Back from the Dogs

[Bowerthane]

Can anyone tell me anything about the scene, character or the like in the below?  Only I think I’ve given too much away about my taste in plays, films etc. here to just ask which one it comes from.

I’d be astonished if the grammar doesn’t have its faults, too:


“Lá  Mat, siþþan iċ  scolde híeran  endeléase  stunda  þé racum ofer ðéos  wucu, iċ þearf þé dón mé ést.  Ðú scealt séon lýtle mǽden mid brúnan hǽr 7 swá rúh, fele cnottum.  Héo ne brúce hit tō fadianne.  Ðæt is wel.  Héo hǽtt Sǽra.  Ġesecge þú híe, iċ bidde,  þæt Módor fand hiere réadan scóh?  Héo wæs swá cariġ ymb þǽm scóh, Mat.  Ac hé wæs rihte under bedde.  Ġief híe miċelne fǽþm 7 miċelne coss for mé 7 spelst híe þæt Módor seofeþ for híe.  Ðú spelst híe  þæt héo is mín  engel.  And  héo macaþ mé swá  módiġ.  Swá, swá  módiġ.  And ðú spelst híe þæt iċ ne ġield.  Ðú spell híe þæt iċ lufiġe híe, Mat.  Ðú spell híe þæt iċ lufiġe híe swá micele.  Dó  þú þæt for mé?  Gíemde þæt. Hér wé gáþ.”

[Linden]

Can anyone tell me anything about the scene, character or the like in the below?  Only I think I’ve given too much away about my taste in plays, films etc. here to just ask which one it comes from.

I’d be astonished if the grammar doesn’t have its faults, too:


“Lá  Mat, siþþan iċ  scolde híeran  endeléase  stunda  þé racum ofer ðéos  wucu, iċ þearf þé dón mé ést.  Ðú scealt séon lýtle mǽden mid brúnan hǽr and swá rúh, fele cnottum.  Héo ne brúce hit tō fadianne.  Ðæt is wel.  Héo hǽtt Sǽra.  Ġesecge þú híe, iċ bidde,  þæt Módor fand hiere réadan scóh?  Héo wæs swá cariġ ymb þǽm scóh, Mat.  Ac hé wæs rihte under bedde.  Ġief híe miċelne fǽþm 7 miċelne coss formé 7 spelst híe þæt Módor seofeþ be híe.  Ðú spelst híe  þæt héo is mín  engel.  And  héo macaþ mé swá  módiġ.  Swá, swá  módiġ.  And ðú spelst híe þæt iċ ne ġield.  Ðú spell híe þæt iċ lufiġe híe, Mat.  Ðú spell híe þæt iċ lufiġe híe swá micele.  Dó  þú þæt for mé?  Gíemde þæt. Hér wé gáþ.”

'Hefignes' (MMXIII)
Ryan Stone (Sandra Bullock) to Matt Kowalski (George Clooney)
 Hey, Mat? Since I had to listen to endless hours of your storytelling this week, I need you to do me a favour. You're gonna see a little girl with brown hair. Very messy, lots of knots. She doesn't like to brush it. But that's OK. Her name is Sara. Can you please tell her that mama found her red shoe? She was so worried about that shoe, Mat. But it was just right under the bed. Give her a big hug and a big kiss from me and tell her that mama misses her. Tell her that she is my angel. And she makes me so proud. So, so proud. And you tell her that I'm not quitting. You tell her that I love her, Mat. You tell her that I love her so much. Can you do that for me? Roger that. Here we go.

[David]

Bowerthane

I can assure you that you have not given away too much about your taste in films and plays. If you carry on posting at the rate you are doing I might get an inkling before I die of old age.

Are they spy stories? I say that because I’m sure I saw an excellent translation of it by Linden but it seems to have disappeared. Maybe she wrote it in invisible ink or some intelligence agency has deleted it.

It looks as though Linden suggests that it is called hefiġnes but I cannot believe there was ever a film made with that title. So translating that I thought of affliction, aggravation, burden, depression, oppression, solemnity, sorrow and torpor. None of these ring a bell either.

Finally I got it, as at the back of my mind I remembered there is a film called gravity, so they are a spaceman and a spacewoman.

[Bowerthane]

Dearie me this is a funny forum.  Folk are either too good or hopeless. 

