It's been a delight e-mailing back and forth about the English-Russian translation with "Jean-Luc," the Russian Trekker who asked for a Russian version of my vid.
And interesting: What exactly did I mean "Spock was a bit of a pill" and Kirk seemed "a bit of a dolt"?
And what does "No greater love" mean?
That last one was a bit of trouble.
When I used it, I trusted that most native English speakers would recognize its meaning, even if they didn't know its source. (John 15:13, "Greater love has no man than this, that he lay down his life for his friends.") I wonder if I'm wrong... Anyway, I used it as shorthand, not as a religious reference.
But Jean-Luc tells me that she doesn't know what it means and that Russians know the Beatles better than the Bible. (Just like John Lennon said!)
Should we use the whole quote? she wondered.
No, that would make it specifically Christian, which would be all wrong--the characters are not Christian. (Especially not Spock, which is one reason Trekkies objected to "Amazing Grace" being played at his funeral, though I was OK with that: it was part of Scotty's cultural repertoire, and he had the bagpipes.)
After fretting about another way to say it, I finally realized we could just use the second half of the quote--"he gave his life for his friends". Easy, but it took me more effort to arrive at that than you'd think.
Here's a funny thing. Turns out the way you write "Bluetooth" in Russian is "Bluetooth."