladu.

Úsporný popis

http://www.bookrags.com/studyguide-redpony/#gsc.tab=0
John Steinbeck - The Red Pony

I. THE GIFT

AT DAYBREAK Billy Buck emerged from the bunkhouse and stood for a moment on the porch looking up at the sky. He was a broad, bandy-legged little man with a walrus mustache, with square hands, puffed and muscled on the palms. His eyes were a contemplative, watery grey and the hair which protruded from under his Stetson hat was spiky and weathered Billy was still stuffing his shirt into his blue jeans as he stood on the porch. He unbuckled his belt and tightened it again. The belt showed, by the worn shiny places opposite each hole, the gradual increase of Billy's middle over a period of years. When he had seen to the weather, Billy cleared each nostril by holding its mate closed with his forefinger and blowing fiercely. Then he walked down to the barn, rubbing his

hands together. He curried and brushed two saddle horses in the stalls, talking quietly to them all the time; and he had hardly finished when the iron triangle started ringing at the ranch house. Billy stuck the brush and currycomb together and laid them on the rail, and went up to breakfast. His action had been so deliberate and yet so wasteless of time that he came to the house while Mrs. Tiflin was still ringing the triangle. She nodded her grey head to him and withdrew into the kitchen. Billy Buck sat down on the steps, because he was a cow hand, and it wouldn't be fitting that he should go first into the dining-room. He heard Mr. Tiflin in the house, stamping his feet into his boots.

The high jangling note of the triangle put the boy Jody in motion. He was only a little boy, ten years old, with hair like dusty yellow grass and with shy polite grey eyes, and with a mouth that worked when he thought. The triangle picked him up out of sleep. It didn't occur to him to disobey the harsh note. He never had: no one he knew ever had. He brushed the tangled hair out of his eyes and skinned his nightgown off. In a moment he was dressed-blue chambray shirt and overalls. It was late in the summer, so of course there were no shoes to bother with. In the kitchen he waited until his mother got from in front of the sink and went back to the stove. Then he washed himself and brushed back his wet hair with his fingers. His mother turned sharply on him as he left the sink. Jody looked shyly away.

"I've got to cut your hair before long," his mother said. "Breakfast's on the table. Go on in, so Billy can come."

Jody sat at the long table which was covered with white oilcloth washed through to the fabric in some places. The fried eggs lay in rows on their platter. Jody took three eggs on his plate and followed with three thick slices of crisp bacon. He carefully scraped a spot of blood from one of the egg yolks.

Billy Buck clumped in. "That won't hurt you," Billy explained. "That's only a sign the rooster leaves."

Jody's tall stern father came in then and Jody knew from the noise on the floor that he was wearing boots, but he looked under the table anyway, to make sure. His father turned off the oil lamp over the table, for plenty of morning light now came through the windows.

Jody did not ask where his father and Billy Buck were riding that day, but he wished he might go along. His father was a disciplinarian. Jody obeyed him in everything without questions of any kind. Now, Carl Tiflin sat down and reached for the egg platter.

"Got the cows ready to go, Billy?" he asked.

"In the lower corral," Billy said. "I could just as well take them in alone."

"Sure you could. But a man needs company. Besides your throat gets pretty dry." Carl Tiflin was jovial this morning.

Jody's mother put her head in the door. "What time do you think to be back, Carl?"

"I can't tell. I've got to see some men in Salinas. Might be gone till dark."

The eggs and coffee and big biscuits disappeared rapidly. Jody followed the two men out of the house. He watched them mount their horses and drive six old milk cows out of the corral and start over the hill toward Salinas.

__________________________________

Přečtěte si text a představujte si vylíčené scény, jako byste je viděli ve filmu. Vizualizace vám pomůže najít adekvátní způsob vyjádření.

