29. listopadu 2022

První pokusy

 Do komentáře vložte 2 odstavce zvolené povídky - originál + překlad.

Registrace povídky

 Do komentáře napište své jméno, název vybrané povídky + autora.

21. listopadu 2022

Shakespeare!

 

 


Jak překládat poezii?  A překládat ji vůbec? Má přednost forma či obsah? Dají se na překlad poesie aplikovat pravidla, o kterých jsme mluvili?


1. Projděte si komentáře k tomuto vstupu. Jaké typy básnické tvorby se objevují? Mají něco společného?

Dokážete se během 2 minut naučit 4 libovolné řádky zpaměti? Vyzkoušejte si to na yvoleném sonetu.Jak postupujete?


2. 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

Interview s Martinem Hilskym

__________________________________

3. Ve dvojicích si vyměňte yvolené sonety. Přečtěte si je pomalu a klidně, vnímejte rytmus a zvukomalbu textu, teprve při druhém čtení se víc soustřeďte na obsah. Ve dvojici se podělte o své dojmy. Jaký sonet zvolil váš partner a proč? 

Individuálně si vyberte jeden z obou sonetů a pokuste se přeložit jedno libovolné ze tří čtyřverší + poslání.
Rozmyslete si, jak budete postupovat.

_______________________

inspirace: originál
https://www.opensourceshakespeare.org/views/sonnets/sonnets.php
audio

české překlady Shakespeara
Jan Vladislav-pdf
http://lukaflek.wz.cz/poems/ws_sonet29.htm
http://www.v-art.cz/taxus_bohemica/eh/bergrova.htm
http://www.shakespearovy-sonety.cz/a29/
Hilsky sonet 12 youtube
http://sonety.blog.cz/0803/william-shakespeare-sonnet-12-64-73-94-107-128-sest-sonetu-v-mem-prekladu


https://ucbcluj.org/current-issue/vol-21-spring-2012/2842-2/
http://mikechasar.blogspot.cz/2011/02/gi-jane-dh-lawrence.html

________________

https://lyricstranslate.com/en/sonnet-66-soneto-66.html

Soneto 66
Harto de todo esto, muerte pido y paz:
de ver cómo es el mérito mendigo nato
y ver alzada en palmas la vil nulidad
y la más pura fe sufrir perjurio ingrato

y la dorada honra con deshonra dada
y el virginal pudor brutalmente arrollado
y cabal derechura a tuerto estropeada
y por cojera el brío juvenil quebrado

y el arte amordazado por la autoridad
y el genio obedeciendo a un docto mequetrefe
y llamada simpleza la simple verdad
y un buen cautivo sometido a un triste jefe;

harto de todo esto; de esto huiría; sólo
que, al morir, a mi amor aquí lo dejo solo.

__________________

https://lyricstranslate.com/en/sonnet-66-shakespeare-sonett-66.html

Shakespeare: Sonett 66

Satt hab ich all dies, verlang im Tod den Frieden,
Seh ich, dass das Verdienst ein Bettler bleibt,
Dass nacktem Nichts das Festagskleid beschieden,
Dass Meineid reinste Treu ins Unglück treibt,
Dass Schande sich mit Ehrengold umhängt,
Dass Geilheit alles, was noch rein ist, schändet,
Dass Unrecht die Gerechtigkeit verdrängt,
Dass Stärke, durch Gewalt gelähmt, verkrüppelt,
Dass Macht dem Wissen fest die Zunge bindet,
Dass Dummheit kritisch Können überwacht,
Dass man die lautre Wahrheit lachhaft findet,
Dass Gut als Sklave dient der bösen Macht.
Satt hab' ich all dies, möcht' weg von alldem sein,
Doch wär' ich tot, ließ' ich mein Lieb allein.

https://shine.unibas.ch/Sonette1.htm#66
https://lyricstranslate.com/en/sonnet-66-sonett-66.html#songtranslation

