Thread: Missing parts in English translation of Pushkin's "The daughter of the commandant"

Originally Posted by Inego

This fragment was not missing, I just disliked the translation. This is the key phrase of the whole novel and its rhythm in Russian is very powerful.

Не приведи бог видеть русский бунт, бессмысленный и беспощадный!

May God grant we never see again so senseless and pitiless a revolt.

I am quite sure the definite article must be used here, because Pushkin wrote about the Russian revolt in general, as a whole. Besides, "русский" was not translated.
So my suggestion is this: Heaven save us from witnessing the Russian revolt, senseless and merciless!

God forbid we see a Russian revolt, so senseless and merciless!

The thing is, the revolt already occurred so he must be talking about the chance of another one, in which case the definite article would not be appropriate. I didn't use the word "another" because I think it's clear that we're talking about the concept of another Russian revolt or Russian revolts in general.

Originally Posted by sperk

God forbid we see a Russian revolt, so senseless and merciless!
The thing is, the revolt already occurred so he must be talking about the chance of another one, in which case the definite article would not be appropriate. I didn't use the word "another" because I think it's clear that we're talking about the concept of another Russian revolt or Russian revolts in general.

Googling "God forbid Russian senseless and merciless" returned many results (none of them being a quote from a complete translation, though) and they all had the indefinite article indeed. Thanks for the explanation.