Current Page || History

Subtitles for Dobrynya Nikitich (1965)


English
June 04 2022 07:11:18
Created by Eus, Lemicnor, Niffiwan
Dobrynya Nikitich.1965.en.1.25fps.1654326678.srt ⭳
Quality: ok

Original subs by Eus & Lemicnor, edited/corrected by Niffiwan in 2022. The original is an archaic, poetic form of Russian, while the English translation is mostly just straightforward, without making a very serious attempt to imitate the style (only a little).

There are some things that perhaps need more explanation. First, about the Sorochinsky mountain (9:08), Lemicnor/Eus had translated it as "Mountains of Madness", but academic.rusays the following (translated with DeepL):

The SOROCHINSKIYE GORI is a toponym that appears in legends, which has no real geographical reference. In the byliny they appear as outside the Rus lands, in an "alien" world, as a place of residence of fantastic hostile beings and imprisonment of captives (in the S. G. Dobrynya fights the Serpent, tramples "serpentlings" and frees people from the caves), bring endowed with mysterious formidable power (on the S. G. dies Vasili Buslaev, after violating the prohibitions). ะก. G. are associated with the common mythological ideas about the mountains in the "other" world. The epithet "sorochinskiy" is probably a distortion of Saracenese. It appears in both forms in byliny about different subjects.

It seems to be more about alien things than about madness. So the line is translated as "Do not visit the alien Saracen mountain".

The next line speaks of the Puchai-River, which had been translated as "River of Death". Academic.ru writes:

Puchay-river is a toponym seen in bylinas. In the bylina "Dobrynya and the Serpent", it is a "fierce river," made of fire; bathing in it threatens death. Despite the ban, Dobrynia Nikitich swims in it, thus causing the Serpent to attack and fight him. In mythical origins P.R. is a water frontier, separating the ordinary world from the "other" world. In the name "Puchay" researchers saw a distorted "Pochayna", name of the river in Kiev, in which, according to legend, occurred the first baptism of the citizens. Hence the interpretation of the subject "Dobrynya and Serpent" as the story of the victory of Christ over paganism in Kievan Rus.

In this translation, the line is translated as "Do not bathe, Dobrynya, in the fiery Puchai river between this world and the next." - possibly a bit too wordy, but it seems to get the concept across.

Video preview(s):
Multiplier is 1.
Offset is 0.

The text content of the file is: