Igenlode Wordsmith > Recent Status Updates

I was really struggling to understand the 'women's voices' Smekhov was using, especially with the dialogue between Milady and Felton and then Milady and the Abbess at Bethune; the irony is that I then had considerable difficulty in distinguishing between Milady and Rochefort in their dialogue together :( Presumably at this point she is no longer exaggeratedly feminine, but addressing him as an equal...

Amusingly, some of the parallel Russian translation appears to be closer to the original than the "Basic English" version of Gulliver: "blade for taking the hair off my face" is simply бритва, for example, and "pocket-cloth" is платок (familar to me in the form of Aramis's famous handkerchief! Z)

Ouch. All that section with Milady and Felton was painfully slow... but we are finally on Chapter 30!

So *now* we get a explanation of verbs in -нуть, after having been asked to use them in the previous chapter... wrong order, methinks.

Given that Gulliver had to swim for his life and was washed up half-drowned, how come his snuff and his written papers took no harm from the prolonged immersion? And why didn't the Lilliputians search him for dangerous weapons during the eight hours they had him drugged and unconscious? :-p

I now realise I've read this before, but I still don't remember anything about it, so I'm deliberately reading it again before starting "Stone & Sky"...

Another odd abridgement in the Russian version: Athos' line "I thought so, and that was why I intervened" is missing in response to Aramis' admission that he had intended to kill Richelieu if the Cardinal had insisted on demanding the letter from Marie Michon.... The text cuts straight to Aramis taking the letter out of his pocket again and reading it out loud to the others.

"I frequently let my legs down but without touching earth; but when I was almost at the end of my powers and unable any longer to put up a fight, I saw that I was in not very deep water, and by thus time the wind had gone down" - not my idea of "Basic English"! I *think* the Russian translation genuinely is less old-fashioned...

"Is Tanya right when she says that it is better to have been born without wings at all?" - what sort of philosophical question is that to put in a textbook and how on earth do they expect us to have the vocabulary to answer it in Russian?

I can't judge as to the Russian version, but the English half of these dialogues (a loose idiomatic translation) is charmingly 'period' in flavour:
"Let's go in now and then we'll see everyone come in."
"Here are our seats. I say, what comfort!"
"The place is certainly full."
"Don't let's be late. (INTERVAL BELL) Oh, they're all coming back. It's no good going now."

How did Bela get back to the inn after going missing, presumed eaten?
(Very glad to see Tam survive, though; I had assumed his death was going to be Rand's Inciting Incident, as I didn't remember him featuring later in the series....)