__________________

Sonett 66

Des Todes Ruh' ersehn' ich lebensmüd,
Seh' ich Verdienst als Bettler auf der Welt,
Und leeres Nichts zu höchstem Prunk erblüht,
Und reinste Treue, die im Meineid fällt,
Und goldne Ehre, die die Schande schmückt,
Und Mädchenunschuld roh dahingeschlachtet,
Und Kraft durch schwache Leitung unterdrückt,
Und echte Hoheit ungerecht verachtet,
Und Kunst geknebelt durch die Übermacht,
Und Unsinn herrschend auf der Weisheit Thron,
Und Einfalt als Einfältigkeit verlacht,
Und Knecht das Gute in des Bösen Fron,
Ja lebensmüd entging' ich gern der Pein,
Ließ den Geliebten nicht mein Tod allein.

Übersetzt von Max Josef Wolff

https://lyricstranslate.com/en/sonnet-66-sonett-66.html-0#songtranslation

__________________

Sonett 66

Ich hab es satt. Wär ich ein toter Mann.
Wenn Würde schon zur Bettelei geborn
Und Nichtigkeit sich ausstaffieren kann
Und jegliches Vertrauen ist verlorn
Und Rang und Name Fähigkeit entbehrt
Und Fraun vergebens sich der Männer wehren
Und wenn der Könner Gnadenbrot verzehrt
Und Duldende nicht aufbegehren
Und Kunst gegängelt von der Obrigkeit
Und Akademiker erklärn den Sinn
Und simples Zeug tritt man gelehrsam breit
Und Gut und Böse biegt sich jeder hin
Ich hab es satt. Ich möchte wegsein, bloß:
Noch liebe ich. Und das läßt mich nicht los.

Deutsche Fassung von
Karl Werner Plath
__________________

Сонет 66

Измучась всем, я умереть хочу.
Тоска смотреть, как мается бедняк,
И как шутя живется богачу,
И доверять, и попадать впросак,

И наблюдать, как наглость лезет в свет,
И честь девичья катится ко дну,
И знать, что ходу совершенствам нет,
И видеть мощь у немощи в плену,

И вспоминать, что мысли заткнут рот,
И разум сносит глупости хулу,
И прямодушье простотой слывет,
И доброта прислуживает злу.

Измучась всем, не стал бы жить и дня,
Да другу будет трудно без меня.


Pasternak, Boris Leonidovic

__________________

Sonnet 66: Translation to modern English
Exhausted with the following things I cry out for releasing death: for example, seeing a deserving person who has been born into poverty; and an undeserving one dressed in the finest clothes; and someone who shows trustworthiness wretchedly betrayed; and public honour shamefully bestowed on the unfit; and unblemished goodness forced into bad ways; and genuine perfection unjustly disgraced; and conviction crippled by corruption; and skill suppressed by those with the power to do it; and stupidity restraining the advance of knowledge; and simple truth being dismissed as simplistic; and good taking orders from evil. Exhausted with all these things I want to escape, except that by dying I would be abandoning my love.

15. listopadu 2022

HW for Nov22

 Choose one sonet by Shakespeare and and bring the original text for the next lesson.

7. listopadu 2022

Moby Dick



Herman Melville

Moby Dick; or The Whale


FINALE

 At length as the craft was cast to one side, and ran ranging along with the White Whale's flank, he seemed strangely oblivious of its advance--as the whale sometimes will--and Ahab was fairly within the smoky mountain mist, which, thrown off from the whale's spout, curled round his great, Monadnock hump; he was even thus close to him; when, with body arched back, and both arms lengthwise high-lifted to the poise, he darted his fierce iron, and his far fiercer curse into the hated whale. As both steel and curse sank to the socket, as if sucked into a morass, Moby Dick sideways writhed; spasmodically rolled his nigh flank against the bow, and, without staving a hole in it, so suddenly canted the boat over, that had it not been for the elevated part of the gunwale to which he then clung, Ahab would once more have been tossed into the sea. As it was, three of the oarsmen--who foreknew not the precise instant of the dart, and were therefore unprepared for its effects--these were flung out; but so fell, that, in an instant two of them clutched the gunwale again, and rising to its level on a combing wave, hurled themselves bodily inboard again; the third man helplessly dropping astern, but still afloat and swimming.

