Theoretically, a human being with dignity & self-respect.

So, I've been struggling with some existential despair-like feelings in recent days, and instead of telling you about THAT, I am going to tell you all about Words I Wish Existed In English! (Part I - I'm sure I'll come up with more, tbh)

So, in my translation project, I often myself feeling frustrated that I have to find an approximation of what is being said, which, you know - makes sense! Languages are very much NOT one-to-one, in any way, and so while some words exist across a lot of languages, some seem specific to either a group of languages or even one language, maybe - idk, I'm neither a polyglot nor a linguist, but that's sort of the sense I've gotten.
( WORDS )

ANYWAY. That is it for now, thank you for coming to my Ted Talk! Sorry this is basically what's taking up a large percentage of my brain that isn't busy setting itself on fire with anxiety! So this is where I shall stay for now. I will probably be back.

Okay, so...hello! I am writing a dreamwidth entry. In the year our lord 2026! Because I am tired of not being able to lock stuff down, and therefore not talking about anything at all, basically, and also most other social media sucks balls now. 

anyway, my first entry is going to be about my new passion project, which I started on April 2nd, and which has taken over my entire brain. That project is translating a series of books I have loved since I was a kid, that were never translated into English. I tried to do this in college, but I gave up on the very first page—I remember this vividly—because I had no idea how to translate "kolkhoz" and the internet wasn't what it is now, for better or for worse. (Worse, now, of course, but with more resources!) (Kolkhoz, btw, is a collective farm. It sounds stupid in English, but is SUCH a familiar and normal word in Russian.)

Anyway, WHAT, exactly, are these books?

They were written by a remarkable woman named Frida Vigdorova, who started her career as a teacher, then promptly switched to journalism, and then also wrote six books, all before dying of cancer in 1965, at the age of 50. FIFTY. I will never get over this. I'm about to turn 44. That's fucking crazy, man.

Anyway, she is actually most well-known for secretly (and sometimes, openly) recording the trial of Joseph Brodsky, a Soviet-era poet who was tried for "parasitism" and all sorts of Soviet censorial nonsense. The NYT even has an archival excerpt, which names Vigdorova! Very fucking cool.

Anyway, it was because she recorded the trial and sent it off to the West to be published by ex-pats, that it gained momentum, and the USSR was forced to simply exile this man, instead of throw him in the gulag, due to public pressure. So this is the sort of woman Frida Vigdorova was. Completely fearless. An honest to God hero of mine. (If you want to get a better idea of what she was like, this is a really lovely write-up from someone who used to know her, translated into English. She name-drops a TON of famous and important Soviet writers, and it's just very interesting to me that most of them are household names, but not Vigdorova, not really.)

ANYWAY. So! These books. There are five of them - a trilogy, and a duology. 

The trilogy is the one I read first, at the age of...I want to say...nine. But they're not exactly kids' books. The Soviet Union didn't coddle kids (as you can imagine) and expected them to read at very high levels, very early on, but if I had to guess the intended audience for the trilogy, I'd say...tweens and early adolescents? I think. Probably.

So what are they about?

They're a fictionalized account of a man named Semyon Karabanov, who was an actual person (real last name Kalabalin; look him up, he was a hottie). Anyway, why him. WELL. His (fictionalized) name first became famous after Anton Makarenko published his famous work on raising "besprezorniki" - homeless kids who've gone astray. There were so many of them, after the Russian Civil War, and he was basically tasked with starting an orphanage and reforming as many boys as he could. Which he did, to great success, many times over, and then wrote a very famous book about it. One of the "characters" introduced in that book was Semyon. And that's who Vigdorova met with, and wrote these books about. 

So, the trilogy is all about how this man continued the same work his teacher began, which he really did do until his death in 1972 (his wife lived until 1999, which is so weird to me! I was 17 at that point! How is that possible! Anyway). It's highly fictionalized, but OH BOY, is it COMPELLING. These books have some of my favorite characters ever (including my very first literary crush, which, upon rereading, is only more compounded) and when I reread them on a whim last year, I realized JUST how important these books were to me. It felt like these were the books that truly made me who I am, for many reasons, in many different ways. 

So, after I first read the trilogy, and couldn't stop talking about it, my mom informed me that there was a duology, as well, which she thought I was a bit too young for, and while it's mostly unrelated, there ARE two characters who show up in the second of those books that I would be happy about. And then she didn't let me read them until I was 11. I remember the day I read the first one - we had a snow day (first in my life; we never got snow days in Russia, for obvious reasons), and I spent the entire day completely absorbed by the first book. Then we had another snow day, and I read the second book, and the THRILL of finding out that my VERY FAVORITE LITERARY CHARACTER, MY WONDERFUL CRUSH, now appeared in it AS AN ADULT....you cannot imagine the joy. Truly. Mind-boggling to 11-year old me. (And, tbh, 44 year old me, as well.)

