Now this is something I’ve been working on since New Year! For the past few years I’ve largely been translating for work, or for academic reasons. I just haven’t had the chance to work on more personal interests, but this year, I’ve made the decision to indulge a little.
This is a Russian-English project. From tomorrow, and every Tuesday for the rest of the year, I’ll do a musical showcase: every week I’m going to translate a song, mostly from my favourite musical period (1980s USSR), and post it here for others to see. Posts may include biographical notes about the musicians or interesting facts about the composition, as I’d like to focus on lesser-known songs, and it may be difficult to find context for them in English elsewhere. If you’re a native/C1-C2 level speaker and don’t find the time period too old-fashioned (😂), I’d also love to hear your thoughts on my efforts!
I currently have four posts queued up from January. They’ll be posted this month, February’s translations will go up on March, and so on. Not sure if December’s entries will go up twice per week, or if this project will have to finish on Jan 2026, but I’ll cross that bridge when I get to it. Translations are scheduled for 5:30pm GMT. I like synthpop and songs about technology. Let’s listen to some music together. 🥰
I love rat snakes they’re so cute and cuddly. Unfortunately, they want to get in your house and cuddle.
They love to live on your porch and deal with pests and be really chill and then sneak in when you least expect it. They’re trying so hard to be domesticated. Sorry bud, you’re so shiny and dark and beautiful but you’re an outside friend.
ratsnake perfec t for domestication put rat snake in House good friend to human very Companion and Friend have good time with ratsnake in house. Put Ratsnake In House. No problems ever ratsnake in house because ratsnake perfect size give Help and Support to human. A ratsnake perfect pet for human can trust ratsnake to be good companion to Human. friend ratsnake.
very compelling argument
oh my god thank you for this subreddit rec. and, though these are wild, there are pet rat snakes on it too!
once i dreamt that i was watching a documentary film in high school english class called ‘the best pig at watching’. it opened on a pig staring motionlessly at something offscreen. a narrator said 'this is the best pig at watching’. it then was struck by lightning and the narrator said 'the best pig at watching has died. i now take you to the second best pig at watching’. the documentary went tn another pig that was afloat on like an ice floe in an ocean, staring at something offscreen. then the ice floe sank and the narrator said 'oh dear. we now take you to the third best pig at watching’ and it just continued like that with various pigs in dangerous situations staring off-camera until they died, to which the narrator reacted with mild disappointment and taking the camera to the next pig. this just kept happening until i woke up
in Beauty and the Beast: Belle’s Magical Christmasthere’s an evil pipe organ voiced by Tim Curry. many of you will remember this. however, i think many of us (including, embarrassingly, myself) overlooked that he is a magic pipe organ. huh. none of the other servants got magic powers. why does that guy have magic powers now? did the enchantress like him? did her magic interfere with his own pre-existing sorcerous powers? was the existing pipe organ magical and when he was meshed with that pipe organ he got some part of the powers it already possessed? i ask this because he also has my favorite motivation of any DTV disney villain: he wants to stay an evil pipe organ that can do magic. i fuck with that honestly.
everything about this makes sense. it’s a midquel. given the structure of the existing movie, it’s hard for the villain to be someone from the village. it would also be a bit awkward for it to be a stranger because the whole story is predicated on it being wrong to turn strangers away (the enchantress). so you have to have someone inside the castle, i guess. disney writers sitting around thinking, ok though. but if it’s someone in the castle, they’re all on the same team, right? they want Beast and Belle to get together so they can be human again. the reason they’re working together even with meaningfully different personalities is because they are united in common cause. So, you need someone who doesn’t want to return to their former form.
this is how you get Forte, explained elegantly thus:
alright so his motivations check out. If he’s just an organist he’s going to get old and he could easily be replaced. there’s no security in his world. thanks to the enchantress, he now IS the pipe organ. by the way the internet summarized this to me as a man who wants to “remain in organ form”. we recognize this as classic pervert behavior.
anyway though! magic! what’s that about
i get being a weird organ pervert who wants to stay an evil pipe organ forever. anyway with the addition of magic this is an easy choice (evil magic pipe organ voiced by tim curry; ideal lifestyle and absolute jackpot win). but WHY!! why is he also a witch! did you make a saucy little face when the Prince threw out the enchantress and you two locked eyes and she was like can you Believe this guy and you were like Oh i Know, like Don’t Even Tell me About It and she was like yeah you can be telekinetic!! evil pipe organ
anyway hashtag #lifegoals!
Full-time court musician, part-time pervert and magician; sounds like your average Enlightenment-era intellectual to me. Probably writing a picaresque novel or two on the side and keeping up a lively correspondence with Benjamin Franklin.
Exactly, this 100% checks out with the way that the musical patronage system in Europe at the time Beauty and the Beast takes place (18th century) works: your entire livelihood was based on getting money from royalty and nobility, which included commissions, but ideally meant being one particular titled VIP’s “court composer” since that had the greatest stability. Falling out of favor could mean losing your livelihood. (All of this was about to change in a few decades as the Industrial Revolution created an urban middle and non-titled-rich class and also established music conservatories, so we got the composer-as-job model that we have now of being either a professor or running a municipal orchestra, but obviously nobody knew this; the winds of change in the music world wouldn’t make themseles known until the 19th century.) It’s really easy to envision some Salieri type (as in the character in Amadeus, not the real historical guy) getting turned into a pipe-organ-who-does-magic and being like, actually, this is way better! I don’t have to worry about young upstart stealing my thunder and my commissions and my court composer job. I can fulfill my sacred mission from God of serving him by making music, forever. Also, a lot of musicians in general are weird little freaks and would probably enjoy being transformed into an immortal music-producing vessel, especially in the form of an instrument with a gigantic range that is prized for its ornateness and for its historical importance (organs are one of the modern instruments with the longest histories in Western classical music, being used in churches even long before any other instrumental music was permitted) and that has a history of being carefully preserved over centuries. To paraphrase a famous Ralph Vaughan Williams quote: why just write music when you can BE music?
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