@RegDwigнt I'll take a look.

@Reg: OK, I don't know what people are finding particularly jarring. There is only one thing that might be as code-switching (and only between dialects): where you say "This here mighty floe is our boat." The demonstrative is one that is redolent of an Appalachian or Southern dialect in the US. Is that the one you've been receiving complaints about? If it's not, I can't imagine what else might be the problem.

I looked online, and apparently that determiner is a feature of the York dialect in Britain, among others.

I didn't notice it the first time through because I was following along with the chords (you know me, I get distracted by chords and things and stuff). But when I followed the words more closely it did kind of stand out. The more I think about it, the more I think you might want to change it to something else.

"This our mighty floe is a boat" would keep the same register and dialect, and scans the same. "This our mighty flow is just our boat" would make you change one quarter to two eighths, but I don't think that too troublesome.

Let me know what you think.

All you EL&U chat denizens, this video is for you. ^

Don't be put off by the title. It's more of a come-on than anything.

Denizens of humanity.

Not all of which are humanitarian.

Hence the lack of moral obligation in the title of the book.

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@Robusto Thank you. Yes, that's the one.

Right. So. What happened there was an attempt at keeping the overall register more down-to-earth.

Well, maybe not even a deliberate attempt so much as a welcome side-effect of one way to fill in the meter.

The original sits somewhere in-between. It's poetic, but very simple. Not quite as high as slumber/encumber. But those have to stay because I have no better solution there. And so some way to offset that register elsewhere may be in order.

This is not a sonet recited from a stage, but a lullaby sung by a mom.

And her seeking to use poetic turns of phrase but occasionally as if slipping back into everyday ones is not entirely out of character.

Maybe the contrast as it is now is a tad too much, and I tend to agree if only because the original is simply more even. But so far I was not able to quite match that in English, so I opted for the second-best thing.

@Robusto Yeah, something like that. I'm not really in love with the sound of "this our" (I feel like it's somehow even more convoluted than "this here"), but yeah, something in that vein.

Or indeed even much simpler: "And this mighty floe is a boat".

I have a bunch of alternatives like that on my list. There are maybe a dozen variations of that line in total (as there are of every line), and I'm liking the simplicity of "and this" the most.

It didn't make the cut because the next line likewise begins with an "and". I don't like the sound and structure of that, nor does it match the source material. I might come to reconsider it, especially if other options are off the table, but it's too early to say.

This whole thing was done in just two hours in the middle of the night, as that is all I have these days. In a professional setting I would have more like two months, or even years. But I don't have that now.

So what I do instead is re-visit every score two months down the line. That luxury I usually do have. But that's only two months from now. So who knows.

But yeah, that's the bit.

@RegDwigнt You know, I'm not exactly in love with "mighty" for floe. A better contrast might be to call it an "icy floe"? That scans the same and reinforces the potential negativity of the place they're in.

"And this icy floe is just our boat" ...

Yeah, but "mighty" comes pre-packed with ideas of safety, which militates against the idea that there is a contrast being made.

@Robusto yeah, I started with a "floe of ice". Little floe of ice is our boat. But there's an article missing there, and mentioning ice also seemed redundant in a way. Like, I know it's perfectly natural to say, but what other floes are even there. I dunno.

@RegDwigнt I would call it reinforcement in this case, not redundancy.

@Robusto well yes is my point. There's no contrast here in the original. It's all safe. You're on a big ship, and the Ursa Major is watching over you. You can sleep now.

Also, polar bears LOVE ice. It's their natural habitat.

But I've given you my $.02. You're the one who has to write it.

@Robusto yes, that was my thinking as well. But I decided to look into other options. Because hey, if you can save a syllable for something else, might as well do.

@Robusto yeah inorite. Sucks to be me.

It's not a problem, it's an opportunity!

True. Then again, maybe if I finally paid you all your royalties, you'd just type my chat messages for me as well.

Imagine all the effort that would save me.

But I don't like paying people.

Especially not attention. He's the worst. I will never pay attention.

I'm sorry, what were we talking about?

Don't fuck with the Jesus.

Also, my piano got finally tuned today. For the first time since the corona.

This is my beach community, Mr Anderson, my beach community!

Or whatever Agent Smith says.

I forget.

@RegDwigнt That's kinda important.

When I had a "real" piano I had to get it tuned once a month or it bothered the hell out of me.

With a digital I never even have to think about that.

Also also, one of them tuning pegs turned out to be of a slightly smaller size (it's such an old instrument, they just used whatever back then). So it couldn't be tuned. So the piano master took me to his shop and gave me the only tuning hammer of that size that he had.

What, you do your own tuning?

And I came back home and tuned the one peg. And now the tuning hammer is fucking stuck on the peg and there's no way it's ever coming off again. Shit's hilarious.

@Robusto I really don't, and I really shouldn't, the reason outlined above being only one of many.

I tried to do that on a harpsichord once and failed miserably. It's way harder than you expect.

But yeah for emergencies I do have a tuning hammer of my own just in case. I just never use it. And for this one peg it would be too large anyway, as I now know.

What note?

If it's a treble note it's going to have three pegs to adjust. You mean to say they have two regular pegs and one small one on that note?

B♭2. One of the two strings. The other was in tune.

@Robusto no, it's like really just that one peg for whatever reason. The technician said that it's also possible it was of the proper size originally but got worn out with time. He wasn't quite sure himself.

Anyway, good luck with that. I'm off to shower and get my day going. Laterz.

Thank you.

I'll go finish up the Rachmaninov or sumthin.

@Robusto it absolutely is impossible. Especially on the notes that have three strings. One kinda works. Two, uh, maybe. Three, never, never, never, ever.

Some years ago I had a conversation with my technician's older brother, who's also a technician himself and runs the shop, and one funny thing he said that I will always remember, he said, he tuned pianos for a full ten years before getting his diploma, and then he tuned pianos for a full ten years more and only then finally understood what the fuck he was even doing.

I actually mentioned that story to him earlier today when I was at the shop, and he laughed and said yeah no, truth be told, I still kinda don't.

Then the three of us talked about the Dunning–Kruger effect for a while.

One thing I did notice today was that the three years of practicing the violin do seem to have improved my pitch perception. Not by an awful lot, but noticeably.

@RegDwigнt My former piano tuner explained that what you do is set a temper on a single octave and then "octave out" ... but setting that temper is reeeeeallly fucking hard.

@Robusto yeah mine actually only ever tunes the A, and then just goes from there a half step at a time. It's quite a feat. And then only uses octaves to check, but they're always fine. I'd be off by a quarter tone by then.

Like, on the violin I sometimes am. And there you always have some reference point midway through, like an open string or a fifth. So really I screw up that much in half the distance.

BTW I'm going with "on our floe just like on a boat" for the time being. Just to get it ouf of the way. Rachmaninov was scheduled for like yesterday and I'm still not done even today. And by the end of the week I need some other piece already and I've not even started on that. Ugh.