From Russia with Rings
Soviet nostalgia. Their own version of Lord of the Rings from 1991 has been found in an old TV-archive, digitized and uploaded to YouTube. It looks just like what one could expect from a eastern European puppet show from decades ago -- even if it's live action. It only aired once before the collapse of the Soviet Union, not that they are related events. While it doesn't have the production value of the Jackson version, it does have things he chose to cut from the books.
Khraniteli1: The Soviet take on Lord of the Rings
Soviet TV version of Lord of the Rings rediscovered after 30 years
Keepers, Part 12
Keepers, Part 23
1 Keepers
2 Хранители | Часть 1 | Телеспектакль по мотивам повести Д.Р.Р.Толкиена - Keepers | Part 1 | Teleplay based on the novel by J.R.R. Tolkien
3 Хранители | Часть 2 | Телеспектакль по мотивам повести Д.Р.Р.Толкиена - Keepers | Part 2 | Teleplay based on the novel by J.R.R. Tolkien
[Ed Note - Translations via Google Translate. Please provide any corrections in the comments.]
Soviet TV Version of Lord of the Rings Rediscovered After 30 Years
The Guardian reports that a Soviet television adaptation of The Lord of the Rings — thought to have been lost to time — was rediscovered and posted on YouTube last week, delighting Russian-language fans of JRR Tolkien.
The 1991 made-for-TV film, Khraniteli, based on Tolkien’s "The Fellowship of the Ring", is the only adaptation of his Lord of the Rings trilogy believed to have been made in the Soviet Union. Few knew about its existence until Leningrad Television’s successor, 5TV, abruptly posted the film to YouTube last week [part one | part two], where it has gained more than 800,000 views within several days.
(Score: 1) by Arik on Tuesday April 06 2021, @11:30PM (15 children)
Английские субтитры? Пожалуйста?
Кто-то должен говорить по-русски.
Чертова кириллица мне.
Я немного знаю только греческий, но не кириллицу, извините.
If laughter is the best medicine, who are the best doctors?
(Score: 2) by istartedi on Tuesday April 06 2021, @11:40PM (13 children)
When I looked at it, there was close-captioning in Russian, which you could run through automatic translation. This works about as well as you'd expect, which is to say *badly*. So if there's demand for human-translated English subtitles, maybe we'll get it but don't hold your breath. I think it'd have to be a labor of love on somebody's part.
Appended to the end of comments you post. Max: 120 chars.
(Score: 2) by Arik on Tuesday April 06 2021, @11:46PM (4 children)
Most of the lovers monolingual Russian but surely not all.
Hence the post.
I find that, knowing the story already, and recognizing cognates occasionally, I can make sense of several of the scenes without knowing a word of Russian that hasn't shown up in English language newsprint recently.
Others are genuinely baffling, however. A genuine fansub would really make this a lot more understandable.
If laughter is the best medicine, who are the best doctors?
(Score: 2) by looorg on Wednesday April 07 2021, @12:19AM (1 child)
It wouldn't hurt with some proper, fan made, subs. My language skills are not good enough to understand it even if I know and am familiar with the story. That said I can still enjoy it for what it is without knowing the language, sort of like you can hum along to songs in foreign languages without knowing a word they are saying. That said it's probably somewhat of acquired taste and perhaps something for the die hard Ring fans.
That said I'm wondering if this has potential to become like a cult classic, something that looks so bad it might become "good". Sort of like the Star Wars x-mas special bad ...
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday April 07 2021, @12:46AM
The Star Wars Holiday Special is its own unique kind of bad...
(Score: 2) by Freeman on Wednesday April 07 2021, @03:57PM (1 child)
I know someone already mentioned the Star Wars Christmas special, but I imagine this "lost classic" is about as "classic" as the Star Wars Christmas special. Otherwise known as horrifically awful, but possibly awful enough to be good in some ways.
