General nonsense

[birdsofshore]

Happy Friday! I have things to discuss.

~~ snowgall, this made me think of you. A study (with bar charts! pie charts! all sorts of charts!) of "aggressive actions" in the HP series, book by book and character by character. Aggressive actions statistics. Can anyone draw any conclusions from this? I wasn't really sure what to make of it, except to marvel at the work that must have gone into it.

~~ I'm going to see James McAvoy in this tomorrow, and to have lunch with who_la_hoop. As you can imagine, I'm pretty excited. I mean, how could I not be. Lunch with who_la! \o/

I'm also fairly pleased about Mr McAvoy. ;) OK, this is embarrassing; I didn't know he was Scottish until yesterday. Why does nobody ever tell me these things?

~~ The very clever catch_life translated some of my fics into Russian for a translation battle. I can't read a word of them, but they look awfully pretty. Here are some links: At Tales told by Severus Snape and on fanfics.me, links 1, 2, 3 and 4. I don't know which is which, but the stories translated were What Potter Wants, This Monstrous Need, This Unstoppable Thirst and One Prick Away from Heaven. Mr Birds put the translation of the last one through Google translate and the title came out as One False Move and You're in Paradise, which both amused and pleased me. I'd imagine things like double meanings must be the worst to translate.

I find the idea of the translation battle really interesting. I don't know any details of how it works but I love the idea of it anyway! Can anyone tell us more details about how such a thing is run?

~~And finally, Steven Moffat has some interesting things to say about fanfiction:

What’s the best or funniest piece of Sherlock fan fiction or fan art you’ve seen?

I don’t know the funniest. There’s been some eye-watering stuff of Benedict and Martin together. A load of it has been superb. There’s a tendency to disparage it. I don’t agree. Even the slash fiction, that’s a great way to learn to work. No one really does three-act structure, but just trying to put words that make somebody else turned on, that’s going to teach you more about writing than any writing college you can go to. It’s creative and exciting. I refuse to mock it—because I’m a man who writes Sherlock Holmes fan fiction for a living!

More from Moffat, including lots of teasers about series 4, here.

Comments

[catch-life.livejournal.com]

Oh my... I am so flattered and pleased that you gave links to the translations at your livejournal :) I hope the translations do justice to the witty originals! At least I tried...
I nearly broke my head over the title "One Prick Away From Heaven"! But we have an idiom in Russian "one false move - and you are a father" (do you have something similar in English?), so I incorporated it into the title to give it a kind of a salty flair, in the loving memory of the word "prick" with its double meaning :)
The battle was not a translators' battle specifically, it was one of the big Russian multifandom games. They are called "fandom battles" and take place on the Russian site diary.ru twice a year. There is a big summer fandom battle, when fandoms compete, and a smaller winter temporary fandom battle, when small teams can be formed on different principles. There were 8 teams of the Harry Potter fandom this winter (Weasley, Snape, Lucius Malfoy, Dramione, Snager, Marauders, Death Eaters and Drarry) and I participated in the Drarry team. All the works at the battles are presented anonymously, Russian texts and translations together, and readers comment and vote. I had a lot of lovely comments under the translations, and I want to thank you one more time for your lovely work!

[birdsofshore]

Ah, thanks, I was hoping you might give us some more details on the battle! So how does voting work? Do the more popular pairings not get an unfair advantage?

We don't have an idiom like that which I can think of, no. I can only imagine the headaches that title would cause, but I liked your solution.

You're really most welcome. I was excited to think of my stories being transformed like that!

[catch-life.livejournal.com]

Well, you are right about the unfair advantage of popular pairings, and popular fandoms have an advantage as well, but the main problem of the voting is the presence of numerous virtual accounts, or bots. The organizers desperately try to eradicate them, but still in vain. But of course the voting is not the main thing for participants and readers. A lot of creative content is produced during these battles, so I truly love them.

[cabinetcaligari.livejournal.com]

That really sounds amazing! Thank you for explaining a bit of this battle here on LJ. It sounds like the HP fandom community is very alive in Russia, and I love the idea of giving points to outstanding translations. Translating is really another art in my opinion, especially with translating all the subtleties, or trying to catch the flow of the original stories and character of the original language.
I've read some Russian novels translated into English, like some work of Dostojevski, and although they were translated, the language pace and flow were so very different from everything else I've read until then. I think it's really hard but also really rewarding trying to translate it properly, with doing right to the original character of the language, but also catch ánd translate all the puns and expressions to the new language.
I cannot read Russian, so I will probably never know how you pulled it off, but I'm really excited to know there are running such fests. Good luck with collecting points for your team!