Anyway, that is my project - two book series, translated into English. Why am I doing this? Mostly, I want T to read them, tbh. I want to share with my friends. I want to be like, look, my heart! And have the ability to share them with people.  

And it's been a FASCINATING experience, translating them. I am obviously not a professional translator, and I'm probably doing a terrible job. But I AM a writer, and I DO have very good command of both languages. And I have a drive I never had before. T has begun to read along, as have a couple other people, and it's been such a joy for me. It's ALL I want to do. 

And it's making me appreciate Russian as a language more than ever. It's been kind of fascinating, as an experience. I've had thoughts before of "I wish English had this word or this word" (or, alternately, I wish Russian this word or this word), but I've never really sat with it in the same way. 

For instance, Semyon keeps referring to the kids of the orphanage (who are all boys in the first book): and he refers to them with all sorts of words: ребята, мальчики, мальчишки, мальчуганы, пацаны...but in English, that either be "guys" or "boys" - no other variation, really, AND, T and I had a very spirited discussion about whether or not I can really have him say "the guys did blah blah" or whatever, and she was insistent that it simply sounded too weird in English, and so I'm having to limit myself to..."boys." Which feels stifling and sad!! Because there's so much LIFE in those other words, and they fit different contexts and scenarios.

There also isn't really a word for what he and the other people working there DO, not really. There's a very common Russian word: "воспитатель", which comes from the word "воспитать" which essentially means to teach a person how to be a person. Kind of. But the best word I could use for it in my translation is "teacher" from "to teach." But it's not the same thing, and it's not the same job. The word "воспитатель" means someone who is raising kids, rearing kids, but not a parent. That's what they called the people who worked at kindergartens, for instance - they weren't teachers, because they weren't teaching anything, they were just...rearing, I guess, when the kids were with them. 

Those are just two of the MYRIAD examples of how limiting translating can be, because there's also the varied sentence structure of Russian that can create so MANY wonderful and hilarious and poignant moments that I'm having to completely rethink, because English sentence structure is very, very different. It's, well. Structured. I don't know if you guys have ever seen that graphic going around tumblr about how you can say the same thing differently in various languages, and there's very straight-forward arrows for many of the languages, until you get to Russian, and the arrows go all over the place because you can basically do whatever the hell you want in Russian, it will change the meaning, but there are basically no rules for what goes where. It's incredibly freeing and a lot of fun to play around with.

Basically, what I am saying is...did you know Russian is a fucking incredible language?? I really have been taking it for granted that I know it (and still speak it, thank goodness, after 33 years of living Not In Russia), but it's so cool. So my current plan is to read more Russian classics that I've eschewed so far. I'm going to go back to rereading War & Peace, gonna read Anna Karenina, I've already reread The Master & Margarita...on and on. Very exciting. I haven't read Chekhov since I was 13-14, and I remember loving him. I've never read Gogol...a stain upon my conscience. 

So that's where I'm at! I will probably continue to add more thoughts on translations, because it's really been such a fun, fascinating experience. Also something I've noticed in translating: despite having read these books multiple times, I'm getting a whole new appreciation for many characters I barely noticed before. I'm having to sit with them all in depth, thinking about how best to say what they're saying, and it's SO fun and cool. 

Oh, and since April 2nd, I've translated nearly 60k words. Which is crazy. The trilogy altogether is roughly 700 pages, and I'm on page 125. WILD. I really thought this would take me ten years, but I'm going at quite the clip. Having people reading along is really helping with that - I am LOVING sharing it. 

OKAY. BYE FOR NOW. I WILL MOST LIKELY BE BACK.

Fic Masterlist: Bandom for now, will expand with time to encompass fandoms past.

( Fic behind the cut. )

holiday love meme 2012
my thread is here!