Dobrodružství na Aljašce

Smoke Bellew
by
Jack London

http://www.fullbooks.com/Smoke-Bellew1.html




THE TASTE OF THE MEAT.
I.
In the beginning he was Christopher Bellew. By the time he was at
college he had become Chris Bellew. Later, in the Bohemian crowd of
San Francisco, he was called Kit Bellew. And in the end he was
known by no other name than Smoke Bellew. And this history of the
evolution of his name is the history of his evolution. Nor would it
have happened had he not had a fond mother and an iron uncle, and
had he not received a letter from Gillet Bellamy.

...........

II.

Kit Bellew landed through the madness of the Dyea beach, congested
with thousand-pound outfits of thousands of men. This immense mass
of luggage and food, flung ashore in mountains by the steamers, was
beginning slowly to dribble up the Dyea valley and across Chilcoot.
It was a portage of twenty-eight miles, and could be accomplished
only on the backs of men. Despite the fact that the Indian packers
had jumped the freight from eight cents a pound to forty, they were
swamped with the work, and it was plain that winter would catch the
major portion of the outfits on the wrong side of the divide.

Tenderest of the tender-feet was Kit. Like many hundreds of others
he carried a big revolver swung on a cartridge-belt. Of this, his
uncle, filled with memories of old lawless days, was likewise
guilty. But Kit Bellew was romantic. He was fascinated by the
froth and sparkle of the gold rush, and viewed its life and movement
with an artist's eye. He did not take it seriously. As he said on
the steamer, it was not his funeral. He was merely on a vacation,
and intended to peep over the top of the pass for a 'look see' and
then to return.

........

III.

Kit's first pack was a success. Up to Finnegan's Crossing they had
managed to get Indians to carry the twenty-five hundred-pound
outfit. From that point their own backs must do the work. They
planned to move forward at the rate of a mile a day. It looked
easy--on paper. Since John Bellew was to stay in camp and do the
cooking, he would be unable to make more than an occasional pack;
so, to each of the three young men fell the task of carrying eight
hundred pounds one mile each day. If they made fifty-pound packs,
it meant a daily walk of sixteen miles loaded and of fifteen miles
light--"Because we don't back-trip the last time," Kit explained the
pleasant discovery; eighty-pound packs meant nineteen miles travel
each day; and hundred-pound packs meant only fifteen miles.

"I don't like walking," said Kit. "Therefore I shall carry one
hundred pounds." He caught the grin of incredulity on his uncle's
face, and added hastily: "Of course I shall work up to it. A
fellow's got to learn the ropes and tricks. I'll start with fifty."

He did, and ambled gaily along the trail. He dropped the sack at
the next camp-site and ambled back. It was easier than he had
thought. But two miles had rubbed off the velvet of his strength
and exposed the underlying softness. His second pack was sixty-five
pounds. It was more difficult, and he no longer ambled. Several
times, following the custom of all packers, he sat down on the
ground, resting the pack behind him on a rock or stump. With the
third pack he became bold. He fastened the straps to a ninety-five-
pound sack of beans and started. At the end of a hundred yards he
felt that he must collapse. He sat down and mopped his face.

"Short hauls and short rests," he muttered. "That's the trick."

Sometimes he did not make a hundred yards, and each time he
struggled to his feet for another short haul the pack became
undeniably heavier. He panted for breath, and the sweat streamed
from him. Before he had covered a quarter of a mile he stripped off
his woollen shirt and hung it on a tree. A little later he
discarded his hat. At the end of half a mile he decided he was
finished. He had never exerted himself so in his life, and he knew
that he was finished. As he sat and panted, his gaze fell upon the
big revolver and the heavy cartridge-belt.

"Ten pounds of junk," he sneered, as he unbuckled it.

He did not bother to hang it on a tree, but flung it into the
underbush. And as the steady tide of packers flowed by him, up
trail and down, he noted that the other tender-feet were beginning
to shed their shooting irons.