Almost simultaneously, with a mighty volition of ungraduated, instantaneous swiftness, the White Whale darted through the weltering sea. But when Ahab cried out to the steersman to take new turns with the line, and hold it so; and commanded the crew to turn round on their seats, and tow the boat up to the mark; the moment the treacherous line felt that double strain and tug, it snapped in the empty air!

"What breaks in me? Some sinew cracks!--'tis whole again; oars! oars! Burst in upon him!"

Hearing the tremendous rush of the sea-crashing boat, the whale wheeled round to present his blank forehead at bay; but in that evolution, catching sight of the nearing black hull of the ship; seemingly seeing in it the source of all his persecutions; bethinking it--it may be--a larger and nobler foe; of a sudden, he bore down upon its advancing prow, smiting his jaws amid fiery showers of foam.

Ahab staggered; his hand smote his forehead. "I grow blind; hands! stretch out before me that I may yet grope my way. Is't night?"

"The whale! The ship!" cried the cringing oarsmen.

"Oars! oars! Slope downwards to thy depths, O sea, that ere it be for ever too late, Ahab may slide this last, last time upon his mark! I see: the ship! the ship! Dash on, my men! Will ye not save my ship?"

But as the oarsmen violently forced their boat through the sledge-hammering seas, the before whale-smitten bow-ends of two planks burst through, and in an instant almost, the temporarily disabled boat lay nearly level with the waves; its half-wading, splashing crew, trying hard to stop the gap and bale out the pouring water.

Meantime, for that one beholding instant, Tashtego's mast-head hammer remained suspended in his hand; and the red flag, half-wrapping him as with a plaid, then streamed itself straight out from him, as his own forward-flowing heart; while Starbuck and Stubb, standing upon the bowsprit beneath, caught sight of the down-coming monster just as soon as he.

"The whale, the whale! Up helm, up helm! Oh, all ye sweet powers of air, now hug me close! Let not Starbuck die, if die he must, in a woman's fainting fit. Up helm, I say--ye fools, the jaw! the jaw! Is this the end of all my bursting prayers? all my life-long fidelities? Oh, Ahab, Ahab, lo, thy work. Steady! helmsman, steady. Nay, nay! Up helm again! He turns to meet us! Oh, his unappeasable brow drives on towards one, whose duty tells him he cannot depart. My God, stand by me now!"

"Stand not by me, but stand under me, whoever you are that will now help Stubb; for Stubb, too, sticks here. I grin at thee, thou grinning whale! Who ever helped Stubb, or kept Stubb awake, but Stubb's own unwinking eye? And now poor Stubb goes to bed upon a mattrass that is all too soft; would it were stuffed with brushwood! I grin at thee, thou grinning whale! Look ye, sun, moon, and stars! I call ye assassins of as good a fellow as ever spouted up his ghost. For all that, I would yet ring glasses with ye, would ye but hand the cup! Oh, oh! oh, oh! thou grinning whale, but there'll be plenty of gulping soon! Why fly ye not, O Ahab! For me, off shoes and jacket to it; let Stubb die in his drawers! A most mouldy and over salted death, though;--cherries! cherries! cherries! Oh, Flask, for one red cherry ere we die!"

"Cherries? I only wish that we were where they grow. Oh, Stubb, I hope my poor mother's drawn my part-pay ere this; if not, few coppers will now come to her, for the voyage is up."

