#krynnsub

Hey everyone! As our project to adapt "The Last Trial" in English comes to a triumphant end, a new era begins.

Kait Howard is stepping up to lead Krynnsub's next project: translating and adapting STAIRWAY's second production: Вий. Please join her on the Krynnsub Facebook page if you are interested in being involved!

As of today, she will take ownership of our social media accounts. Please give her a warm welcome :)

Song: Oath of Loyalty

#1

In an earlier draft we had the song begin:

"I deserved to be rejected"

but that sounded a little too much like "I deserve to be rejected."

(Final Draft)

"You were harsh, but I deserved it ."

#2 (Raw Translation):

"You remain faithful to yourself,/

Your purpose is great!"

When he rejects her in "War of the Twins" Raistlin cuts into her with the words, "I thought your aim was higher, Revered Daughter." That inspired the wording of these adapted lines (Final Draft):

"You pursue a higher purpose/

And I know that's where your heart is!"

#3 There was a great moment when a couple of lines had effortless internal rhymes

(Final Draft):

"Let me PROVE I’m worthy of YOU!/

I shall WIN your recogniTION!"

That second line is straight from the "raw" translation, and I think that the Krynnsubbers who worked on it were actually trying to be lyrical. They made it to the final cut!

#4

"Брать с меня по высшей мере

Обещай мне, обещай!"

("Raw" translation)

"Promise me, promise/

To use me, until you have reached your goal!"

Around the time I began reading in Russian, I started to suspect that our "raw" translation for this song was not entirely raw after all.

Why was it repeating "Promise me" at the beginning instead of at the end? Again, these lines seem intentionally lyrical, even matching stresses and the syllable count. We looked to Irina for guidance on it.

Irina Kruglova explained the meaning was more like:

"To expect that a person does no less than he\she is able to do, not to be content with his\her low-performance."

Our final draft focused on her demand that Raistlin hold her to the highest standard that she could achieve:

"Promise me you'll ask perfection/

I will strive for nothing less."

#5 (Raw translation):

"There is no tenderness dearer to me/

Than you being rigourous with me/

I need no indulgence!/

I wait for no absolution!"

During the rewrite process, sometimes you have to shuffle lines around to just to make them sound good. That was the case here, with the following arrangement:

(Final Draft):

"I require no indulgence/

I won’t hide behind excuse /

I hold nothing quite as dearly /

Song: Concerning Love

#1 Takhisis pokes fun at Raistlin, admiring the beautiful combination of black and white during the song "Seduction." How could we get that across in English?

We went through several rough drafts:

*"Black and white in love: the perfect couple"

(Looks good on paper but didn't sound good sung)

*"Nothing goes better than light with darkness"

(Sounded good but lost the reference to their robe colors: "Black and white.")

*"Nothing goes better with black than white does"

(This one didn't work because it made it seem like the "white" was secondary to "black" rather than the two being equal and enhancing each other )

*"Opposite colors make quite the couple"

(This showed how "Black and white" complimented each other through color theory, but we really wanted to keep the direct reference to "Black and white")

*In the end we chose a new option:

(Final Draft):

"Black and white truly make quite the pairing."

#2 (Rough Draft):

Raistlin:

"I'm the one who planted this weed of passion"

This was a fine rewrite, but "test audiences" (AKA my coworkers) giggled when I sang it for the first time because "planted this WEED" made them think of marijuana before I even got to "passion."

Somehow (thankfully), this simple tweaking of the phrasing did not summon the same image:

(Final Draft):

"In my soul you're seeing the weed of passion/

Sprouting from a seed I myself planted/"

#3

Raistlin:

"Оба знаем мы, что бывает во имя любви."

(Raw translation): "We are both aware of the stupidities people do in the name of love."

We read this line as being parallel to the lines in Legend of the Abyss:

Takhisis:

"Что же было дальше? Мы оба знаем:/

Чёрная Луна поглотила утро!.../

...Из-за любви дурака!"