His short hauls decreased. At times a hundred feet was all he could
stagger, and then the ominous pounding of his heart against his ear-
drums and the sickening totteriness of his knees compelled him to
rest. And his rests grew longer. But his mind was busy. It was a
twenty-eight mile portage, which represented as many days, and this,
by all accounts, was the easiest part of it. "Wait till you get to
Chilcoot," others told him as they rested and talked, "where you
climb with hands and feet."

"They ain't going to be no Chilcoot," was his answer. "Not for me.
Long before that I'll be at peace in my little couch beneath the
moss."

A slip, and a violent wrenching effort at recovery, frightened him.
He felt that everything inside him had been torn asunder.

"If ever I fall down with this on my back I'm a goner," he told
another packer.

"That's nothing," came the answer. "Wait till you hit the Canyon.
You'll have to cross a raging torrent on a sixty-foot pine tree. No
guide ropes, nothing, and the water boiling at the sag of the log to
your knees. If you fall with a pack on your back, there's no
getting out of the straps. You just stay there and drown."

"Sounds good to me," he retorted; and out of the depths of his
exhaustion he almost half meant it.

"They drown three or four a day there," the man assured him. "I
helped fish a German out there. He had four thousand in greenbacks
on him."

"Cheerful, I must say," said Kit, battling his way to his feet and
tottering on.

He and the sack of beans became a perambulating tragedy. It
reminded him of the old man of the sea who sat on Sinbad's neck.
And this was one of those intensely masculine vacations, he
meditated. Compared with it, the servitude to O'Hara was sweet.
Again and again he was nearly seduced by the thought of abandoning
the sack of beans in the brush and of sneaking around the camp to
the beach and catching a steamer for civilization.

But he didn't. Somewhere in him was the strain of the hard, and he
repeated over and over to himself that what other men could do, he
could. It became a nightmare chant, and he gibbered it to those
that passed him on the trail. At other times, resting, he watched
and envied the stolid, mule-footed Indians that plodded by under
heavier packs. They never seemed to rest, but went on and on with a
steadiness and certitude that was to him appalling.

He sat and cursed--he had no breath for it when under way--and
fought the temptation to sneak back to San Francisco. Before the
mile pack was ended he ceased cursing and took to crying. The tears
were tears of exhaustion and of disgust with self. If ever a man
was a wreck, he was. As the end of the pack came in sight, he
strained himself in desperation, gained the camp-site, and pitched
forward on his face, the beans on his back. It did not kill him,
but he lay for fifteen minutes before he could summon sufficient
shreds of strength to release himself from the straps. Then he
became deathly sick, and was so found by Robbie, who had similar
troubles of his own. It was this sickness of Robbie that braced him
up.

"What other men can do, we can do," Kit told him, though down in his
heart he wondered whether or not he was bluffing.



IV.

"And I am twenty-seven years old and a man," he privately assured
himself many times in the days that followed. There was need for
it. At the end of a week, though he had succeeded in moving his
eight hundred pounds forward a mile a day, he had lost fifteen
pounds of his own weight. His face was lean and haggard. All
resilience had gone out of his body and mind. He no longer walked,
but plodded. And on the back-trips, travelling light, his feet
dragged almost as much as when he was loaded.
He had become a work animal. He fell asleep over his food, and his
sleep was heavy and beastly, save when he was aroused, screaming
with agony, by the cramps in his legs. Every part of him ached. He
tramped on raw blisters, yet this was even easier than the fearful
bruising his feet received on the water-rounded rocks of the Dyea
Flats, across which the trail led for two miles. These two miles
represented thirty-eight miles of travelling. He washed his face
once a day. His nails, torn and broken and afflicted with
hangnails, were never cleaned. His shoulders and chest, galled by
the pack-straps, made him think, and for the first time with
understanding, of the horses he had seen on city streets.