From the ship's bows, nearly all the seamen now hung inactive; hammers, bits of plank, lances, and harpoons, mechanically retained in their hands, just as they had darted from their various employments; all their enchanted eyes intent upon the whale, which from side to side strangely vibrating his predestinating head, sent a broad band of overspreading semicircular foam before him as he rushed. Retribution, swift vengeance, eternal malice were in his whole aspect, and spite of all that mortal man could do, the solid white buttress of his forehead smote the ship's starboard bow, till men and timbers reeled. Some fell flat upon their faces. Like dislodged trucks, the heads of the harpooneers aloft shook on their bull-like necks. Through the breach, they heard the waters pour, as mountain torrents down a flume.

"The ship! The hearse!--the second hearse!" cried Ahab from the boat; "its wood could only be American!"

Diving beneath the settling ship, the whale ran quivering along its keel; but turning under water, swiftly shot to the surface again, far off the other bow, but within a few yards of Ahab's boat, where, for a time, he lay quiescent.

"I turn my body from the sun. What ho, Tashtego! let me hear thy hammer. Oh! ye three unsurrendered spires of mine; thou uncracked keel; and only god-bullied hull; thou firm deck, and haughty helm, and Pole-pointed prow,--death-glorious ship! must ye then perish, and without me? Am I cut off from the last fond pride of meanest shipwrecked captains? Oh, lonely death on lonely life! Oh, now I feel my topmost greatness lies in my topmost grief. Ho, ho! from all your furthest bounds, pour ye now in, ye bold billows of my whole foregone life, and top this one piled comber of my death! Towards thee I roll, thou all-destroying but unconquering whale; to the last I grapple with thee; from hell's heart I stab at thee; for hate's sake I spit my last breath at thee. Sink all coffins and all hearses to one common pool! and since neither can be mine, let me then tow to pieces, while still chasing thee, though tied to thee, thou damned whale! THUS, I give up the spear!"

The harpoon was darted; the stricken whale flew forward; with igniting velocity the line ran through the grooves;--ran foul. Ahab stooped to clear it; he did clear it; but the flying turn caught him round the neck, and voicelessly as Turkish mutes bowstring their victim, he was shot out of the boat, ere the crew knew he was gone. Next instant, the heavy eye-splice in the rope's final end flew out of the stark-empty tub, knocked down an oarsman, and smiting the sea, disappeared in its depths.

For an instant, the tranced boat's crew stood still; then turned. "The ship? Great God, where is the ship?" Soon they through dim, bewildering mediums saw her sidelong fading phantom, as in the gaseous Fata Morgana; only the uppermost masts out of water; while fixed by infatuation, or fidelity, or fate, to their once lofty perches, the pagan harpooneers still maintained their sinking lookouts on the sea. And now, concentric circles seized the lone boat itself, and all its crew, and each floating oar, and every lance-pole, and spinning, animate and inanimate, all round and round in one vortex, carried the smallest chip of the Pequod out of sight.

But as the last whelmings intermixingly poured themselves over the sunken head of the Indian at the mainmast, leaving a few inches of the erect spar yet visible, together with long streaming yards of the flag, which calmly undulated, with ironical coincidings, over the destroying billows they almost touched;--at that instant, a red arm and a hammer hovered backwardly uplifted in the open air, in the act of nailing the flag faster and yet faster to the subsiding spar. A sky-hawk that tauntingly had followed the main-truck downwards from its natural home among the stars, pecking at the flag, and incommoding Tashtego there; this bird now chanced to intercept its broad fluttering wing between the hammer and the wood; and simultaneously feeling that etherial thrill, the submerged savage beneath, in his death-gasp, kept his hammer frozen there; and so the bird of heaven, with archangelic shrieks, and his imperial beak thrust upwards, and his whole captive form folded in the flag of Ahab, went down with his ship, which, like Satan, would not sink to hell till she had dragged a living part of heaven along with her, and helmeted herself with it.