All right, all right already you’ve rumbled me.  It’s Dr Ryan Stone’s/ Sandra Bullock’s little soliloquy in the Soyuz just after the crisis moment in Gravity, chapter seven, scene two.  Back from the dogs now her darkest dream has bubbled up something she’d clean forgotten about the soft-landing jets.  Or of course she really received an afterlife visitation in the form of mission commander Matt Kowalski/ George Clooney, to tip her off about the same:

Stone to Kowalzki ‘in the blind’: “Hey Matt, since I had to listen to endless hours of your storytelling this week, I need you to do me a favor.  You are gonna see a little girl with brown hair, very messy, lots of knots.  She doesn’t like to brush it.  That’s okay.  Her name is Sarah.  Can you please tell her that Mama found her red shoe?  She was so worried about that shoe, Matt.  But it was right under the bed.  Give her a big hug and a big kiss for me and tell her than Mama misses her.  You tell her that she is my angel.  And she makes me so proud.  So, so proud.  And you tell her that I’m not quitting.  You tell her that I love her, Matt.  You tell her that I love her so much.  Can you do that for me?  Roger that.  Here we go.”


I’m guessing you, Linden, found an online version of the script, since Sandra Bullock definitely doesn’t begin the fourth sentence with “But”.  I took my version down from the English-language subtitles on my DVD, checked against what Sandra Bullock actually says using the “English for the hard of hearing” function.  Only I amended ‘mama’ to ‘Mama’/ Módor because the character is using it as a proper noun, as well as took the second T out of ‘Matt’ as this would be needless, and even misleading, to an Old English reader.

But what about the grammar, eh?  Nor am I sure if my choice of words is as good as may be.  I simply couldn’t flush out any alternative to fadian, ‘arrange’ for ‘brush (hair)’ specifically.  So far as I can tell, the Old English simply didn’t have hairbrushes and camb existed as a noun but not, then, as a verb.  It occurred to me to render it Héo nis nán cambes fréond but I felt that was dragging the anchor too far from the source version.  Though now I wonder if one could put Héo ne brúce hit tō windanne, “She doesn’t like to plait it” and call it a cultural translation.

The other bitch was “Mama misses her” since ‘missing’ in the sense intended, of an emotional hankering, seems to be a relatively modern idiom.  As a verb missan seems to be rare in Old English and comes no nearer to that modern shade of meaning than ‘overlook’, otherwise it’s ‘fail to hit’.  Arguably a verb ‘to hanker ( for)’ or the like would have done, but I could nohow find such a thing.  Seofan means ‘to sigh, lament’ but I’m surprised nobody picked me up about using be as an instrumental particle.  I’d run out of patience when I plumped for that and I’m now sure that for better compasses the sense and sentiment of the source version: “Mother sighs/ laments for her/ on her account.”  Maybe a tad woollier to us but not, I think, to the Old English.

On the other hand, the way “I’m not quitting” came out as iċ ne ġield does better justice, if anything, to the all-or-nothing sentiment of the scene since it is terser; salt on the eggs of the understated passion of the whole soliloquy.  Sandra Bullock puts a less-is-more tenor into her delivery, outwardly more businesslike and yet deepening the emotional charge as Stone steels herself towards the end, where the backing music insinuates some pitch.  Which is why I switched from the indicative Ðú spelst to the imperative Ðú spell.


Which is what tempts me to waste time on this nonsense!  Yet it also exemplifies what I have developed the habit of calling “the wet and dry approach” that makes translating so interesting.  Meaning the need, first, to get as straight as you can all the dry scholarly and syntactical questions, but always with an eye on the other half of the problem: of doing justice to the sense and sentiment of the source text.  Which is why Gravity or Sucker Punch are just gasping to be exploited for translation practise, because they work so well on both the grey-matter and gut level.

For those who don’t know, the case for Eduardo and Jonás Cuarón having made a modern classic lies in the profoundly clever way the evolutionary symbolism, explicit in the closing scenes, works in reverse for the whole film.  The palaeontologist Stephen J. Gould is on record somewhere as pointing out that, if one reels back the film of evolution, one soon finds any number of junctures where life may well have developed along who-knows-what different tangents, if indeed life survived at all.  The KT-Boundary Event is only Earth’s best known mass extinction.  There was at least one other for which a meteorite strike is the suspect cause, back in the Silurian Era if memory serves; so we’ve had two fires in our International Space Station.  Then Horsa and I, only the other week, were wondering “What happened to the hairy guy?” on the Orcs and Elves in our DNA? thread, wondering whether woodwoses, elves and the like could be an epigenetic after-image of the Neanderthals or Homo erectus or, as Horsa pointed out, the Denisovans.  Because we Homo sapiens nearly went extinct with them.  I’m under the impression that any troop of chimpanzees is genetically more diverse than the whole human race, a relative lack of diversity that can only be explained by a prehistoric “evolutionary bottleneck”, maybe caused by climate change, that reduced us to about 2,000 individuals. 
   So you can’t call Ryan Stone’s astronaut’s Day from Hell, or her survival of it, a jot more far-fetched than evolutionary history and our own survival, here to look back upon it.  I’ve noticed that other admirers of the film are going to some lengths to find metaphors; that, say, radioing to “Houston in the blind” symbolises prayer and that the religious imagery conveys some “inner meaning or ‘message’” but I think they’re being too fussy.  I much prefer the prehistory “true or feigned, with its varied applicability to the thought and experience of the” viewer, because Professor Tolkien was quite right to say “that many confuse ‘applicability’ with ‘allegory’; but one resides in the freedom of the” viewer, “and the other in the purposed domination of the” screenwriters.  It only recapitulates what Stephen J, Gould meant that evolution could have gone any which way, and that we made it alive is miracle enough.

