Sevenmere

Busted out the watercolours and touched my ink and pen nib for the first time in a decade probably.

Ultimately, the idea floating around in English-speaking spaces that правда and истина are Super Duper Distinct and one of them is untranslatable is kinda... like, the thing is, fundamentally they're kinda just synonyms in a different register.

They both mean "truth," but правда is the colloquial use while истина is a more poetic version and thus gets elevated into a formal register since it's not used often (logical proofs, objective facts, etc).

English does most of its register changes through contextual changes in writing style and tone instead of spelling changes, and so it's 'untranslatable' but not actually untranslatable. It's just two words meaning "truth" in different contexts.

Now, there's an idiom that gets tossed around in both Russian and English, "everyone has their own правда but there is only one истина." The idea being that правда is some kind of subjective, internally-held belief that's in conflict with the 'real' truth, the objective reality, the истина.

This idiom is, imo, stupid. It's dumb in Russian (правда is not "subjective truth," it's just the colloquial word for truth!) and it's even dumber in English, because when it's used in English it's done in such a way to portray the statement as some kind of "mystical deep truths of the Russian language." Generally, this is exotifying the Soviet Union in particular as a place of Unique Nature Such That Its Citizens And Government Have Skewed Views Of Truth (as seen in this awful New York Times article that circulated in the mid-late 2010s).

If you're familiar with the way that American anime fandom tends to put perfectly-translatable Japanese words on a pedestal because of their Exotic Deep Nuance, it's kinda just the same shit. "Nakama" and "baka" et al.

Very few words are truly untranslatable into other languages, and especially into English due to its extensive loanword usage, and this isn't one of them. It's really just "truth (normal conversational tone)" and "truth (being fancy about it)."

ANYWAY, all that said, no, the Arknights line isn't referencing this at all. It's a bespoke translation of Marina Tsvetaeva's 1915 poem "I know the truth."

And I'm gonna also go on a tangent about this (sorry), because personally, I don't actually like this specific translation, because it makes the poem feel a little more defeatist than it's intended to. "I know the truth—forsake all other truths" feels to me a bit more ominous, a bit sadder, like you're giving up.

Meanwhile, when translated a bit more literally, you get "I know the truth—all other truths, begone!"

I know the truth is a poem of despair but nonetheless defiance in the face of war and atrocity, of questioning the narratives by those who'd dress violence up in pretty words or ideologies. Of questioning why this all happens, of demanding a better future before the war lays us all low.

And I feel like the Hypergryph translation makes it feel less That, I guess.

I know the truth—forsake all other truths! There's no more need for men to war with men. Look—evening comes. Look—night is near. What use are words, poets, lovers, generals? The wind lies low. The fields are soaked with dew. The stars will freeze the sky in silence soon. And we will sleep beneath the earth at last. We who could never let each other rest.

Like, this is very poetic! But if you compare it to, say, Elain Feinstein's translation from Selected Poems (Marina Tsvetaeva) in 1994:

I know the truth—give up all other truths! No need for people anywhere on earth to struggle. Look—it is evening, look, it is nearly night: what do you speak of, poets, lovers, generals? The wind is level now, the earth is wet with dew, the storm of stars in the sky will turn to quiet. And soon all of us will sleep under the earth, we who never let each other sleep above it.

or A.S. Kline's translation from his project Poetry in Translation:

I know the truth! Renounce all others! There’s no need for anyone to fight. For what? – Poets, generals, lovers? Look: it’s evening, look: almost night. Ah, the wind drops, earth is wet with dew, Ah, the snow will freeze the stars that move. And soon, under the earth, we’ll sleep too, Who never would let each other sleep above.