[catch-life.livejournal.com]

Oh, thank you so much for praising the translators! I agree with you completely. To be honest with you, I am not a "real" translator - I am a researcher and do something like translations from time to time just for the sheer fun and pleasure of the task. While entering and studying fandoms (the Russian Harry Potter fandom, in particular) I noticed how much effort fandom translators put into it, and how much they really do for the development of ideas across cultures. Russian Harry Potter fandom is pretty alive, I am glad to say that ;) And there are many translators there, working with English texts and with other languages as well, although not so actively, unfortunately, because not so many people know other languages apart from English.
Dostojevski is definitely a very difficult author to translate, but I would say that translating contemporary banter with all its undercurrents or translating smut into Russian (which just doesn't have enough words for it!) is a task of a comparable level of difficulty sometimes :) But it is fun, fun, fun!

[your-insomnia.livejournal.com]

but I would say that translating contemporary banter with all its undercurrents or translating smut into Russian (which just doesn't have enough words for it!) is a task of a comparable level of difficulty sometimes :)

Pardon my interjection but god, yes, this so much. That is one reason I cannot read Drarry in Russian anymore though I used to at some point...In fact, the Russian Drarry fandom was my gateway into English Drarry fandom. It all started with a fic called Драко Малфой и Тайная Комната (Draco Malfoy and the Chamber of Secrets) and it's a mega epic, instant cult classic story that spawned two incredible sequels which detail Harry & Draco's love affair from Hogwarts era into their late forties. I never read anything more epic and romantic in my life before or since and it's no surprise that it got me obsessed with Drarry. The Russian fandom in general produces some amazing work. I sort of wish I could keep up with it still but there is so much to keep up with in the English fandom alone...And also like I mentioned, the smut just doesn't sound the same in Russian. Literally nothing can make me blush when I read Drarry smut In English but when I read the equivalent in Russian, I just want to hide my face in my hands from how red it turns. Maybe that has to do with something personal and how I was brought up (my Russian family is very conservative and polite) or maybe it's the quality of the Russian language itself, I'm not sure.

[catch-life.livejournal.com]

Well - fandoms are huge nowadays, the Russian fandom is not so big as the English one, but still it is big enough. And a lot of amazing texts are produced, not in Drarry category only, but in many others as well (in gen, for example). So if you read Russian you always can switch between both :)
As for the smut - a lot of important work with the language has been done during the last years, so maybe it is not so uncomfortable anymore. Thanks to amazing fandom writers. So I hope one day you'll check :)

[birdsofshore]

How frustrating about the bots! But the battles sound like a really exciting focal point for Russian fandom. Thank you for answering all of our questions!

[catch-life.livejournal.com]

Dear birdsofshore, I am collecting my strength, and, what is even more important, my resources of free time for the translation of Unguarded. I hope to do it this summer, during my holidays. So, first of all, I hope you don't mind that I am your "official Russian translator" now ))) And second, please don't give a permission to other translators if they ask - I will do it. This is just in case! A lot of fics are being translated from English into Russian, and sometimes people just don't know about each other's works. But I always ask the writer first, I think it is the right way to begin with a translation.
And, of course, I am desperately waiting for the next part of the story!

[catch-life.livejournal.com]

Dear birdsofshore, two more (nice) updates.
1. I have already started the translation, it is so much fun. I have a couple of questions, so if you don't mind, I will collect them and ask you at the stage of editing the whole text. It is just a couple of sentences where I am not really sure about the meaning.
2. There will be new art for this story! I've found an amazing artist who loves Albus. So, after the translation she promised me to do something.
My best,
ns17 (Natalia)

[birdsofshore]

Hi Natalia, sorry I didn't reply to your other update - I'm happy to hear you are working on Unguarded. Please do ask me any questions at all - you can save them up or pm me as you go along, I don't mind which.

That is exciting about the art - do you have a link where I could see some of the artist's previous work? I'm just curious!

Thanks for letting me know your plans.

[catch-life.livejournal.com]

The artist is actually one of the best Russian HP fandom artists, here is her gallery:
http://anastasiamantihora.deviantart.com/gallery/
She is not sure at the moment if it will be a digital art or a collage. But anyway, I am sure it will be great.
Only it has to remain anonymous till this autumn, because we are playing for the Harry Potter team again, in the summer fandom battle ))) But I will send you the art when it is ready.

[birdsofshore]

OH MY GOD! I know her work very well from DeviantArt! She's one of my favourite artists! Oh, help, I can't believe this. I'm kind of lost for words. So, you're saying I shouldn't really tell anyone about it? I'm SOOOOOOOO excited. Please, please do send me the art (and please pass on from me that I am SUPER THRILLED!)

[catch-life.livejournal.com]

I am glad to hear that you know her ;) Yes, she is brilliant, I also think so! I'll send her your lovely comment, for sure.
But please remain quiet, these are the rules of the game. Of course, her style is absolutely recognizable, but still the rules require not to admit the authorship openly :)

[birdsofshore]

I understand! It will be hard keeping quiet, I'm so excited, but I'll iron my ears or something to make sure I don't blurt it out on my journal :DD

[catch-life.livejournal.com]

Please don't iron your hands, you will need them to continue writing the story!
:)
Can I ask you for your e-mail, to send the questions (and the pictures) when they are ready?
Mine is nsamutina on gmail