Yet another translation question.

[quem98.livejournal.com]

First is an excerpt from a soviet historian's writings about those 18th century documents I've been asking for help on.

The sentance is "Наибольше интерес представляет декларативная часть указа - своеобразное программное завление, излагающее солержание социальной политики ставки Пугачева и намечающее перспектывы движения.

So I've translated it as (I've tried to keep the translation as direct as possible):
The declarative portion of the decree presents a far greater interest - The unique policy statement, laying out the contents of the social politics of Pugachev's headquarters and outlining perspectives of the movement...

Or does ставки in this case mean a stake or a bet? Which it what multitran tells me...

The second sentence is yet another one of those godawful 18th century texts. It's talking about Catherine II's troops being completely overshelmed by Bashkir raids, and I get most of it, but I can't parse this sentence to save my life. Each time I try I come out with wildly different translations:

...А доныне нигде еще башкирамъ от наших командъ удару [?] не было; и что делаютъ наши генералы - богъ знаетъ, а ожидают только, чтобъ сами они, злодей, пришли въ познание, чего никогда им не дождаться.

(Question mark is in the text)

The last part stumps me... Is it...

And up until now, nowhere yet was there a strike on the Bashkirs from our unit; and what our generals are doing - lord knows, but [they] expect only that the evil doers themselves will

a) appear where we least expect them?
b) come to the knowledge that no one ever expects them?
c) expect the unexpected?
d) run away and join the circus?

Are any of my translations close? (nevermind b and c... Non stop thesis writing has done bad things to my brain)

Comments

[ilia-yasny.livejournal.com]

1. You're right, ставка is headquarters here
2. ... come to the inquest [or simply appear and give up], which they [the generals,apparently] will be waiting forever.

[quem98.livejournal.com]

But isn't it...
which they [the generals] are not waiting for?

I thought there were no double negatives in Russian.

[nadyezhda.livejournal.com]

oh, I think there ARE double negatives. Technically there aren't any in English.

[quem98.livejournal.com]

Right... That's what I meant.

[khathi.livejournal.com]

1. In this case it means "headquarters", so your translation is correct here.
2. Here you're also absolutely correct up to the last part. Which, I believe, means that generals are expecting Bashkirs to come to their senses and stop attacks, and that will never come, of course.

[unberillii.livejournal.com]

>Наибольше интерес представляет декларативная часть указа - своеобразное программное завление, излагающее солержание социальной политики ставки Пугачева и намечающее перспектывы движения.

Correct: Наибольший интерес представляет декларативная часть указа - своеобразное программное завление, излагающее содержание социальной политики ставки Пугачева и намечающее перспективы движения.

Ставка Пугачева = headquarters here, you're right


>А доныне нигде еще башкирамъ от наших командъ удару [?] не было; и что делаютъ наши генералы - богъ знаетъ, а ожидают только, чтобъ сами они, злодей, пришли въ познание, чего никогда им не дождаться.

Correct and contemporary: А доныне нигде еще башкирам от наших команд удару не было; и что делают наши генералы - бог знает, а ожидают только, чтоб сами они, злодеи, пришли в познание, чего никогда им не дождаться.

read http://community.livejournal.com/learn_russian/435322.html?thread=6525050#t6525050 :)

[ex-187cm.livejournal.com]

Russian is my native language, and English is not, but maybe I can try to help you here :)

1) Headquarters

2) As close to text as I can:
And up to this time the Bashkirs haven’t been striked by our teams; and God only knows what our generals are doing, they are only waiting for them, evildoers, to give up, what will never come true*.

Something like that :-)
There are some minor errors in the 1st sentence, while the second one definitely belongs to old Russian — to the language we spoke 100 and more years ago. That is the very thing that makes the sentence construction unusual and hardens the understanding.

Besides, it is an auful mixture of old and modern Russian grammar. If the strong mark (or how do you call it, «ъ») is used at the end of every world, than there should be «i» instead of и in some cases, and besides, there should be some other letters we don’t have in Cyrillic alphabet at all today. Read more (http://www.artlebedev.ru/kovodstvo/23/) (the link is in Russian and belongs to a Russian design-studio; it is written for designers, but is the briefest explanation of old Russian grammar rules I could find).

It is difficult even for me to understand the phrase пришли въ познание, — this is really an etymological question. I guess, it means сдались (given up), but nobody would use THESE words to express this thought nowadays.

-----
* — не дождутся is a well-turned, often used phrase. It means they won’t wait till that, while they are waiting, but the thing they are waiting for will never come. Не дождешься, не дождетесь, не дождусь….
— Усама бин Ладен сдастся!
— Не дождетесь!

That’s it. Sorry for my poor English :-)

[khathi.livejournal.com]

It's not an Old Russian in a strict sense, BTW. It's really a modern Russian, just slightly archaic. Old Russian -- it's the language "Слово о полку Игореве" written in. Actually grammar didn't change much since Ekaterine The Great, just vocabulory and word usage shifted a bit.
BTW, what's with that completely offkey remark about "mix of old and modern Russian grammar"? Don't mix grammar and orthograpy! You cannot say "This is grammar rule" just because there is some rule -- that Lebedev's page has absolutely nothing to do with grammar.
The phrase above is indeed a mix, but a mix of pre-reform and post-reform orthography, which was common in Soviet times, when typography was still done in lead and modern typesets lacking pre-reform letters. Then typographers just rendered "yat'" as "e" and "i-decimal" as "i".

PS: Your notion of pre-reform orthography also looks quite strange for me. Hard sign, or yer, was used not in every word, but only in the cases where was non-palatalized consonant at the end of word. This practice was long obsolete, but it was dropped only in orthography reform of 1918, together with other obsolete letters.

[quem98.livejournal.com]

I was copying the sentence from one of the books I need for my research. Since I don't have old cyrillic on my keybord, I improvised as best I could.

The passage comes from a document written in the Summer of 1774 from a Russian official stationed somewhere in the Urals talking about the devestation wreaked by Bashkir rebels.

I'm finishing up a Master's Thesis on the Pugachev Revolt. Since I'm required to base my thesis on original research, I've spent many waking hours pouring over 18th century Russian texts. It usually picks up once the Bashkirs start setting things on fire... They did that a lot. I've gotten better at parsing this kind of text, but there are sometimes when I get stumped... or refuse to believe that the translation I've come up with is correct.

[khathi.livejournal.com]

Ah, I see. That's the reason for such familiar-looking texs. ^_^ But your translations in this case were correct, except that part about "придти в познание", which is indeed rather irregular. But as I said above, most probable translation of this phrase is "come to senses", so generals hoped that Bashkirs will just get bored with burning and pillaging, and go away.

[quem98.livejournal.com]

It's ok.

At some point I'll type something in Russian, and it will make you feel much better about your English skills.

Thank you though.

I thought that he was saying something like that, but I wasn't sure.

[quem98.livejournal.com]

... No, that was just my lame attempt at simulating old Russian with a modern Russian font. The text itself has all of the antiquated letters that don't exist on my keyboard.

I'm well aware that it isn't modern Russian. I still had to translate it. :/

Serves me right for picking the Thesis topic I did.

[ex-khutshur106.livejournal.com]

Hey, in first sentence first word should be "Наибольший", not "Наибольше".
I think so, at least :)

[salexey.livejournal.com]

>> The unique policy statement
I would say "A kind of policy statement".