One ordeal that nearly destroyed him at first had been the food.
The extraordinary amount of work demanded extraordinary stoking, and
his stomach was unaccustomed to great quantities of bacon and of the
coarse, highly poisonous brown beans. As a result, his stomach went
back on him, and for several days the pain and irritation of it and
of starvation nearly broke him down. And then came the day of joy
when he could eat like a ravenous animal, and, wolf-eyed, ask for
more.

Ještě k letecké angličtině

aneb, jak si také můžeme ověřit některé termíny a proniknout do překládané problematiky:

http://technet.idnes.cz/letecka-anglictina-co-si-piloti-povidaji-fdw-/hardware.aspx?c=A150918_134452_hardware_kuz

Obyčejný děj

Frederick Forsyth  - The Shepherd

For a brief moment, while waiting for the control tower to clear me for takeoff, I glanced out through the Perspex cockpit canopy at the surrounding German countryside. It lay white and crisp beneath the crackling December moon.

Behind me lay the boundary fence of the Royal Air Force base, and beyond the fence, as I had seen while swinging my little fighter into line with the takeoff runway, the sheet of snow covering the flat farmland stretched away to the line of the pine trees, two miles distant in the night yet so clear I could almost see the shapes of the trees themselves.

Ahead of me, as I waited for the voice of the controller to come through the headphones, was the runway itself, a slick black ribbon of tarmac, flanked by twin rows of bright-burning lights, illuminating the solid path cut earlier by the snowplows. Behind the lights were the humped banks of the morning’s snow, frozen hard once again where the snowplow blades had pushed them. Far away to my right, the airfield tower stood up like a single glowing candle amid the brilliant hangars where the muffled aircraftmen were even now closing down the station for the night.

Inside the control tower, I knew, all was warmth and merriment, the staff waiting only for my departure to close down also, jump into the waiting cars, and head back to the parties in the mess. Within minutes of my going, the lights would die out, leaving only the huddled hangars, seeming hunched against the bitter night, the shrouded fighter planes, the sleeping fuel-bowser trucks, and, above them all, the single flickering station light, brilliant red above the black-and-white airfield, beating out in Morse code the name of the station— CELLE—to an unheeding sky. For tonight there would be no wandering aviators to look down and check their bearings; tonight was Christmas Eve, in the year of grace 1957, and I was a young pilot trying to get home to Blighty for his Christmas leave.

I was in a hurry and my watch read ten-fifteen by the dim blue glow of the control panel where the rows of dials quivered and danced. It was warm and snug inside the cockpit, the heating turned up full to prevent the Perspex’ icing up. It was like a cocoon, small and warm and safe, shielding me from the bitter cold outside, from the freezing night that can kill a man inside a minute if he is exposed to it at six hundred miles an hour.

“Charlie Delta...”

The controller’s voice woke me from my reverie, sounding in my headphones as if he were with me in the tiny cockpit, shouting in my ear. He’s had a jar or two already, I thought. Strictly against orders, but what the hell? It’s Christmas Eve.

“Charlie Delta...Control,” I responded.

“Charlie Delta, clear takeoff,” he said.

I saw no point in responding. I simply eased the throttle forward slowly with the left hand, holding the Vampire steady down the central line with the right hand. Behind me the low whine of the Goblin engine rose and rose, passing through a cry and into a scream. The snub-nosed fighter rolled, the lights each side of the runway passed in ever quicker succession, till they were flashing in a continuous blur. She became light, the nose rose fractionally, freeing the nosewheel from contact with the runway, and the rumble vanished instantly. Seconds later the main wheels came away and their soft drumming also stopped. I held her low above the deck, letting the speed build up till a glance at the air-speed indicator told me we were through 120 knots and heading for 150. As the end of the runway whizzed beneath my feet I pulled the Vampire into a gently climbing turn to the left, easing up the undercarriage lever as I did so.

From beneath and behind me I heard the dull clunk of the wheels entering their bays and felt the lunge forward of the jet as the drag of the undercarriage vanished. In front of me the three red lights representing three wheels extinguished themselves. I held her into the climbing turn, pressing the radio button with the left thumb.

