Lost in Translation

There are two ways you can translate a foreign language, literally and idiomatically.  Some languages make almost no sense when translated literally, I understand that Chinese is the worst in that respect.  When you translate a song or poem by either method, you usually lose the rhyme and the meter.  If you try to put the rhyme and the meter back in, you have to practically rewrite the song, often losing much of the original meaning in the process.  I think most of Otava Yo's material is derived from simple Russian folk songs, so the meaning probably isn't very complex to begin with, love, war, crops, livestock, things like that.

Thanks to Old Dog for informing me of the difficulty I would likely encounter trying to make a DVD from downloaded material.  It sounds to me like it would be more trouble than it's worth, so I shan't pursue it any further.  I can view the videos on You Tube any time I want to, but my hypothetical wife doesn't have the time or the inclination to sit in front of a computer for very long.  It was mostly for her benefit that I wanted to buy or make a DVD.  I think I will buy a few of their audio CDs eventually, but first I want to get more familiar with the songs so that I can select the ones I like the most.

I agree with Uncle Ken that Trump might have more success selling his wall to Congress if he would stop calling it a wall.  He ranted so much about it during his campaign, likely before he knew what was involved, that it's become a matter of honor with him.  Truth be known, they have been upgrading the border barriers for some time, and might have secured the whole stretch eventually.  I don't know if Trump thinks that he can do it faster but, either way, it's going to be too little too late.  The time to secure the border was like a hundred years ago, and that ship sailed a long time ago.

One thing for sure, the present system they have for processing asylum claims is totally inadequate to handle the current volume of applicants.  If they hold them in detention, they have to feed them for a year or two before their case even comes up.  If they catch and release them, most of them won't bother to show up for their hearing at all, they'll just stay incognito and make lots of babies that will automatically become citizens when they're born.  That's another law that should be changed, but it will require a constitutional amendment.  Lots of luck on that one!