Joshua 1:9 "Be strong and of a good courage; be not afraid, neither be thou dismayed: for the Lord thy God is with thee"
(Score: 3, Touché) by Arik on Friday April 09 2021, @02:46AM
If laughter is the best medicine, who are the best doctors?
(Score: 2) by maxwell demon on Wednesday April 07 2021, @05:59AM (6 children)
How did you copy/paste the subtitles? I wanted to see how DeepL did on them, but couldn't copy them from the transcript on YouTube.
BTW, the Russian subtitles are automatically generated. I don't know Russian, but my experience with automatically generated subtitles on YouTube in general tells me that already the source material for the translation isn't too well. Also the subtitle for 2:08 reads not something Russian/Kyrillic, but “you do”, which I'm pretty sure was not in the original text, further hinting at the quality of the subtitles.
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
(Score: 2) by istartedi on Wednesday April 07 2021, @06:40AM (5 children)
It's not immediately obvious, but when you click the gear icon, then click Subtitles, another sub-menu appears. Then you can choose auto-translate and it will give you a choice of languages.
Appended to the end of comments you post. Max: 120 chars.
(Score: 2) by maxwell demon on Wednesday April 07 2021, @07:59AM
So I get there's no way to translate it with anything other than Google Translate (other than manually typing all the subtitles)?
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
(Score: 2) by maxwell demon on Wednesday April 07 2021, @08:01AM (3 children)
Also, I don't even get the Auto-translate option; maybe that's only available on mobile?
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
(Score: 2) by Magic Oddball on Wednesday April 07 2021, @09:03AM
They should also work in the desktop version of Firefox, though for some reason the option for auto-translation will only appear in the "Subtitles/CC" section of the gear-icon menu after the CC icon has been clicked on to turn on captions.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday April 07 2021, @05:22PM
It works on a PC with FireFox.
(Score: 2) by Arik on Friday April 09 2021, @03:02AM
You're missing nothing but hilarity however.
Well it manages to get most of some of the really easier videos I suppose. In and of itself a feat; by last decades standards, but it hasn't improved much. Imagine an autistic south asian 9 year old who doesn't understand English but has been working REALLY HARD for 3 years now at transcribing it phonetically without knowing a single word. And he's dang good at it, thank you very much.
But he's still transcribing the sounds themselves, de zounz mselvz. We got another autistic kid, this one's 11 and he's from east asia and also doesn't speak a word of English, but he's been at it 4 years and he's real good at looking at the phonetic transcript and matching that up with a word from the English dictionary.
They're both really amazing at what they're doing; but the end result still is far from good in most cases.
If laughter is the best medicine, who are the best doctors?
(Score: 4, Funny) by kazzie on Wednesday April 07 2021, @10:11AM
Lest we be accused of double-standards, Peter Jackson's Fellowship Of The Ring also had some bad captions [archive.org].
(Score: 3, Funny) by driverless on Wednesday April 07 2021, @04:09AM
They're taking the hobbits to Leningrad, to Leningrad, to Leningrad,
They're taking the hobbits to Leningrad...
(Score: 2, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday April 07 2021, @12:47AM (2 children)
Frodo: Comrade Sam.
Sam: Da, superior comrade Frodo?
(Score: 2) by looorg on Wednesday April 07 2021, @01:04AM (1 child)
You thought Lord of the Rings was long winded before ... So is this going to be the story of how Comrade Stal .. Sauroman vanquishes the capitalist dwarfs/elves and make a workers paradise with his Orcs in Mordor, is Mount Doom his personal Dacha?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday April 07 2021, @01:19AM
Galadriel: Look in the mirror, comrade frodo.
Frodo: Don't tell me what to do, babushka comrade,
(Score: 4, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday April 07 2021, @01:24AM (9 children)
It is not a film, TV or not. It is "Телеспектакль", which was a (not very popular at all) genre during the soviet times. It literally means "play on TV" or "TV play" or "theater TV play" - you get the idea, and that is what it is - a theater play filmed and edited for TV presentation, with couple scenes filmed outside. Cheap to make, and provided some degree of entertainment. Being familiar with most of the soviet time classics (I grew up there), I cannot recall a single "TV play" that I watched or liked while growing up. None. It was always an obscure thing, serving to fill up air time on the two TV channels we had, with something, anything.