“Charlie Delta, clear airfield, wheels up and locked,” I said into my oxygen mask.

“Charlie Delta, roger, over to Channel D,” said the controller, and then, before I could change radio channels, he added, “Happy Christmas.”

Strictly against the rules of radio procedure, of course. I was very young then, and very conscientious. But I replied, “Thank you, Tower, and same to you.” Then I switched channels to tune into the RAF’s North Germany Air Control frequency.

Down on my right thigh was strapped the map with my course charted on it in blue ink, but I did not need it. I knew the details by heart, worked out earlier with the navigation officer in the nav. hut. Turn overhead Celle airfield onto course 265 degrees, continue climbing to 27,000 feet. On reaching height, maintain course and keep speed to 485 knots. Check in with Channel D to let them know you’re in their airspace, then a straight run over the Dutch coast south of the Bevelands into the North Sea. After forty-four minutes’ flying time, change to Channel F and call Lakenheath Control to give you a “steer.” Fourteen minutes later you’ll be overhead Lakenheath. After that, follow instructions and they’ll bring you down on a radio-con- trolled descent. No problem, all routine procedures. Sixty-six minutes’ flying time, with the descent and landing, and the Vampire had enough fuel for over eighty minutes in the air.

Swinging over Celle airfield at 5,000 feet, I straightened up and watched the needle on my compass settle happily down on a course of 265 degrees. The nose was pointing toward the black, freezing vault of the night sky, studded with stars so brilliant they flickered their white fire against the eyeballs. Below, the black-and-white map of north Germany was growing smaller, the dark masses of the pine forests blending into the white expanses of the fields. Here and there a village or small town glittered with lights. Down there amid the gaily lit streets the carol singers would be out, knocking on the holly-studded doors to sing “Silent Night’' and collect pfennigs for charity. The Westphalian housewives would be preparing hams and geese.

Four hundred miles ahead of me the story would be the same, the carols in my own language but many of the tunes the same, and it would be turkey instead of goose. But whether you call it Weihnacht or Christmas, it’s the same all over the Christian world, and it was good to be going home.

From Lakenheath I knew I could get a lift down to London in the liberty bus, leaving just after midnight; from London I was confident I could hitch a lift to my parents’ home in Kent. By breakfast time I’d be celebrating with my own family. The altimeter read 27,000 feet. I eased the nose forward, reduced throttle setting to give me an air speed of 485 knots and held her steady on 265 degrees. Somewhere beneath me in the gloom the Dutch border would be slipping away, and I had been airborne for twenty-one minutes. No problem.

The problem started ten minutes out over the North Sea, and it started so quietly that it was several minutes before I realized I had one at all.

For some time I had been unaware that the low hum coming through my headphones into my ears had ceased, to be replaced by the strange nothingness of total silence. I must have been failing to concentrate, my thoughts being of home and my waiting family. The first thing I knew was when I flicked a glance downward to check my course on the compass. Instead of being rock-steady on 265 degrees, the needle was drifting lazily round the clock, passing through east, west, south, and north with total impartiality.

I swore a most unseasonal sentiment against the compass and the instrument fitter who should have

checked it for 100-percent reliability. Compass failure at night, even a brilliant moonlit night such as the one beyond the cockpit Perspex, was no fun. Still, it was not too serious: there was a standby compass—the alcohol kind. But, when I glanced at it, that one seemed to be in trouble, too. The needle was swinging wildly. Apparently something had jarred the case—which isn’t uncommon. In any event, I could call up Lakenheath in a few minutes and they would give me a GCA—Ground Controlled Approach—the second-by-second instructions that a well-equipped airfield can give a pilot to bring him home in the worst of weathers, following his progress on ultraprecise radar screens, watching him descend all the way to the tarmac, tracing his position in the sky yard by yard and second by second. I glanced at my watch: thirty- four minutes airborne. I could try to raise Lakenheath now, at the outside limit of my radio range.

