Need some help from William Faulkner enthusiasts

My GF has to translate a text written by Faulkner. And it's not that easy, because of his idiosyncratic language. I've helped her as much as I could but we are still stuck with some phrases we have trouble understanding. So... basically looking for help with this.
If you're up to it, please send me a PM.

[MENTION=88551]Space_Cadet[/MENTION]...

Di you get some help?

Yeah, I answered about 15 questions, translating from the Faulkner into English. It was fun. What a gnarly writer. Space_Cadet needed help with a translation into Armenian, which sounds brilliantly obscure. I'd love more details myself...

Armenian? my weakest language... next to Arapaho..

I am sure there are many Southern idioms and expressions that do not translate well into Armenian, or many other languages for that matter.

Tight as Dick's hatband
You can't make a silk purse out of a sow's ear
I'm fixin' to ______________________
Barking up the wrong tree
I have a mind to _____________
Bless your heart
Lord a' mercy
Many, many more

I am a high school English teacher as well as a proud Southerner. I don't know any Armenian, but I'd be happy to help if I can.

I just helped with getting Faulkner into English; Armenian s a whole nother kettle of fish.

Here are the questioned Faulkner excerpts, with my answers. I'm sure Space_Cadet would welcome any corrections, as would I.

1. I dont aim for that storm to catch me up here. I’d blow too durn far once I got started.

"Durn" is a euphemism for "damn" or "darn." I guess he means that he will run so fast the approaching storm won't catch him.


2. I knowed that when she see you she would know hit, same as writing.


"Hit" means "it." Her seeing you would be crystal-clear to her, as clear as writing.


3. I see him dissolve—legs, a rolling eye, a gaudy splotching like cold flames and float upon the dark in fading solution; all one yet neither; all either yet none. I can see hearing coil toward him, caressing, shaping his hard shape—fetlock, hip, shoulder and head; smell and sound.


It's a horse, right? He visualizes hearing, or sound, as encircling the body of the horse, explaining perhaps the shivers that play across the skin of a horse


4. Well, I be durn if I like to see my work washed outen the ground, work I sweat over. It’s a fact. A fellow wouldn't mind seeing it washed up if he could just turn on the rain himself.


Plowing, his work on the land, is ephemeral, and he resents it when it is washed away. He'd mind less if he had some control himself over the destructive rain.




5. A white signboard wheels up like a motionless hand lifted above the profound desolation of the ocean.


"Wheels up" means appear suddenly.


6. The land runs out of Darl's eyes; they swim to pin points.


Hmm. I think Darl is dreaming about possessing land and his eyes widen; when reality hits (no land), his eyes return to their original pointiness.






7. Because a fellow can see ever now and then that children have more sense than him. But he dont like to admit it to them until they have beards. After they have a beard, they are too busy because they dont know it they'll ever quite make it back to where they were in sense before they was haired, so you dont mind admitting then to folks that are worrying about the same thing that aint worth the worry that you are yourself.


We all worry about the same thing, and childhood fears are as important as those formed later. None of the things worried about are worth the effort.


8. Jewel looks at him, then at me, then his face turns in in that quiet, constant, questing about the scene


Is Jewel a man? If so, his face turns in on itself as he looks around the room. Hence the double "in." But the "he" of "his face" could be the face shutting down. Depends on the context.


9. We could watch the rope cutting down into the water, and we could feel the weight of the wagon kind of blump and lunge lazy like, like it just as soon as not


The weight of the wagon going through a ford is personified by the "blump" sound, and this "personality" of the wagon would rather be fording the stream as not.


10. In the wagon bed it lies profoundly, the long pale planks hushed a little with wetting yet still yellow, like gold seen through water, save for two long muddy smears.


Faulkner again personifies the material, in this instance the planks in the wagon. Thus they are "hushed," meaning less bright in this instance.


11. I lay by the lamp, holding up my own head, watching him cap and suture it before he breathed


Not sure. Is there a real head injury? If so, the narrator literally holds his head steady while the "he" character performs low-grade surgery. Don't know what "cap" means in this context. Sorry.


12. He is down there in the barn, sliding fluidly past the gaudy lunging swirl, into the stall with it.

"It" is again a horse. The narrator avoids the (dangerous) horse to enter the stall; he loves and understands horses.


13. He couldn't buy no team from nobody, let alone Snopes, withouten he had something to mortgage he didn't know would mortgage yet.


He's so broke that he can't afford to buy a team of horses (or mules), not even from the Snopes; if he can ever raise the money, he doesn't see how yet.


14. Cash broke his leg and now the sawdust is running out. He is bleeding to death is Cash.


Is Cash's leg really broken, in reality? If so, "sawdust," used to stuff dollsand toys, is being used as a metaphor for blood.


15. I could last it," Cash says. "It aint but one more day. It dont bother to speak of." He looks at us, his eyes wide in his thin gray face, questioning. "It sets up so," he says.


I think "sets up so" means that the injury has stabilized enough for him to go on, at least for another day.

Faulkner = American James Joyce