Now small fowls flew screaming over the yet yawning gulf; a sullen white surf beat against its steep sides; then all collapsed, and the great shroud of the sea rolled on as it rolled five thousand years ago.



Epilogue

"AND I ONLY AM ESCAPED ALONE TO TELL THEE" Job.

The drama's done. Why then here does any one step forth?--Because one did survive the wreck.

It so chanced, that after the Parsee's disappearance, I was he whom the Fates ordained to take the place of Ahab's bowsman, when that bowsman assumed the vacant post; the same, who, when on the last day the three men were tossed from out of the rocking boat, was dropped astern. So, floating on the margin of the ensuing scene, and in full sight of it, when the halfspent suction of the sunk ship reached me, I was then, but slowly, drawn towards the closing vortex. When I reached it, it had subsided to a creamy pool. Round and round, then, and ever contracting towards the button-like black bubble at the axis of that slowly wheeling circle, like another Ixion I did revolve. Till, gaining that vital centre, the black bubble upward burst; and now, liberated by reason of its cunning spring, and, owing to its great buoyancy, rising with great force, the coffin life-buoy shot lengthwise from the sea, fell over, and floated by my side. Buoyed up by that coffin, for almost one whole day and night, I floated on a soft and dirgelike main. The unharming sharks, they glided by as if with padlocks on their mouths; the savage sea-hawks sailed with sheathed beaks. On the second day, a sail drew near, nearer, and picked me up at last. It was the devious-cruising Rachel, that in her retracing search after her missing children, only found another orphan.


25. října 2022

The Importance of Being Earnest

 


Překladatelský oříšek - jak přeložit název komedie Oscara Wildea?

I překládání slovních hříček má své zásady.

Mnohdy jazyk již svými stavebními vlastnostmi vytváří zvláště příznivé podmínky pro některý typ uměleckých prostředků. Tak angličtina bohatstvím homonym a synonym, které je u jazyka převážně jednoslabičného přirozené, má zvláště příznivé podmínky pro tvoření slovních hříček. Silnou tradici slovních hříček v anglické literatuře již od dob biblických překladů a Shakespearových dramat je stěží možno pokládat za pouhou náhodu.

http://sas.ujc.cas.cz/archiv.php?art=783





Jack.  Gwendolen!

Gwendolen.  Yes, Mr. Worthing, what have you got to say to me?

Jack.  You know what I have got to say to you.

Gwendolen.  Yes, but you don't say it.

Jack.  Gwendolen, will you marry me?  [Goes on his knees.]

Gwendolen.  Of course I will, darling.  How long you have been about it!
I am afraid you have had very little experience in how to propose.

Jack.  My own one, I have never loved any one in the world but you.

Gwendolen.  Yes, but men often propose for practice.  I know my brother
Gerald does.  All my girl-friends tell me so.  What wonderfully blue eyes
you have, Ernest!  They are quite, quite, blue.  I hope you will always
look at me just like that, especially when there are other people
present.  [Enter Lady Bracknell.]

Lady Bracknell.  Mr. Worthing!  Rise, sir, from this semi-recumbent
posture.  It is most indecorous.

Gwendolen.  Mamma!  [He tries to rise; she restrains him.]  I must beg
you to retire.  This is no place for you.  Besides, Mr. Worthing has not
quite finished yet.

Lady Bracknell.  Finished what, may I ask?

Gwendolen.  I am engaged to Mr. Worthing, mamma.  [They rise together.]

Lady Bracknell.  Pardon me, you are not engaged to any one.  When you do
become engaged to some one, I, or your father, should his health permit
him, will inform you of the fact.  An engagement should come on a young
girl as a surprise, pleasant or unpleasant, as the case may be.  It is
hardly a matter that she could be allowed to arrange for herself . . .
And now I have a few questions to put to you, Mr. Worthing.  While I am
making these inquiries, you, Gwendolen, will wait for me below in the
carriage.