Before trying Lakenheath, the correct procedure would be to inform Channel D, to which I was tuned, of my little problem, so they could advise Lakenheath that I was on my way without a compass. I pressed the transmit button and called: “Celle, Charlie Delta, Celle, Charlie Delta, calling North Beveland Control....”

I stopped. There was no point in going on. Instead of the lively crackle of static and the sharp sound of my own voice coming back into my own ears, there was a muffled murmur inside my oxygen mask. My own voice speaking... and going nowhere. I tried again. Same result. Far back across the wastes of the black and bitter North Sea, in the warm, cheery concrete complex of North Beveland Control, men sat back from their control panel, chatting and sipping their steaming coffee and cocoa. And they could not hear me. The radio was dead.

Fighting down the rising sense of panic that can kill a pilot faster than anything else, I swallowed and slowly counted to ten. Then I switched to

Channel F and tried to raise Lakenheath, ahead of me amid the Suffolk countryside, lying in its forest of pine trees south of Thetford, beautifully equipped with its GCA system for bringing home lost aircraft. On Channel F the radio was as dead as ever. My own muttering into the oxygen mask was smothered by the surrounding rubber. The steady whistle of my own jet engine behind me was my only answer.

It’s a very lonely place, the sky, and even more so the sky on a winter’s night. And a single-seater jet fighter is a lonely home, a tiny steel box held aloft on stubby wings, hurled through the freezing

emptiness by a blazing tube throwing out the strength of six thousand horses every second. But the loneliness is offset, cancelled out, by the knowledge that at the touch of a button on the throttle, the pilot can talk to other human beings, people who care about him, men and women who staff a network of stations around the world; just one touch of that button, the transmit button, and scores of them in control towers across the land that are tuned to his channel can hear him call for help. When the pilot transmits, on every one of those screens a line of light streaks from the center of the screen to the outside rim, which is marked with figures, from one to three hundred and sixty. Where the streak of light hits the ring, that is where the aircraft lies in relation to the control tower listening to him. The control towers are linked, so with two cross bearings they can locate his position to within a few hundred yards. He is not lost any more. People begin working to bring him down.

The radar operators pick up the little dot he makes on their screens from all the other dots; they call him up and give him instructions. “Begin your descent now, Charlie Delta. We have you now...” 


1. Přečtěte si celou ukázku, nechte na sebe působit autorův styl a rytmus řeči.
2. Zaměřte se na tučně vyznačený odstavec, identifikujte možné překladatelské problémy.
3. Přeložte část textu vyznačenou kurzívou a překlad vložte do komentáře k tomuto blogu.

Perlička z dabingu

http://kultura.idnes.cz/dabing-herci-televize-prima-df6-/televize.aspx?c=A150413_183346_televize_vha

Námořníci a suchozemci

Námořní tradice je pro obyvatele britských ostrovů stále něčím naprosto samozřejmým. Se stejnou samozřejmostí se očekává, že běžný anglicky čtoucí občan ovládá základy námořnické a lodnické terminologie - a totéž musí zvládnut i překladatel.

V capse máte k dispozici knihu N. Monsarrata The Cruel Sea. Ukázky, které budeme překládat, jsou ze dvou různých kapitol.
Než začnete překládat, zjistěte si základní fakta o autorovi a knize, vyhnete se tak trapným omylům!


další technické termíny, obvyklé v námořní literautře na téma 2. světové války:

asdic

http://www.thefreedictionary.com/asdic

http://merchantships2.tripod.com/ian/asdicdiagram.jpg

aldis

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2q7zhC4On84

 


