www.byzcath.org Forums Mysteries: The Life of Worship The Kliros Translation Help

Hi Folks,

For those of you who know Slavonic, can you help with some translations of some of our various hymns?

I'm helping to compile a "local hymnal" and if we cross reference our 'standards' back to perhaps the Pisne Duchovni, you'll see where some our hymns with only 2 stanzas in English have 4 or more in their native language. And, further research shows the English might as well be a totally separate song, lyrics wise, compared to the slavonic. So, rather than just "make up something" and set it to the same music, I'd like to try to translate/transliterate from the old.

So, starting with one. Holy this Moment, or rather Plyvi Svitami.

Plyvi svitami pisne ľubovi,
naj zvuk tvoj hromom soteň bude.
Na nas splyvaje �časťa čudove,
sam Christos Hospoď u slavi jde

(Plyvi) shining, songs of love
May your sound rumble like the thunder of hundreds
Wonderful happiness come unto us
And Christ himself come in glory.

So what is Plyvi? I'm not a linguist, and google translate doesn't know this word.

Thoughts?

I know Russian so-so and I used to know Polish well. "Plyvi", I guess, is some form of the verb meaning "to flow" ("Flowing with lights (svitami)", i.e. shining). It is not in my Russian dictionary, but it is a root in some Polish words, and if you do not know this, Ukrainian shares a large vocabulary with Polish, moreso than with Russian, although it is in the same language group with Russian from origin and grammar and word development. It seems to follow Grimm's Law, being similar to "flow" or "fluid." I do not know if this is Slavonic, or Ruthenian dialect jazzed up as Slavonic--it is hard for me to get my head around it in Latin script with diacritics. I found a better copy elsewhere, but I have a suspicion this is a Polish hymn put into an East Slavic idiom.

This is a nice project, thanks for taking it on. You do correctly note that much of what we have in English today is more a podoben based on the melody than an actual translation.

You can also see the difficulty as accurate translations frequently have way too many syllables.

Your last line is missing "Lord".

Steve Puluka
Cantor Holy Ghost Mckees Rocks - Carpatho-Rusyn tradition
MA Theology Duquesne University
http://puluka.com/home