First, you know I've been following your log for a long time, ever since you were doing your first novela in Croatian. Love the music videos too. I add my congratulations on
finishing the second volume of Colloquial Russian. Well done!
Yes, you'll need an original English source, something from which you can copy and paste. Your pdf must have ocr text. You can test it by moving your cursor over a word and highlighting it. You can also copy text from an epub, or kindle format e-book.
The simple "down and dirty" way to make a parallel text is to open a text document first. I use OpenOffice.
Next, insert a table and define how many columns you want. I don't use the third column, as I don't trust machine translation well enough yet, though maybe I should start trusting it more. So I choose two columns. Next, then hit "spacebar" to move your cursor over one space, then hit "enter" and move your cursor to the next line. Do this in both columns. Then copy and paste Russian (TL) into column 1. ( When doing a book, I like to copy maybe a dozen pages max at a time, which I can turn into a parallel text in about 10 minutes manually.) Then highlight all the text in column 1 and make the font one you like and the font size from 10-12 works pretty well. For the next column, repeat the procedure with English (L1). When finished, I print the text to pdf and put it on my tablet. You'll end up with something like this:
Dashiell Hammet- Collita roja wrote:CatalanTemps enrera havia preparat una o dues morts,
quan eren necessàries. Però aquesta és la primera
vegada que m'hi trobo entrampat. És aquesta
maleïda ciutat. Aquí, és que no pots anar de dret.
Al començament ja em vaig veure embolicat.
Quan el vell Elihu recorregué a mi no podia fer
altra cosa que enfrontar els malfactors l'un contra
l'altre. Vaig haver d'orientar el treball de la millor
manera que vaig saber. Què podia fer-hi si de la
millor manera volia dir arribar a una matança?
Altrament sense el suport d'Elihu la feina no podia
fer-se.
—Si no podies fer-hi res, per què carat et
lamentes, ara? Tu beu, i prou.
Em vaig beure la meitat del got i vaig sentir la
necessitat de continuar parlant | "I've arranged a killing or two in my time, when
they were necessary. But this is the first time I've
ever got the fever. It's this damned burg. You can't
go straight here. I got myself tangled at the
beginning. When old Elihu ran out on me there
was nothing I could do but try to set the boys
against each other. I had to swing the job the best
way I could. How could I help it if the best way
was bound to lead to a lot of killing? The job
couldn't be handled any other way without Elihu's
backing."
.
"Well, if you couldn't help it, what's the use of
making a lot of fuss over it? Drink your drink."
I drank half of it and felt the urge to talk some
more. |
It helps to know the language you are working with well enough to know where the text should line up, when doing this manually. Bear in mind that some languages use a lower amount of text to say the same thing we say in English, and some use more text. I usually read the parallel text on a tablet. Of course, a human translation will not be literal because it has to be readable by its intended readership.
I'm currently reading "Red Harvest" by Dashiell Hammet. In the first half of the book, I was looking up a lot of vocabulary that I couldn't deduce by context, and checking my guesses against the parallel text. I am about 80% finished with the book. New vocabulary is not as frequent. Now, I am highlighting turns of phrase and idioms much more. The advantage of reading on a tablet is being able to enlarge the L2 to fill the screen, then you can easily slide over to the L1 to confirm guesses or read ahead, if you want.
A parallel text does make it easier to read. If you make it through this Agatha Christie book, you'll find that you will have less need to look up vocabulary in the next one. Authors and translators have their own voices.
GlobalVoices.org wrote:RussianСирийский беженец искал надежду и свободу, поборов все сложности, с которыми он столкнулся лицом к лицу, пока добирался до Испании. А здесь — снова заключение, но на этот раз из-за вспышки COVID-19.
Мы не готовы. У нас нет ни масок, ни перчаток, ни стерилизующих средств, кроме мыла с ароматом тревоги.
Мы немного взволнованы появлением этой маленькой невидимой твари под названием коронавирус. Но считаем, что она слишком мала, чтобы нанести ущерб организму, который уже перенёс психологические и физические страдания в родной стране, Сирии, затем перебрался по контрабандистским дорогам через Турцию и оказался в сложных условиях в Испании, учитывая карантин, который никто не мог предвидеть. | A Syrian refugee is searching for hope and freedom after all the difficulties he faced on his journey from Syria to Spain, only to face the unexpected: yet another confinement, but this time due to the outbreak of COVID-19.
We are not ready. We don’t have masks, nor gloves to cover those little hands or anything to sterilize them with other than some soap mixed with anxiety.
We are a little concerned about this tiny invisible being called the Coronavirus. We believe it is too small to hurt those bodies that have already endured tremendous psychological and physical suffering in their native country, Syria, then once again on the smuggling routes through Turkey and finally in an environment of instability in Spain, right down to a quarantine that was never foreseen. |
Source
Побег от смерти в Сирии в карантин в Мадриде
От заключения в Сирии — к заключению в Испании
Перевод опубликован 7 Октябрь 2020 13:04 GMT From death in Syria to quarantine in Madrid
The journey from confinement in Syria to confinement in Spain
Translation posted 28 August 2020 14:18 GMTHere's the English translation from Russian in DeepL
DeepL wrote:The Syrian refugee was looking for hope and freedom as he struggled face to face as he made his way to Spain. And here again he is imprisoned, but this time because of the COVID-19 outbreak.
We are not ready. We have no masks, no gloves, no sterilizing agents, except soap with the scent of anxiety.
We are a little excited about this little invisible creature called coronavirus. But we believe that it is too small to damage the body, which has already endured psychological and physical suffering in its home country, Syria, then crossed the smuggling roads through Turkey and found itself in difficult conditions in Spain, given the quarantine, which no one could have foreseen.
Translated with
http://www.DeepL.com/Translator (free version)
Words I
think I may have learned from the parallel text (thanks to Serpent and Vadim, I learned to read Cyrillic from thier tweets). Parallel texts can be a very useful tool:
Сирийский: Syrian
Испании: Spain
масок: mask
Мы: We
Мы не готовы: We are not ready
стерилизующих: sterilize
коронавирус: corona virus
психологические и физические: psychological and physical
Сирии: Syria
Турцию: Turkey
карантин: quarantine
From DeepL (This article was translated from Arabic into both Russian and English)
ароматом: aromatic/aroma/scent?
I've only looked up a handful of words which were seriously hindering my understanding of the plot, like грузовик (lorry, truck). The main thing confusing me at the moment is the surname of the main characters. The book is about a family, where the son has been convicted of murdering the mother and subsequently died in prison, but new evidence has come to light to suggest he had an alibi for the time of the murder. So there are lots of family members with the same surname, which is spelled as "Эрджайл" in Russian, and I cannot for the life of me figure out what this surname can have been in the original English version. Suggestions welcome 
It was because I was cold and tired and indulging my obsession with this series was the only way I could make myself do any exercise 
Anyway, looking it up established that there's absolutely no link between the two words 
