Talk:The Song of the Stormy Petrel

Translator's note
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Translator's note: I took 2 1/2 years the Russian as an undergrad, and read Gorki in translation while in High School. The first work of native, unadulterated Russian I ever read was The Song of the Stormy Petrel. For no real reason, I decided to read it again, and ... wrote the wikipedia article. Thus the translation is GFDL. Despite its revolutionary nature, I am vehemently anti-communist. Deal with it.

One translation I read on the 'Net used the word sable where Gorki used the common Russian adjective черный meaning black. To me, weird. I did not like this, as if the translator was trying to sound overly "poetic."

Any resemblance to other translations is accidental &mdash; I alone am responsible for this translation, for any good language, and for the bad. Doubtless others will improve on me. My Russian is at best imperfect.

And the translation is not perfect; as the Russian original makes clear. I tried to preserve the original meanings (and a little of the poetry) as much as possible without saying anything too awful. Much of the original poetry is unavoidably lost.

dino talk

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Burevestnik in Dal's Dictionary
In regard to the debate as to what Gorky exactly meant by burevestnik (conventionally translated by "storm petrel"), a quotation from Dal's Dictionary, Russia's favorite dictionary in Maxim Gorky's time, would not be amiss. Dal would give the following definition of burevestnik (as part of the article Burya ["storm"]):


 * Бурныя птицы, буревестники, близкие чайкам, Procellariae; держатся в открытом море. Альбатрос, тогак, капский баран, Diomeda exulans, самая большая водяная птица. Буревестник большой, Procell. gigantea, черноватый, с гуся (тропический) Б. Северный, Р. glacialis, меньше утки. Качурка, P. pelagica, мал, серо-бурый.

That is,


 * The birds of storm, burevestniks, similar to seagulls, Procellariae; they stay over the open ocean. Albatross, togak, Cape ram, Diomeda exulans, the [world's] largest aquatic bird. The greater burevestnik, Procellaria gigantea, backish, size of a goose (tropical) . The northern burevestnik, P. glacialis, smaller than a duck. Kachurkas, P. pelagica, small[er?], grayish-brown.

As we can see from the above, an educated Russian reader of Gorky's time (one with all 4 volumes of Dal's dictionary on his bookshelf) would understand burevestnik as an oceanic "bird of storm". The word was used as a generic term for multiple species (family Procellariidae), and the dictionary would illustrate it with such examples (presumably, better-known species) as
 * Diomedea exulans = Wandering Albatross
 * Procellaria gigantea = Macronectes giganteus = Southern Giant Petrel
 * Procellaria glacialis = Fulmarus glacialis = Northern Fulmar
 * Procellaria pelagica = European Storm Petrel (more specifically known as kachurka in Russian)

-- Vmenkov (talk) 17:42, 27 October 2013 (UTC)

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