Thread: Short translation needed

Hi all,

Someone wrote me the following text, can anybody translate it? Thanks in advance!

А завтра ведь может и не случиться И сердца шепот оборвется Так и не сказав люблю

It's a poetry of sorts. Difficult to translate exactly but...

А завтра ведь может и не случиться
И сердца шепот оборвется
Так и не сказав люблю


What if tomorrow won't ever come
Then heart's whisper will be gone
Before it says "I love ..."

Hope it makes sense.

P.S. I think the translation ought to be OK now. No further edits from me, but you really-really DO want a second opinion on this.

Oopsie, no "you" in the original and without punctuation in the original , the ellipsis is a guess.

Seems indeed quite poetic... Thanks for the translation! And if anybody wants to give a second opinion, that would be most welcome!

Originally Posted by Yevgeni20

Seems indeed quite poetic... Thanks for the translation! And if anybody wants to give a second opinion, that would be most welcome!

Well, my "second opinion" is only that the English translation seems much more poetic than the original.

if tomorrow doesn't ever come

Originally Posted by Оля

Originally Posted by Yevgeni20

Seems indeed quite poetic... Thanks for the translation! And if anybody wants to give a second opinion, that would be most welcome!

Well, my "second opinion" is only that the English translation seems much more poetic than the original.

if tomorrow doesn't ever come

Nah, my translation is a doggerel too. Rhymes are abysmal, meter is broken, you name it.

But the original's author, whoever s/he was, had a good idea or two, if not very good grasp of the rules of Russian poetry. Just don't tell them I said that, ok? (EDIT: I mean, ones who write such a poetry are usually easy to offend, not that I'm an authority of any kind.)

As for that "won't" business... The closest translation "But tomorrow might never come/happen" doesn't sound right somehow.

Second most accurate translation would be "If tomorrow were to never happen"("were never to happen") (and yes, I had to look this particular tense (T/A/M if you insist) up. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Subjunctiv ... ubjunctive ) but it isn't easily parseable, and neither is the other variant, "If tomorrow should never happen" and inversion is too much associated with questions.

So... I made it up. I know, you aren't supposed to do that with English tenses, but it was late and I hoped that, were it to be inappropriate, someone would correct me...

ac220
What about "What if tomorrow never comes/happens"?
(not arguing, just checking my grammar)

Originally Posted by E-learner

ac220
What about "What if tomorrow never comes/happens"?
(not arguing, just checking my grammar)

Sounds OK to me, but I'm not really a native speaker. (except in reality, as opposed to poetry. tomorrow always comes, not just happens. )

The problem here is the unusual phrasing of the original, not the grammar per se. It's easy to translate the gist of it, any of the variants above would do it. It's not that easy to translate the sentiment...

"А что если завтра не наступит" is the way you would normally say it in Russian, but the author didn't do that. "А", "ведь", "может". "случиться" вместо "наступит" all give it a sense of certain... precariousness... As if the slightest action or inaction may tip the balance. I`m not sure how to translate all that, that`s why I asked about second opinions.

Hope I don't make too much fool of myself by over-analyzing the poem in question. Actually I was very moved by it, inexact rhymes and all.

Maybe it was a conscious choice of the author to add such ambiguity to the poem!

I'll try to find who wrote it and ask him/her what he/she actually meant!

Originally Posted by Yevgeni20

I'll try to find who wrote it and ask him/her what he/she actually meant!

Don't. Or else tomorrow indeed will never come. Besides, they probably don't know it exactly anyway.

I wrote all that to explain why I translated it that way. Basically, to do the same thing as the author did, - to avoid the "normal" way of expressing conditionality. (no "*oulds", no "were"s) and to avoid present tense. I'm not some kind of superbeing that can explain the meaning of poetry in prose.