Anyhow they’re overlooking Ryan Stone’s role, which is what spacewalks viewers through to the wet end, for her back-story supplies the human interest that stops Gravity being a mere allegory of evolution.  I mean, if you’re Ryan Stone and you know you never knew scit about using the Russian podule’s soft-landing jets for propulsion, then you stand in the position of a recipient of privileged information.  There is an afterlife!  With personal jam on it, since you have not after all lost Sarah; and who would be first to insist on Matt Kowalski popping back to tip Mama off about the soft-landing jets, if not her only child?  Which is how that line “tell her that she is my angel”/ spelst  híe þæt héo is mín engel comes to be such an inspired bit of scriptwriting by Cuarón and son.  It supplies the paradoxical twist by which, knowing now that burning up on re-entry is not the worst thing that can happen ( it would simply mean Stone’s early re-union with Sarah) they re-invented what ought to be a corny climax into a classy way to beat viewers to death with, as I say, the wet end.

Any Old English scop would back me up on this.

Ne má ac drífan.  Lǽtað ús háme.

---oo0oo---

[Linden]

Dearie me this is a funny forum.  Folk are either too good or hopeless. 

pott nemneþ cetel blæc!

I’m guessing you, Linden, found an online version of the script, since Sandra Bullock definitely doesn’t begin the fourth sentence with “But”.  I took my version down from the English-language subtitles on my DVD, checked against what Sandra Bullock actually says using the “English for the hard of hearing” function.  Only I amended ‘mama’ to ‘Mama’/ Módor because the character is using it as a proper noun, as well as took the second T out of ‘Matt’ as this would be needless, and even misleading, to an Old English reader.

Well of course I did -thought that was the idea!

............So far as I can tell, the Old English simply didn’t have hairbrushes and camb existed as a noun but not, then, as a verb.

What about cemban, cæmban, ge-cemban - to comb
and raggig - shaggy, bristly, ragged as applied to the rough coat of a horse
or  rúh - rough, knotty, undressed?

The other bitch was “Mama misses her” since ‘missing’ in the sense intended, of an emotional hankering, seems to be a relatively modern idiom.  As a verb missan seems to be rare in Old English and comes no nearer to that modern shade of meaning than ‘overlook’, otherwise it’s ‘fail to hit’.  Arguably a verb ‘to hanker ( for)’ or the like would have done, but I could nohow find such a thing.  Seofan means ‘to sigh, lament’ but I’m surprised nobody picked me up about using be as an instrumental particle.  I’d run out of patience when I plumped for that and I’m now sure that for better compasses the sense and sentiment of the source version: “Mother sighs/ laments for her/ on her account.”  Maybe a tad woollier to us but not, I think, to the Old English.

Loads of options here - so here are just a few
miss (noun) - loss (Mycel is me unbliss mínra dyrlinga miss, Hml. S. 23, 271. )
for-þolian - go without, miss, lack (+ dative)
þolian - to suffer lack or loss of something (gen.), to lose what one has, to fail to get what one desires; in many cases the loss or failure is the result of wrong either done or suffered by the subject of the verb, to forfeit, be (wrongfully) deprived of
cwanian - to bewail, deplore, lament, mourn
geomrian - to be sad, to sigh, groan, murmur, mourn, sorrow, lament, bewail
.............................
At this stage I give up.  Except to say that my approach is virtually the opposite of yours I think - first I look for "les mots justes" that 'feel right' and then I do my best with the grammar/syntax.

