A few weeks ago we posted part one of Jo Bourne's translation of a YouTube posting of a French documentary about the almasty. We continue with part two...
Almasty. Yeti du Caucase. Part 2
Realisation
Sylvain Pallix
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QdzYiQYg9UM&feature=related
Rough draft translation by Jo Bourne 9 October 2010
Voiceover: [Proving] the existence of the Almasty is the object of this journey, but the circumstances [of the trip mean that] science is a long way from daily concerns. Tracking the creature across these vast, wild spaces often feels like a pointless exercise. Like we’re chasing an illusion. In this republic, where the creature is hardly likely to delight [to do much for] the embryonic tourist industry, it is perhaps a strange [daft] idea to want to photograph or film it.
We’re in the valley of the river Moushta [that’s what it sounds like, can’t find it], where tracks have been discovered. He is convinced that this place, filled with canyons and inaccessible gorges is an ideal habitat for the Almasty.
ANDRE KAZLOV, ANTHROPOLOGIST
[Well we’ve found footprints…]
“It was here in 1976 that we found traces of stones [with tracks] maybe belonging to a relic hominin. Three footprints on one side of the river and three or four here. In one of the footprints there was a hair. The hair was analysed at the laboratory of Forensic Medicine at the Perm Medical Institute. It has an interesting structure. It does not belong to animals or humans.
Voicover: It will take a million detection systems if we are to have any hope of covering the region. Even then, it would be pure chance were the Almasty just to wander out of the neighbouring forest. Nature is the most precious ally of wild creatures. [Even] Bears and wolves have escaped our watch, offering not so much as a footprint to assuage our curiosity.
And the Almasty – too quiet? [Why the silence?] Lkely it has no desire for its destiny to collide with that of man.
SYLVAIN MAHUZIER, NATURALIST
“[Can’t hear the start of what he says] Almasty, that it a question very painful [incomprehensible, bad sound and he’s quiet] can we reasonably, from a scientific point of view, let this chance [too quiet] in the Caucusus, and never know what this creature – probably very important for all anthropologists – is?”
Voiceover: In an attempt to solve the mystery of this creature, night vision glasses amplify sight under the moon and stars – just part of our technological arsenal.
[the film jumps here]
… hypodermic pistol. Its only for making it sleep so we can gather indisputable proof: hair, saliva, a drop of blood, prints from hands and feet, as well as a mask from the face. The Almasty is not destined to be a hunting trophy, even less a circus attraction…
3:19
Voiceover: Our exploration takes place in a radius [? Rayon. Lit: ray] of 100 km around St Makavot [this is what it sounds like] and often brings us close to Mount Elbrus. We have, several times, sought a family who were said to have raised an Almasty, without much success [Nous avons a plusiers repris cherche un famille qu aurait ete eleve un Almasty, sans grand success]. A negative response is sometimes a symbol of a religious taboo. To not speak of the diabolical creature is primarily to avoid [incomprehensible word. Possibly a word for a curse?].
There are places where the Almasty has been seen more often than others. At Fermi [?] Baksan, the shadow of the yeti seems to fall on each street corner.
HOSSEIN ATMOURZAEV
He never shows himself in the day. We can’t see him. There’s something weird about them. Something repoussant, even. Otherwise, they look like men. He was taller than me. About this high. They are like wolves: they don’t turn their heads but turn their bodies… like this.
Other man: He turned round like a wolf, you understand…?
Micha: Like that…
Other man: Yes, like that, he turned his whole body round. And then he left.
Voiceover: Our belief wavers according to the witnesses we speak to. The similarity of the descriptions is surprising – how can everyone have the same repeated hallucinations?
Yet for the most part, the witnesses all treat their encounters as a unique experience. Like the director of the school at Fermi Baksan, they all take the trouble to remember the date, and take us to the precise spot of the event that marked their memory. It was in 1940 that he saw the Almasty in the village where he was born, [that was later] razed by Stalin.
ICHZIR OUZDENOV
“My parents had gone haymaking; at the time I was a small boy. I came out over there… and in this tree I saw an Almasty. He was small, black. I didn’t pay attention to his eyes. His fur covered his whole body.”
The Almasty was more commonly seen in the years before the war when there was little in the way of mechanisation and where the villages had no electricity.
The fracas [ ? xxxxxx] and the massive deportation of the Balkarian people towards central Asia has also served to distance the wild man from their base [think they mean man’s base, ie proximity to man]. To see the Almasty and find tracks is increasingly rare.
6:55
A farmer in the valley of [Hip soco? Do you have a map?] had that chance and the fright of its life during our stay. It was his dog that put her on alert. She first thought it was a fox attacking her hens.
(the woman appears to count six, if schist is six)
Voice: “Are you sure they’re the tracks of an Almasty?
DOUCHA IVANOVA
“I’m sure. I saw it with my own eyes. It wasn’t a man. And I immediately knew what it was.
He was small like that…
His hair was like that. [gestures] The eyes were different. A bit like that [drawing] and his forehead was high.”
Voice: Higher than that of a man?
Doucha: “Yes.”
Voice: “What colour was he? Black?”
Doucha: No, like the fur. [pointing to parka trim].
Voiceover: Andre is less enthusiastic, maintaining a scientific reserve. The angle of the stride seems to him closer to that of man. The Almasty walks in a line, like a tightrope walker [not clear if he means generally, or this suspect Almasty]. However, he’s never seen anyone walking barefoot in the region.
Andre: In this footprint, the big toe is longer than in the other footprint. I think this is the footprint of another creature [two different kinds of relic hominin? Surely not – Jo].
Voiceover: These footprints are [can’t catch it] a fragile vestige of our objective. They take a cast, less for posterity than for analysis.
If the Almasty was walking here, so close to our base, it’s rather frustrating, no?
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