Gwendolen.  [Reproachfully.]  Mamma!

Lady Bracknell.  In the carriage, Gwendolen!  [Gwendolen goes to the
door.  She and Jack blow kisses to each other behind Lady Bracknell's
back.  Lady Bracknell looks vaguely about as if she could not understand
what the noise was.  Finally turns round.]  Gwendolen, the carriage!

Gwendolen.  Yes, mamma.  [Goes out, looking back at Jack.]

Lady Bracknell.  [Sitting down.]  You can take a seat, Mr. Worthing.

[Looks in her pocket for note-book and pencil.]

Jack.  Thank you, Lady Bracknell, I prefer standing.

Lady Bracknell.  [Pencil and note-book in hand.]  I feel bound to tell
you that you are not down on my list of eligible young men, although I
have the same list as the dear Duchess of Bolton has.  We work together,
in fact.  However, I am quite ready to enter your name, should your
answers be what a really affectionate mother requires.  Do you smoke?

Jack.  Well, yes, I must admit I smoke.

Lady Bracknell.  I am glad to hear it.  A man should always have an
occupation of some kind.  There are far too many idle men in London as it
is.  How old are you?

Jack.  Twenty-nine.

Lady Bracknell.  A very good age to be married at.  I have always been of
opinion that a man who desires to get married should know either
everything or nothing.  Which do you know?

Jack.  [After some hesitation.]  I know nothing, Lady Bracknell.

Lady Bracknell.  I am pleased to hear it.  I do not approve of anything
that tampers with natural ignorance.  Ignorance is like a delicate exotic
fruit; touch it and the bloom is gone.  The whole theory of modern
education is radically unsound.  Fortunately in England, at any rate,
education produces no effect whatsoever.  If it did, it would prove a
serious danger to the upper classes, and probably lead to acts of
violence in Grosvenor Square.  What is your income?

Jack.  Between seven and eight thousand a year.

Lady Bracknell.  [Makes a note in her book.]  In land, or in investments?

Jack.  In investments, chiefly.

Lady Bracknell.  That is satisfactory.  What between the duties expected
of one during one's lifetime, and the duties exacted from one after one's
death, land has ceased to be either a profit or a pleasure.  It gives one
position, and prevents one from keeping it up.  That's all that can be
said about land.

Jack.  I have a country house with some land, of course, attached to it,
about fifteen hundred acres, I believe; but I don't depend on that for my
real income.  In fact, as far as I can make out, the poachers are the
only people who make anything out of it.

Lady Bracknell.  A country house!  How many bedrooms?  Well, that point
can be cleared up afterwards.  You have a town house, I hope?  A girl
with a simple, unspoiled nature, like Gwendolen, could hardly be expected
to reside in the country.

Jack.  Well, I own a house in Belgrave Square, but it is let by the year
to Lady Bloxham.  Of course, I can get it back whenever I like, at six
months' notice.

Lady Bracknell.  Lady Bloxham?  I don't know her.

Jack.  Oh, she goes about very little.  She is a lady considerably
advanced in years.

Lady Bracknell.  Ah, nowadays that is no guarantee of respectability of
character.  What number in Belgrave Square?

Jack.  149.

Lady Bracknell.  [Shaking her head.]  The unfashionable side.  I thought
there was something.  However, that could easily be altered.

Jack.  Do you mean the fashion, or the side?

Lady Bracknell.  [Sternly.]  Both, if necessary, I presume.  What are
your politics?

Jack.  Well, I am afraid I really have none.  I am a Liberal Unionist.

Lady Bracknell.  Oh, they count as Tories.  They dine with us.  Or come
in the evening, at any rate.  Now to minor matters.  Are your parents
living?

Jack.  I have lost both my parents.

Lady Bracknell.  To lose one parent, Mr. Worthing, may be regarded as a
misfortune; to lose both looks like carelessness.  Who was your father?
He was evidently a man of some wealth.  Was he born in what the Radical
papers call the purple of commerce, or did he rise from the ranks of the
aristocracy?