Some posters above suggested a "fan effort translation" for subtitles. Sure, I could do that in a weekend or two, but... it is horrible. The acting and dialog are abysmally bad. It is not worth anyone's time, no idea why it is even news. If every mediocre thing ever created in the Soviet Union was newsworthy, SoylentNews editors would have job security for 10 years.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday April 07 2021, @01:47AM
"SoylentNews editors would have job security for 10 years."
LOL, good one.
(Score: 3, Touché) by c0lo on Wednesday April 07 2021, @01:47AM (2 children)
You mean... the Soviet TV did have mediocre programs too? (grin)
(as a kid, I used to enjoy those [youtube.com]. No need of translation then, neither today)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 1) by The Mighty Buzzard on Wednesday April 07 2021, @02:09AM
Cosmoball [imdb.com] was quite decent for cinema nowadays, Russian or not. Which is to say it's a passable way to kill an evening when you don't have anything you genuinely enjoy doing lined up. So better than most of the absolute garbage coming out of Hollywood lately but not as good as the extremely rare good stuff they somehow manage to accidentally make.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday April 07 2021, @02:13AM
That one is, indeed, a classic. Widely believed to be strongly inspired by "Tom and Jerry" cartoons, it was immensely popular among the kids (and adults too) during the soviet era. And, as you noticed, it was only, or one of the few, Soviet cartoons without spoken dialog in it. Unfortunately, as most things in the USSR, it was rationed. In twenty years of living there, I don't think I had a chance to watch every episode made. I remember getting the weekend newspaper with TV schedule for the next week and circling the 10 minute intervals simply titled "Cartoon" for the week, hoping they would play an episode of "Nu Pogody" ("Just you Wait!") that you linked. Or some other decent one. But that was rare.
(Score: 2, Funny) by The Mighty Buzzard on Wednesday April 07 2021, @02:02AM (2 children)
Job security? We already chain them to their desks. How much more secure can we make them?
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday April 07 2021, @02:09AM (1 child)
Liar.
You don't got no desk, you can't afford'em.
(Score: 1) by The Mighty Buzzard on Thursday April 08 2021, @05:04AM
Or chains either, which is why we make them bring their own.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 2) by crafoo on Wednesday April 07 2021, @09:37AM
I'm moderately curious how the story was modified to account for Russian culture and if any Soviet core values made it into the adaptation.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday April 07 2021, @08:05PM
I was tracking and agreeing with you until you got to this line. Personally I think it's very reasonable that this was posted. It's "Lord of the Rings," which inherently makes it more interesting to "nerdy" people, of which there is a disproportionately large number here.
It's like saying, "why is it newsworth that Steve Jobs died? Are we going to cover every CEO death from now on?"
I say that as somebody who did find this article interesting and am glad it was posted... and considering the non-trivial number of people who responded to the article, I can't be the only one.
(Score: 0, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday April 07 2021, @04:18AM
Reminder that the depiction of orcs is clearly Tolkien's crypto-racism and so all of his work should be canceled.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday April 08 2021, @10:19AM (2 children)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kHFKdgjEugs [youtube.com]
3,5 hours of fun
(Score: 2) by looorg on Thursday April 08 2021, @01:39PM (1 child)
That is awesome, sadly even less people will understand what they are saying compared to the russian version. Finnish Gollum is looking super creepy ...
(Score: 2) by looorg on Thursday April 08 2021, @01:45PM
Following the comments there was a subbed version of the finnish hobbit.
Hobitit 1 Bilbo Eng sub The Hobbits Finland 1993
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4gzWA4Euzck&list=PL3ocuSNpUyox511pHCbDfF8FKKXQq5ONn&index=1 [youtube.com]