Examples of translation problems

[Andrew Jameson]

Dear Colleagues,
I am looking for linguistic examples for a lecture.
The lecture deals, among other things, with instances
where serious misunderstandings arise (or are
capable of arising) because of the mismatch of
the English and Russian languages and cultures.
These are instances where each side believes they
have understood the other, but are nonetheless at cross
purposes. I would be particularly interested in examples
and anecdotes from real life about these problems.
My examples would be:
natsional'nost' (In the West, loosely used for citizenship;
so a Russian who is a citizen of Lithuania, may well answer
a nationality question "Russian" and later be accused of
giving contradictory or false information.)
bezopasnost' (Used in Russian for both safety and security,
which are as different as chalk and cheese, especially
difficult as Russia largely lacks a "safety culture".)
kontrol' (Used in all European languages except English
for checking and supervising, but in English meaning
"to be in charge of" something.)
The lack of a "real" word for "learn" in Russian makes
it difficult to talk about non-teacher centred learning when
discussing education.
Further contributions are welcome. I shall try to summarise
the results to the list.
Thanks for your interest.
Andrew Jameson
Chair, Russian Committee, ALL
Reviews Editor, Rusistika
Listowner, allnet, cont-ed-lang, russian-teaching
1 Brook Street, Lancaster LA1 1SL   UK
Tel: 01524 32371  (+44 1524 32371)
Virus checker: Norton Symantec

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