Marie Antoinette Part Five

Drumroll please!

It's worth saying that I embedded this video before it finished uploading. If you see this post and the video doesn't work then we've had last minute technical problems; more that possible!



And now for the, crossposted to my personal blog, post regarding this part

Sorry for the delay with this but it's finally online.

The exact translation in this video is probably a bit sloppy. I'm really out of practice with German which feels weird. It's almost like my old Elisabeth days when I had to stop and look things up every five minutes. Okay, in my really old Elisabeth days I had to look things up every five seconds but I digress. I was also rushing with this part to attempt to get it online and finished it at three a.m.. It's been three months since I uploaded the last part and, although I have good excuse, I feel really bad about that.

Claudia, a friend of mine from Austria, helped me with a line that was causing me real trouble so thank you to her <3

Also, I still can't get accents to render properly on my hard subbing so some words are missing accents. Of course, this doesn't really affect English but this musical does like to chuck in the odd bit of French (translations below).

Anyway, talking about the video:

Axel has this lovely line where he says 'Wir sind freier als die meisten Menschen.' (We're freer than many people). It's a lovely concept. Although they're unhappy he knows that, in comparison, they're lucky and shouldn't complain. Annoyingly, free isn't commonly seen in a comparative fashion, and I'm unsure if technically it can be as you're either free or not. Apparently, there is a word "freer" so that's the one I used.

Maskenspiel is translated as masque not masquerade. A masque is a kind of big entertainment play dance song thing put on by players (within courts). Traditionally, masks would be worn by the players so this is a big metaphorical thing beyond just saying "we wear masks". A masquerade, is a ball at which people wore masks so slight difference :-)

Translations:

Mainly French, again, with a bit of Latin. My Latin is very rusty as I learned it many years ago so may not be accurate. Axel also 'translates it' in the musical. In fact, my French is getting rusty too but that's a complete other story!

Trés jolie, ne c'est pas? - Very pretty, isn't it?

Oui - Yes

Bon soir, Monsieur Orléans! - Good Evening Mr. Orléans!

Palais Royal - Royal Palace

Non! - No

Bien sur. - For sure.

Bien oui - Well yes

S'il vous plaît! - If you please (also means just "please")

Pour le plaisir - For pleasure. (This is kinda creepy in context!)

Dolore Fortiter - Sorrow bravely (Latin)

Quelle que soit - Whatever

Excuse-moi, chéri - Excuse me, dear.

 _____________________________________________________________________

This was originally posted on my LiveJournal account and Digne posted a very interesting comment on the meaning of freedom so it's worth going across there to read that. I also realised that, having posted at 3:00 a.m., most of the post was complete gobbledygook!

Subbing delay

I am really, really late with posting Marie Antoinette, as I promised, and I'm also really behind with the Tanz der Vampire libretto that I am still working on.

A lot has been going on in my life, most recently with my applying for a university in the Netherlands. Still waiting to hear if I will be offered an interview or not! Of course a lot of other stuff has been going on too but I won't go into it here because I have a personal blog for that!

I do, however, feel really guilty for keeping people waiting. I don't even know what part of Marie Antoinette I'm on, that's how long it's been. I'm going to look that up now and I'll get right down to translating now. I should be doing other things but oh well. I'm not going to make a libretto for Marie Antoinette, as I usually do and as I have planned to, and will focus on just getting the videos up. Not promising anything but wanted to say I'm still alive!

Tanz has been progressing slowly. At 2 a.m. when I have nothing better to do I sit down and do a bit of Tanz work ;-)

Just when I thought technology couldn't hate me any more!

Part four has been hell for me. I think I've already posted a rant about finding bits hard to translate, and not liking the song but that is nothing compared to the technical problems I experienced.

Some subtitles simply refused to appear.

Some subtitles decided to appear in a totally different place to where they should have.

And then this happened. One line of subtitles which seemed to explode into a cloud of names.

Eventually, I managed to get things into some kind of order but it got to the stage where I couldn't actually get any of my edits to save either so there are still mistakes. I'm disappointed with this part, both with the translation and with the formatting, but I can't actually change anything even though I have noticed mistakes.

On the plus side, it's not really an important part for character development so there's no chance you miss out on anything.

Can I also say that the prostitutes' dancing, especially after Margrid's entrance, reminds me of how my late grandmother used to dance, if they're rather more sleazy!

Having 'fun' with part four

So, part three of Marie Antoinette finally made it online and I'm onto part four already.

I must admit that I'm finding this part really, really difficult for various reasons. Firstly, I've not really translated anything for six months now, and haven't even looked at German translation for at least three. That means that everything is going a lot, lot slower than normal. Then I have to come up against a song that includes proverbs, idioms, and euphemism. The icky things to translate! Not only are they often difficult for me to understand but they also are often impossible to correctly put into English. Add to this the lack of practice and I can imagine there are going to be some rather funny sounding translations in this part! Taking it slowly though so hopefully it'll turn out okay!

Then there's the fact that I just don't like this part. For those of you who haven't seen it on the facebook page, this part focuses on Margrid's meeting with Madame Lapin and on introducing Madame Lapin's brothel. I often joke with Nené that every good musical has a good prostitute song (seriously, think about it!) and this is not one of them. I find this song insipid, unnecessary and plain annoying.

So, add all that together and I am really not enjoying translating this part. On the plus side, it is only six minutes long or something.

Anyway, this all seems rather like bad news so I'll spill the better news now. The whole of act one is now split up into parts. I have also timed quite a lot of the subtitles for later parts (and am looking forward to translating those bits) so there's a light at the end of the tunnel.

Remind me why I subtitle stuff again?

My goodness, has this been a difficult part to complete. I can't remember if I had problems in the translation because it was so long ago! However, the technical aspects have plagued me completely.

I have ended up with this file as an mp3 (useful when it's got subtitles, I know!). I have ended up with it apparently in HD yet being so fuzzy as to be unreadable. I have ended up with files that have had a predicted save time of several days. I have had upload times that get stuck at three minutes. I hate technology.

As you're reading this, however, I've managed to get something bearable together. It's worth me saying that, having noticed that we were having some problems with them, I have removed all accents from the subtitles. I don't know what the issue is with accents right now but there is an issue! I may sort this for the next part or I may bury my head and cry about technology.

I couldn't up the quality as much as I would have liked so made the subtitles bigger, which is something I had wanted to do anyway, to make them legible.

Oh, and because someone will moan about my lack of translation of 'esprit': this word, despite being used in German is a French loan word and is used in England too. It means lively and witty and, well, spirited.

Anyway, talking about the part, it contains what is probably my favourite song from the musical "Still, Still". It's a beautiful song of hope and of love, made all the more poignant by the circumstances. What's not so clear in the video, Agnés is tending to the children of a dead woman at this point and it is this woman that Margrid doesn't want to end up like. It's a powerful scene.

I also LOVE Louis in this part. I just feel that the role is perfect. Marie Antoinette herself I'm not so keen on as I feel that she is always made into some evil person but oh well.