As for what exactly the old English scop is backing you on- I'm not at all clear on that so I'll take your word for it

[Bowerthane]

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Well of course I did -thought that was the idea!
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Well since there’s no emoticon for choking on one’s coffee, I propose a    Two Minutes’ Silence for the idea that you-just-put-something-into-Google.  Just like any spotty mingepiece who knows how to press buttons but FA else can do.  No wonder I thought you were using my email back in April for the Sucker Punch translation.     

Clearly I’m going to have to upload some original material to give those who enjoy an intellectual challenge -allenge -lenge -enge a sporting chance, around here...


Trusting, however, that you came up with cemban ( I’ve found the preterite under ce-), cæmban, ġe-cemban and forþolian by your own sagacity and not by some online quick-fix ( some super Old English e-thesaurus you can’t be bothered to tell the rest of us about?)    Linden, I propose an upgraded version of Stone’s soliloquy as follows:   

“Lá Mat, siþþan iċ scolde híeran endeléase stunda þé racum ofer ðéos wucu, iċ þearf þé dón mé ést.  Ðú scealt séon lýtle mǽden mid brúnan hǽr and swá rúh, fele cnottum.  Héo ne brúce hit tō cembianne.  Ðæt is wel.  Héo hǽtt Sǽra.  Ġesecge þú híe, iċ bidde, þæt Módor fand hiere réadan scóh?  Héo wæs swá cariġ ymb þǽm scóh, Mat.  Ac hé wæs rihte under bedde.  Ġief híe miċelne fǽþm 7 miċelne coss for mé 7 spelst híe þæt Módor forþoliaþ híe.  Ðú spelst híe þæt héo is mín engel.  And héo macaþ mé swá módiġ.  Swá, swá módiġ.  And ðú spelst híe þæt iċ ne ġield.  Ðú spell híe þæt iċ lufiġe híe, Mat.  Ðú spell híe þæt iċ lufiġe híe swá micele.  Dó þú þæt for mé?  Gíemde þæt.  Hér wé gáþ.”


You’ll notice that I’ve got rúh for ‘messy’ in the first clause of the second sentence.  I’m intrigued to see that miss could be used to hit the modern sense, but it still looks like an exception to me and, anyhow, a noun.  I try to keep parts of speech the same unless history and/ or syntax is against me ( and then risk anything that looks unusual, non-standard of otherwise iffy only as a last resort).

 
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Well of course I did -thought that was the idea!
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I still can’t believe you said that.  Where’s the sportsmanship in Just Putting Something Into Google?

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The moral right of the author to be identified as a registered user of milk has been asserted.

[David]

Bowerthane – when spoke about your problem  translating brushing I went to my dictionary and the best I found was swāpan which I was not happy with.

I knew the old English for comb was camb so I tried camban and cambian but they were not there. With i-mutation in mind I did try cemban and cembian and actually missed cemban, which was there. After Linden gave that I checked and found it that time.

After Linden gave you cemban I wonder why you chose to use tō cembianne which does not seem right to me. I think that cemban is better.

[Linden]

Well since there’s no emoticon for choking on one’s coffee, I propose a  Two Minutes’ Silence for the idea that you-just-put-something-into-Google.  Just like any spotty mingepiece who knows how to press buttons but FA else can do.  No wonder I thought you were using my email back in April for the Sucker Punch translation. 

Given that I don't watch films how else was I going to identify the film? I have no idea what you are referring to about an email - like this last time, I just translated enough to put into Google.  I used the stuff from Google because I did not wish to embarrass either myself or you in using my translation of your OE.

Clearly I’m going to have to upload some original material to give those who enjoy an intellectual challenge -allenge -lenge -enge a sporting chance, around here

Don't worry - I won't ever bother again - I was trying to be helpful.

Trusting, however, that you came up with cemban ( I’ve found the preterite under ce-), cæmban, ġe-cemban and forþolian by your own sagacity and not by some online quick-fix ( some super Old English e-thesaurus you can’t be bothered to tell the rest of us about?)  Linden, ...........................................................

I would have thought it was obvious that such a word existed from the Modern English derivative 'unkempt'.

[Bowerthane]

There’s other emoticons, Linden – shake down!  I thought I had my tongue in my cheek.  I see what you mean now ( though don’t you watch any films?) but you came across as if you’d just been putting stuff into Google, which is a weeny bit dismaying when you’ve slaved over a hot grammar-and-that and thought other Old English users might enjoy a good guess.

Please wear this as a kiss-and-make-up-quick   hat because I also innocently think it’s obvious that your contributions to this kind of thing are valuable, interesting and commonly more proficient than mine.  That and that some half-serious theatricals might reinvigorate interest in these forums, which are also a bit dismaying now that I’ve got my finger out and rejoined Ðā Engliscan Ġesīþas at long last.