Jack.  I am afraid I really don't know.  The fact is, Lady Bracknell, I
said I had lost my parents.  It would be nearer the truth to say that my
parents seem to have lost me . . . I don't actually know who I am by
birth.  I was . . . well, I was found.

Lady Bracknell.  Found!

Jack.  The late Mr. Thomas Cardew, an old gentleman of a very charitable
and kindly disposition, found me, and gave me the name of Worthing,
because he happened to have a first-class ticket for Worthing in his
pocket at the time.  Worthing is a place in Sussex.  It is a seaside
resort.

Lady Bracknell.  Where did the charitable gentleman who had a first-class
ticket for this seaside resort find you?

Jack.  [Gravely.]  In a hand-bag.

Lady Bracknell.  A hand-bag?

Jack.  [Very seriously.]  Yes, Lady Bracknell.  I was in a hand-bag--a
somewhat large, black leather hand-bag, with handles to it--an ordinary
hand-bag in fact.

Lady Bracknell.  In what locality did this Mr. James, or Thomas, Cardew
come across this ordinary hand-bag?

Jack.  In the cloak-room at Victoria Station.  It was given to him in
mistake for his own.

Lady Bracknell.  The cloak-room at Victoria Station?

Jack.  Yes.  The Brighton line.

Lady Bracknell.  The line is immaterial.  Mr. Worthing, I confess I feel
somewhat bewildered by what you have just told me.  To be born, or at any
rate bred, in a hand-bag, whether it had handles or not, seems to me to
display a contempt for the ordinary decencies of family life that reminds
one of the worst excesses of the French Revolution.  And I presume you
know what that unfortunate movement led to?  As for the particular
locality in which the hand-bag was found, a cloak-room at a railway
station might serve to conceal a social indiscretion--has probably,
indeed, been used for that purpose before now--but it could hardly be
regarded as an assured basis for a recognised position in good society.

Jack.  May I ask you then what you would advise me to do?  I need hardly
say I would do anything in the world to ensure Gwendolen's happiness.

Lady Bracknell.  I would strongly advise you, Mr. Worthing, to try and
acquire some relations as soon as possible, and to make a definite effort
to produce at any rate one parent, of either sex, before the season is
quite over.

Jack.  Well, I don't see how I could possibly manage to do that.  I can
produce the hand-bag at any moment.  It is in my dressing-room at home.  I
really think that should satisfy you, Lady Bracknell.

Lady Bracknell.  Me, sir!  What has it to do with me?  You can hardly
imagine that I and Lord Bracknell would dream of allowing our only
daughter--a girl brought up with the utmost care--to marry into a cloak-
room, and form an alliance with a parcel?  Good morning, Mr. Worthing!

[Lady Bracknell sweeps out in majestic indignation.]



11. října 2022

Facts, Fiction and Description: A Fall of Moondust

 Výběr slov je pro překlad stěžejní - nicméně především vzájemný vztah zvolených výrazů rozhoduje o věrnosti překladu, o jeho čtivosti, sdělnosti...

Vyhledejte v následujícím textu zajímavé dvojice přídavného a podstatného jména (e.g. a jagged line)  a pokuste se je - izolované - přeložit několika různými způsoby. Hledejte zajímavé kombinace, přirozené i méně vhodné. Sdílejte své návrhy v komentáři.



Arthur C. Clarke

A Fall of Moondust

Chapter 2

Ahead of “Selene”, the horizon was no longer a perfect, unbroken arc; a jagged line of mountains had risen above the edge of the Moon. As the cruiser raced toward them, they seemed to climb slowly up the sky, as if lifted upon some gigantic elevator.

"The Mountains of Inaccessibility," announced Miss Wilkins. "So called because they're entirely surrounded by the Sea. You'll notice, too, that they're much steeper than most lunar mountains."

