Stranger in a Strange Tongue

[marycrawford]

In a desperate attempt to find some new Iolaus-centric fiction to read, I'm now struggling through the stories at New Myths of Ancient Greece and the Iolausian Corner.

I say 'struggling' not because the stories aren't any good but because my Russian isn't. The transliterations alone take some getting used to: Iphicles is Ifikl, Iolaus is Iolai, Hercules is Gerakl and so on. But then all Western names tend to look bizarre in the cyrillic alphabet.


I've found some good original stories, as well as excellent translations of some of the best English-language Hercules stories.
Most of the original stuff at the Iolausian Corner is in the Notes on the Cuff section: short, often funny stories. I like Katya's snippets; she does a very good voice-of-Iolaus. In one of them, Iolaus wakes up after yet another brawl and tries woozily to make logical deductions about where he is, what happened, how many of his limbs are still working, and how he can explain to Hercules in time that he needs to go pee. It sounds like a heavy hurt-comfort piece, but is actually very funny.

"You need to drink this," the son of Zeus said sternly. "It's medicine. It'll help to fight the fever and ease pain. Come on, brother. Just a sip. That's right...well done...now another sip for Iphy, and one for mother, and one for Jason, and one for Xena..."
Oy. The one for Xena was clearly one too many.

Pfft, translating even that one paragraph is quite a challenge for me. For instance, Herc calls Iolaus 'radi menya' which is literally 'my joy' rather than 'brother'. While it sounds strange, it's the sort of endearment that would probably come naturally to Motherhen!Hercules, especially a Russian version of same - I've noticed before that Russians use more endearments than Americans do. And I don't have a clue how to translate it properly.

To leap onto another horse entirely, this is one of the many things I love about the Aubrey/Maturin novels, the way these two men address each other:

'I am very deeply obliged to you, Jack, my dear,' said Stephen.

'There is no such thing as obligation between you and me, brother,' said Jack.

Aww. I do wish men would talk like that in this day and age. And before someone reads this and thinks that Patrick O'Brian wrote romance novels, here's another irresistible quote that I trust and hope will convince that person to buy the whole series immediately:

'But how in God's name do you expect to keep bees on a man-of-war?' cried Jack. 'Where in God's name do you expect them to find flowers, at sea? How will they eat?'

'You can see their every motion,' said Stephen, close against the glass, entranced. 'Oh, as for their feeding, never fret your anxious mind; they will feed with us upon a saucer of sugar, at stated intervals. If the ingenious Monsieur Huber can keep bees, and he blind, the poor man, surely we can manage in a great spacious xebec?'

'This is a frigate.'

'Let us never split hairs, for all the love.'

Comments

[halimede.livejournal.com]

Uhm, hello? You speak Russian? ::passes out from sheer admiration::

[marycrawford.livejournal.com]

::fans Halimede frantically::

Nonono! I don't speak Russian. Well, at gunpoint.
I can read Russian, but with the aid of a big dictionary.

Mary, who apparently has a complex about this sort of thing

[halimede.livejournal.com]

::toasts big dictionaries, but not the guns so much::

And I'm still muy, muy impressed, yo. :) (And no, I don't speak Spanish or Portuguese or any of those languages, I'm just faking it.)