Talk:The Song of the Stormy Petrel

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Translator's note: I took 2 1/2 years the Russian as an undergrad, and read Gorki in translation while in High School. The first work of native, unadulterated Russian I ever read was The Song of the Stormy Petrel. For no real reason, I decided to read it again, and ... wrote the wikipedia article. Thus the translation is GFDL. Despite its revolutionary nature, I am vehemently anti-communist. Deal with it.

One translation I read on the 'Net used the word sable where Gorki used the common Russian adjective черный meaning black. To me, weird. I did not like this, as if the translator was trying to sound overly "poetic."

Any resemblance to other translations is accidental — I alone am responsible for this translation, for any good language, and for the bad. Doubtless others will improve on me. My Russian is at best imperfect.

And the translation is not perfect; as the Russian original makes clear. I tried to preserve the original meanings (and a little of the poetry) as much as possible without saying anything too awful. Much of the original poetry is unavoidably lost.

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