(Raw translation):

"What happened next? We both know:/

The Black Moon devoured the morning!.../

...All because of the fool's love!"

"We both know," they each repeat, openly agreeing that love is foolishness.

In our final draft adaptation of Legend of the Abyss, we had written:

"How it really ends, you and I know better/

Evil rose again with its reign of terror....

...All for the love of a fool!"

While we did not try to match the exact wording in English across both songs,

we still made it a clear "I know that you know that I know" moment that brought in a generalized reference to that fool of Legend:

(Final Draft) Raistlin:

"You know there's no question/

That Love is a lie/

Folly is the fate/

Of those whom Love renders blind/

#4

Рейстлин:

"Чтоб вместе с ней пропасть!"

Somehow we had misinterpretted this line to mean "That I might fall with it into the Abyss?!"

(Takhisis):

"Open up your heart"

(Raistlin):

"To fall into that hell?"

We were corrected that the meaning of "Пропасть" here was "perish" and adjusted the line accordingly.

(Takhisis):

"Open up your heart"

(Raistlin):

"That it might get me killed?"

The line went through one more change so we didn't have this strange emphasis on "GET":

(Final Draft):

"To be struck down and killed?"

#5 Perhaps the toughest part of this song was determining what to do about his final dismissive commands.

Raistlin:

"Я хочу быть один! Все оставьте меня,/

Все оставьте меня! Все оставьте меня!"

(Raw translation):

"I want to be alone! Leave me, all of you!/

Leave me, all of you!/ Leave me, all of you!"

We needed something that sounded good repeated three times.

"Stay away from me, all" sounded off with "all" at the end. We probably could have gotten away with it once, but not three times.

"Stay away, everyone" had a similar problem, and sounded more like a warning than a plea

to be alone.

Over the years we were always pondering a possible new draft for those lines, but found the variation we most liked was:

(Final Draft) Raistlin:

"I prefer being alone! I don't need anyone./

I don't need anyone! I don't need anyone!"

It isn't quite a "dismissal" but it keeps the line "I prefer being alone" that Takhisis will later use against him in "Lord of Nothing" ("I thought you preferred being alone?"). It also makes these lines from before stand out:

(Final Draft):

"I need no one at all! What are they to me?/

Just a faithful sword! Just the master key!"

Solace and Tika's Warning

#1

Tika asks,"Who ordered potatoes? Who ordered soup?"

Originally we rewrote this line as "Who ordered hot soup and spiced potatoes?"

Turns out, окрошка is actually a refeshing COLD Russian soup. What? Cold soup? Yeah, that doesn't sound right in English (even though I'm sure it is delicious.) So we just ditched "soup" altogether and focused on the most important part of the Inn of the Last Home:

"Who had a plate of the spiced potatoes?"

And we replicate that nice internal rhyme that we see in картошки/окрошки.

#2

Tika warns about the Grove of the Dead, which is like all of the scary things you have heard about the Shoikan Grove plus the geographical location and behavior of the Wayreth forest rolled into one.

Playing With Fire

#1 The raw translation begins:

"In the light of hymns and prayers,

In the coolness of the temple's columns

My soul has been waiting for this fire from the start..."

The focus is on the wait for that flame...Crysania wants more from her destiny.

First we had the line read:

"Nurtured by calm words of prayer,

Sheltered from the harsher world..."

It would be her way of saying that she is aware her life has been easy and she is ready to leave that mundanity behind.

A more literal translation we came up with was:

"In the light of heaven's love

In the coolness of the church..."

But it just didn't sound compelling. In the end we changed the wording and focused on that hole in her life that is finally being filled:

"Every day with every prayer

Longing for what wasn't there

My soul has waited for its chance to shine..."

#2

In an earlier draft we wrote:

"Father please don't hold me back

I know the fatal risk I take

I'll save what remains of his soul or I will die..."