She did not labor this, since it was an unfortunate fact that the majority of lunar peaks were a severe disappointment. The huge craters which looked so impressive on photographs taken from Earth turned out upon close inspection to be gently rolling hills, their relief grossly exaggerated by the shadows they cast at dawn and sunset. There was not a single lunar crater whose ramparts soared as abruptly as the streets of San Francisco, and there were very few that could provide a serious ohstacle to a determined cyclist. No one would have guessed this, however, from the publications of the Tourist Commission, which featured only the most spectacular cliffs and canyons, photographed from carefully chosen vantage points.

"They've never been thoroughly explored, even now," Miss Wilkins continued. "Last year we took a party of geologists there, and landed them on that promontory but they were only able to go a few kilometers into the interior. So there may be “anything” up in those hills; we simply don't know."

Good for Sue, Pat told himself; she was a first-rate guide, and knew what to leave to the imagination and what to explain in detail. She had an easy relaxed tone, with no trace of that fatal singsong that was the occupational disease of so many professional guides. And she had mastered her subject thoroughly; it was very rare for her to be asked a question that she could not answer. Altogether, she was a formidable young lady, and though she often figured in Pat's erotic reveries, he was secretly a little afraid of her.

The passengers stared with fascinated wonder at the approaching peaks. On the still-mysterious Moon, here was a deeper mystery. Rising like an island out of the strange sea that guarded them, the Mountains of Inaccessibility remained a challenge for the next generation of explorers. Despite their name, it was now easy enough to reach them--but with millions of square kilometers of less difficult territory still unexamined, they would have to wait their turn.

“Selene” was swinging into their shadows; before anyone had realized what was happening, the low-hanging Earth had been eclipsed. Its brilliant light still played upon the peaks far overhead, but down here all was utter darkness.

"I'll turn off the cabin lights," said the stewardess, "so you can get a better view."

As the dim red background illumination vanished, each traveler felt he was alone in the lunar night. Even the reflected radiance of Earth on those high peaks was disappearing as the cruiser raced farther into shadow. Within minutes, only the stars were left--cold, steady points of light in a blackness so complete that the mind rebelled against it.

It was hard to recognize the familiar constellations among this multitude of stars. The eye became entangled in patterns never seen from Earth, and lost itself in a glittering maze of clusters and nebulae. In all that resplendent panorama, there was only one unmistakable landmark--the dazzling beacon of Venus, far outshining all other heavenly bodies, heralding the approach of dawn.

It was several minutes before the travelers realized that not all the wonder lay in the sky. Behind the speeding cruiser stretched a long, phosphorescent wake, as if a magic finger had traced a line of light across the Moon's dark and dusty face. “Selene” was drawing a comet tail behind her, as surely as any ship plowing its way through the tropical oceans of Earth.

Yet there were no microorganisms here, lighting this dead sea with their tiny lamps. Only countless grains of dust, sparking one against the other as the static discharges caused by “Selene's” swift passage neutralized themselves. Even when one knew the explanation, it was still beautiful to watch--to look back into the night and to see this luminous, electric ribbon continually renewed, continually dying away, as if the Milky Way itself were reflected in the lunar surface.

The shining wake was lost in the glare as Pat switched on the seaichlight. Ominously close at hand, a great wall of rock was sliding past. At this point the face of the mountain rose almost sheer from the surrounding sea of dust; it towered overhead to unknown heights, for only where the racing oval of light fell upon it did it appear to flash suddenly into real existence.

Here were mountains against which the Himalayas, the Rockies, the Alps were newborn babies. On Earth, the forces of erosion began to tear at all mountains as soon as they were formed, so that after a few million years they were mere ghosts of their former selves. But the Moon knew neither wind nor rain; there was nothing here to wear away the rocks except the immeasurably slow flaking of the dust as their surface layers contracted in the chill of night. These mountains were as old as the world that had given them birth.