I must have got you mixed up with David Jones or some other office-holder about the e-mail.  If you don’t know about my Zack Snyder-version of the Battle of Hastings you might like to ask David, or any other office-holders he may have shown it to, and they will tell you all about how my sense of humour gets out of hand. ( I’ve still got it, he said hinting, to upload on the general forum if you think it’d make a lot of ġesīþas laugh.)

Ooh, if I had my way we’d all be sat round, translating some old Bob Dylan lyrics about love, peace and togetherness...


Andswaru mé fréond blǽwþ in winde...


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tō cembianne... does not seem right to me. I think that cemban is better
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My waters are telling me you’re right, David.  Héo ne brúce hit cemban certainly wouldn’t hurt, would it?  Now that I – try to! – remind myself what I thought I was doing, I think it was what my Sweet’s Anglo-Saxon Primer says about using the “inflected infinitive preceded by tó” to “express purpose”, “complement the sense of some verbs” ( none of them brúcen), “define or determine the reference of an adjective” ( irrelevant here) or “express necessity or fitness” using is éac tó witenne ‘it must also be known’ as the example.  Maybe it was late at night and I let the meaning meddle with the grammar.  Also my Old English Grammar by Joseph and Elizabeth Wright gives no guidance about infinitives at all, which I do remember as both surprising and annoying.  Trouble is I’d already combed ( pun-pun-pun) my textbooks and exemplars of Old English for improvements on fadian before Linden offered cemban etc. so I knew I couldn’t get a bum-steer from what the Old English actually did with cemban ( or if you’re like me the penny may only drop properly when you see something used in context).  But rather than me rattle on I wish other ġesīþas would say yeah or nay and give reasons.  Was hair-care something the Old English would make a grammatical point of expressing fitness about, or was I half asleep?

Also, if I’ve loved Linden better now, he or she might like to say which preposition or instrumental particle forþolian should take.  I found it in my Sweet’s dictionary with a little wi after it and þolian ( which does not seem to be a phrasal verb) has a paradigm in my Old English Grammar but that leaves me guessing whether Módor forþoliaþ híe should be Módor  forþoliaþ be híe or... what?


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The moral right of the author to be identified as a drama queen has been asserted.
 

[Linden]

There’s other emoticons, Linden – shake down!  .....................................

It's no wonder that I have trouble with your OE when I have such trouble understanding your communications in Modern English. 
For example - "Shake down!" I am told but what does it mean?  Are you still not being very nice - I honestly have no idea although I strongly suspect that you are not and that you are disguising your not-niceness in deliberately obscure (to me at least) language. 

To me a shake down is a robbery or other act of depriving someone of something against their will or it is a form of testing where one expects a few teething troubles.  Neither of those seemed to be appropriate so I looked it up - yes I really did - I 'Google-d' it!   The only meaning it appears to have apart from the above is to become accustomed to something new; so is that what you are saying - do you really mean 'get used to it'? - or have I missed a meaning that might be acceptable?

You are a member of the society and as such (while I remain as site administrator) I am obliged to ensure that you can use the Gegaderung provided that you comply with the rules but I don't have to do anything else.  Generally I try to encourage contributors by joining in the response to their posts and attempting to help out with queries but that is not an essential part of the job.  I do my very best to be fair and helpful to people - but there is a limit.

[Bowerthane]

You’re not the only one who has his limits if this keeps happening when he’s trying to be helpful, Linden.  Look up “shake down” ( two words, it’s a phrasal verb I’m using) in the Merriam-Webster ( US standard) dictionary and you’ll find the meaning “settle down”.  As in “cool it” or “take it easy”.  Bud. I knew this only from a novel I was proofing a few months back, written in US English by a chap from New York.  One of his characters used it in that sense, reminding me that the Canadian journalist Mark Steyn also used it in that sense in The Spectator, a while back.  I knew the one-word noun only in the test-for-teething-troubles sense you mention, and I’m indebted to you for its other meanings because I’d never come across them. 

Is anybody ELSE getting the wrong idea from my posts?  I thought I may have given it by not using emoticons, but look what’s happened.  Only I have more sensible claims on my time than jumping on widdly little wrangles on Internet forums before they slither out of proportion, even one where I’m still hoping to discuss the Old English from time to time, so I hope this is fixed and forgotten or, as I say, I just won’t come back. 

If anyone thinks I need add more than this to my last post they'd better tell me what to say, themselves.