PART ONE 1939: Learning
Chapter 11 (p. 40)
For three weeks they worked very hard indeed. From the moment that the Admiral's barge approached in a wide, treacherous sweep right under their stern and almost caught the Captain
unawares, the ship's company was in a continual state of tension. If they were not out exercising
with the submarine, they were doing gun-drill or running through Action Stations in harbour: if they were not fighting mock fires or raising the anchor by hand, an urgent signal would order them to lower a boat and put an armed landing-party ashore on the nearest beach. In between times, relays of men attended drills and lectures ashore: sometimes, with half the crew thus absent and their normal organization unworkable, a fearsome directive from the Admiral would set them to some manoeuvre which necessitated every available man tackling the nearest job, irrespective of his rating.
Stokers would find themselves firing guns, seamen had to try their hand at hoisting flag-signals: telegraphists and coders, gentlemanly types, would take on the crude job of connecting up filthy oil-pipes from the oiler. 'Blast the old bastard!' said Bennett sourly, when some crisis or other found him hauling on a rope instead of watching other people do it: 'I'll be cleaning out the lavatories next.' Lockhart wished it might be true. ... The three week's ordeal was exhilarating, and profoundly good for the ship, as far as training was concerned; but there were occasions when they all felt due for a holiday, and none too sure that it would arrive in time.