At first glance the above lyrics are a  perfectly acceptable rewrite.

However, "perilous gamble" stood out to us from the raw translation. She is betting her life that she can overcome this trial.

We expanded the metaphor with the following final draft replacement:

"Yes, I know the risk I take/

But let the dice fall where they may/

I'll beat him in this deadly game/

Or lose it all."

#3

"Ferocious eyes gleam!/

I can't look away!"

In my mind she isn't saying that she is the helpless prey caught in the beam of the beast's eyes, she is telling Paladine-- "It's too late, I am already involved. He started it and I have to finish it."

We rewrote it as:

"He locked me into a staredown/

Pray

#1 We could have renamed this one "Prayer" but this title keeps the interesting homophone connection to "Prey." We understand that Raistlin is the "beast/monster of so many songs" and that he is going to prey upon Crysania's ambition and compassion.

#2 I recall misunderstanding the raw translation at first:

"God let us have a frank conversation!"

Here, I'd thought she was asking to be allowed to speak frankly with God.

So, the line was initially rewritten as "Holy father Paladine, let me speak my mind."

When the true meaning was understood (us= Raistlin and herself), we came up with a few new options:

"Lord I pray he won't ignore what I (go?plan?) to say..."

#2 I remember clearly that this is the one song where Margaret Weis contributed to the discussion. Instead of supporting either option for the line above, she chimed in with her own proposal. "How about: What I need to say."

English Adaptation Retrospective

See the full English libretto on our Krynnsub Facebook Page!

Chasm Between Brothers

This is the new name we gave to "Brother's Gap." We think it sounds like more of an impassable challenge to overcome--Don't you?

#1 We realized Caramon's first lines needed to sound good not just to begin a song but in context with the dialogue. We had to make a clean transition from "Nightmares again? Maybe there's a reason" to "You've got me worried about this plan of yours." So, we had Caramon say "Take my advice: Don't look for trouble." It seemed like a natural way for Caramon to set up delving further into his concerns.

#2 The final line was troublesome too.

Originally, we changed it to: "All will be very different one day when I'm a God... All will be very different one day when I'm a God, when I'm a God."

It looks fine on paper, but we were missing a few syllables (thanks to "богом" being repeated.) We solved this issue by going with "....when I've ascended. All will be very different one day when I ascend--ascend to Godhood!"

#3 Another Krynnsubber reminded us of the purposefulness that we put into the line:

"While you're the people's hero I'm the freak!"

It rhymes with "weak" of course, and the statement is proven later in Wizards' Conclave when everyone agrees behind his back:

"We've never had a worse freak in our ranks/

The Last Trial Retrospective:

Wizard's Dream

#1 After the "mother's ghost" was given a singing role in the show, we had even more lyrics to translate! We had fun rhyming "cradle" and "maple"--and playing on the similarities between her song and "Rock-a-bye Baby" (when the bough breaks the cradle will fall...):

"And when the burden of snowfall/

Would break the boughs of the maple/

My son, hear that song from your cradle/

That you may again be hopeful."

#2 Takhisis' first lines gives us long adjectives to describe dead, dark, cold, empty eyes. So many syllables! In English, that just made it sound like a mouthful. We focused on the fact that she says "зрачок." To us, that meant there was special emphasis on the pupils of her serpent eyes, just as we see later in "Tango with Death."

We got a good internal rhyme out of it too!

"Do you not recognize the slit pupils beneath my disguise?"

#3

"But you wish to reach my divine aura?"

It was tricky to tease the right meaning out of this line. We decided to go with the idiom "a moth drawn to the flame." This works well, as Raistlin later uses the same symbol to refer to himself in "Trial by Fire:"

"To the flame little moth/

Key to the lock/"

Our result:

"And yet you're drawn like a moth to my flame..."

#4

Another Krynnsubber recalled how we went back and forth on just the right wording for:

"Come to me... stay here by my side."