:D :D :D

Because I have ALL OF THIS FREE TIME:

1 - Your current OTP
2 - A pairing you initially didn’t consider but someone changed your mind - ( Answer! )

3 - A pairing you have never liked and probably never will
4 - A pairing you wish you liked but just can’t
5 - Have you added anything stupid/cracky/hilarious to your fandom, if so, what
6 - What’s the longest you’ve ever been in a fandom - ( Answer! )

7 - Do you remember your first OTP, if so who was in it ( Answer! )

8 - Do you prefer characters from real action series or anime series
9 - Has the internet caused you to stop liking any fandoms, if so, which and why ( Answer! )

10 - Name a fandom you didn’t care/think about until you saw it all over tumblr your social network sites
11 - How do you feel about the other people in your current fandom ( Answer! )

12 - Your favorite fanartist/author gives you one request, what do you ask for ( Answer! )

13 - Your favorite fanart or fanartist
14 - Your favorite fanfiction or fanauthor ( Answer! )

15 - Choose a song at random, which OTP does it remind you of ( Answer! )

16 - Invent a random AU for any fandom (we always need more ideas) ( Answer! )

17 - A ship you’ve abandoned and why
18 - A pairing you ship that you don’t think anyone else ships
19 - Show us an example of your personal headcanon
20 - Do you remember what your first fanwork was?
21 - Self-rec: What's your favorite fanwork you've created? ( Answer! )

22 - Are you one of those fans who can’t watch anything without shipping [Bad username or site: Answer! @ livejournal.com]

Pretty much yes! Even if it isn't hardcore shipping, I just love romance. I can't help it. I find people's relationships fascinating and I love people getting together and I just want certain characters to get together. So, maybe it is all hardcore shipping. /o\

23 - 5 favorite characters from 5 different fandoms ( Answer! )

24 - 3 OTPs from 3 different fandoms
25 - A fandom you’re in but have no ships from
26 - Ask me a different fannish question

LET'S PLAY. When I'm not busy killing things and stuff. :)))))

Title: Rock and a Hard Place
Fandom: Teen Wolf
Pairing: Stiles/Derek
Rating: NC-17
Warnings: Underage drunkenness (but over 18)
Summary: Stiles is forced to spend the night at Derek's. Oh, no, the horror. (8400 words; set sometime in the ~unspecified future, say, a year from S2's left off.)
Notes: AHAHAHA. Teen Wolf fic. That I wrote. Anyway.

With HUGE thanks to desfinado for being HUGELY encouraging and sweet, to spuzz for TAKING OVER MY LIFE looking over this and being really, really great, and, of course, to brooklinegirl, for listening to me bounce off the walls, beta-reading it while I mouth-breathed at her, and not divorcing me as a result. I love you all. ♥

On AO3

( SJDAJSDLAJ )

IS IT MONDAY YET

I NEED ICONS


p.s. Whenever I see/say the words "Teen Wolf" I hear them in spuzz's calm voice as she said it at the start and end of each episode. She would ROLL AROUND THE COUCH DURING THE EPISODE, but as soon as it was done, she'd very calmly say, "Teen Wolf." AND THUS IS HAPPENS IN MY HEAD FROM NOW ON.

Title: Waxing
Fandom/pairing: MCR, Frank/Gerard
Rating: R
Summary: Coda to Run: Ten years on, Frank and Gerard return home for Thanksgiving.
Notes: Happy Birthday to my wonderful darling shiningartifact! This is for you. ♥ With huge thanks to mistresscurvy for looking this over and cheerleading, and to brooklinegirl, as always, for cheerleading, beta-ing, and bullying me into it. ♥

On AO3.

Title: Variations on a Fugue
Author: mrsronweasley
Band(s): My Chemical Romance
Pairing(s): Frank/Gerard
Word Count: ~36,000
Rating: NC-17
Warning(s): None
Notes: Oh man. This was the second ever bandom fic I started, and did not finish for years. It lingered at the 3k words mark for years until I decided to finally finish it, because it had been in my brain for so goddamn long. PHEW. DONE. HOORAY. I CAN MOVE ON.

I have SO MANY thanks to give: to mistresscurvy, theopteryx, and shiningartifact for their INCREDIBLE support as I wrote them frantic emails and disjointed bits and was a crazy-eyed maniac at various points in time - a HUGE, HUGE thank you. I love you guys so much. Why do you even put up with me. ♥

To Bexless, for being the bestest Britpick beta, as well as support system, and amazing cheerleader. And ALSO the actual person to INSPIRE this in the first place, oh so many years ago. So, this one's kind of for you! A few years late. ILUSFM. ♥

And finally, to brooklinegirl for the most THOROUGH of betas, incredible support, and encouragement - without her, this wouldn't have happened, like, at all. Thank you, my darling lady. You are the best. ♥ (All the remaining mistakes are purely mine.)

Finally, a big huge THANK YOU to the mods for all their hard work! ♥

Summary:

Frank Iero is a young nobleman currently living with his parents in the Lake District, where he plans on leading a quiet life away from London and its temptations. However, temptation moves into his neighbourhood in the face of one Gerard Way. (Early Edwardian AU.)

On AO3 | On DW

Bonus Materials

Fanart:
Frank (non-spoilery) by theopteryx

Fanmix:
Mix by viviansface