PART FOUR 1942: Fighting
Chapter 5 (p.195)
The torpedo struck Compass Rose as she was moving at almost her full speed: she was therefore mortally torn by the sea as well as by the violence of the enemy. She was hit squarely about twelve feet from her bows: there was one slamming explosion, and the noise of ripping and tearing metal, and the fatal sound of sea-water flooding in under great pressure: a blast of heat from the stricken fo'c'sle rose to the bridge like a hideous waft of incense. Compass Rose veered wildly from her course, and came to a shaking stop, like a dog with a bloody muzzle: her bows were very nearly blown off, and her stern was already starting to cant in the air, almost before the way was off the ship.
At the moment of disaster, Ericson was on the bridge, and Lockhart, and Wells: the same incredulous shock hit them all like a sickening body-blow. They were masked and confused by the pitch-dark night, and they could not believe that Compass Rose had been struck. But the ugly angle of the deck must only have one meaning, and the noise of things sliding about below their feet confirmed it. There was another noise, too, a noise which momentarily paralysed Ericson's brain and prevented him thinking at all; it came from a voice-pipe connecting the fo'c'sle with the bridge - an agonized animal howling, like a hundred dogs going mad in a pit. It was the men caught by the explosion, which must have jammed their only escape: up the voice-pipe came their shouts, their crazy hammering, their screams for help. But there was no help for them: with an executioner's hand, Ericson snapped the voice-pipe cover shut, cutting off the noise.
To Wells he said: 'Call Viperous on R/T. Plain Language. Say --' he did an almost violent sum in his brain; 'Say: "Torpedoed in position oh-five-oh degrees, thirty miles astern of you".'
To Lockhart he said: 'Clear away boats and rafts. But wait for the word.'
The deck started to tilt more acutely still. There was a crash from below as something heavy broke adrift and slid down the slope. Steam began to roar out of the safety-valve alongside the funnel.
Ericson thought: God, she's going down already, like Sorrel.
Wells said: 'The R/T's smashed, sir.'
Down in the wardroom, the noise and shock had been appalling; the explosion was in the very next
compartment, and the bulkhead had buckled and sagged towards them, just above the table they
were eating at. They all leapt to their feet, and jumped for the doorway: for a moment there were
five men at the foot of the ladder leading to the upper deck - Morell, Ferraby, Baker, Carslake, and
Tomlinson, the second steward. They seemed to be mobbing each other: Baker was shouting 'My
lifebelt - I've left my lifebelt!' Ferraby was being lifted off his feet by the rush, Tomlinson was
waving a dish-cloth, Carslake had reached out above their heads and grabbed the hand-rail. As the
group struggled, it had an ugly illusion of panic, though it was in fact no more than the swift
reaction to danger. Someone had to lead the way up the ladder: by the compulsion of their peril,
they had all got there at the same time.
Morell suddenly turned back against the fierce rush, buffeted his way through, and darted into his
cabin. Above his bunk was a photograph of his wife: he seized it, and thrust it inside his jacket. He
looked round swiftly, but there seemed nothing else he wanted.
He ran out again, and found himself already alone: the others had all got clear away, even during
the few seconds of his absence. He wondered which one of them had given way.... Just as he
reached the foot of the ladder there was an enormous cracking noise behind him: foolishly he
turned, and through the wardroom door he saw the bulkhead split asunder and the water burst in. It
flooded towards him like a cataract: quickly though he moved up the ladder, he was waist-deep
before he reached the top step, and the water seemed to suck greedily at his thighs as he threw
himself clear. He looked down at the swirling chaos which now covered everything - the
wardroom, the cabins, all their clothes and small possessions. There was one light still burning
under water, illuminating the dark-green, treacherous torrent that had so nearly trapped him. He
shook himself, in fear and relief, and ran out into the open, where in the freezing night air the
shouting was already wild, the deck already steep under his feet.
The open space between the boats was a dark shambles. Men blundered to and fro, cursing wildly,
cannoning into each other, slipping on the unaccustomed slope of the deck: above their heads the steam from the safety-valve was reaching a crescendo of noise, as if the ship, pouring out her vitals,
was screaming her rage and defiance at the same time. One of the boats was useless -it could not be
launched at the angle Compass Rose had now reached: the other had jammed in its chocks, and no
effort, however violent, could move it. Tonbridge, who was in charge, hammered and punched at it:
the dozen men with him strove desperately to lift it clear: it stuck there as if pegged to the deck, it
was immovable. Tonbridge said, for the fourth or fifth time: 'Come on, lads - heave!' He had to roar
to make himself heard; but roaring was no use, and heaving was no use either. Gregg, who was by
his shoulder, straining at the gunwale, gasped: 'It's no bloody good, Ted ... she's fast.... It's the list...'
and Tonbridge called out: The rafts, then - clear the rafts!'
The men left the boat, which in their mortal need had failed them and wasted precious minutes, and
made for the Carley floats: they blundered into each other once more, and ran full tilt into the
funnel-guys, and shouted fresh curses at the confusion. Tonbridge started them lifting the raft that
was on the high side of the ship, and bringing it across to the other rail; in the dark, with half a
dozen fear-driven men heaving and wrenching at it, it was as if they were already fighting each
other for the safety it promised. Then he stood back, looking up at the bridge where the next order -
the last order of all - must come from. The bridge was crooked against the sky. He fingered his lifejacket and tightened the straps. He said, not bothering to make his voice audible:
'It's going to be cold, lads.'
Down in the engine-room, three minutes after the explosion, Watts and E.R.A. Broughton were
alone, waiting for the order of release from the bridge. They knew it ought to come, they trusted
that it would. ... Watts had been 'on the plate' when the torpedo struck home: on his own initiative,
he had stopped the engine, and then, as the angle of their list increased, he had opened the safetyvalve
and let the pressure off the boilers. He had followed what was happening from the noise
outside, and it was easy enough to follow. The series of crashes from forward were the bulkheads
going, the trampling overhead was the boats being cleared away: the wicked down-hill angle of the
ship was their doom. Now they waited, side by side in the deserted engine-room: the old E.R.A.
and the young apprentice. Watts noticed that Broughton was crossing himself, and remembered he
was a Roman Catholic. Good luck to him tonight.. . . The bell from the bridge rang sharply, and he
put his mouth to the voice-pipe:
'Engine-room!' he called.
'Chief,' said the Captain's far-away voice.
'Sir?'
'Leave it, and come up.'
That was all - and it was enough. 'Up you go, lad!' he said to Broughton. 'We're finished here.'
'Is she sinking?' asked Broughton uncertainly.
'Not with me on board.... Jump to it!'