shlyukha, kurva, shalava

[Misha Angelovskiy]

Dear Margo and list, 

To my native ear (and after a brief consultation with
the the owner of my mother's tongue) here are my two
cents:

shluxa is a whore:  much like in English, it's a
designation of profession with heavy negative
connotations;

kurva is a bitch:  more of a comment on personality of
the woman (in most dialects, though admittedly not
all); to me it also seems slightly stronger than the
omnipresent suka.

Translating the statement as 

"I am a whore, not a bitch" 

may leave your reader slightly confused, since the
finesse of distinction is as high in English (it seems
to my non-native ear) as in Russian.  The meaning of
the statement seems best rendered by 

"I may be a whore, but I am not a nasty bitch"

though, of course, it is up to you to exercise as much
or as little translator's license as seems
appropriate.

Finally, shalava tends to refer to lowest class
people.  It seems to connote cheapness and dirt, seems
non-gender specific though probably used most often to
refer to women, and nothing in its meaning actually
refers to exchanging sex for money.  I think if faced
with translating the word into contemporary American
English, I would go with skank.

Hope this helps.

Misha Angelovskiy

P.S.: Spell-checking this message sent me googling for
the correct spelling of skank in English.  Check out
how brilliantly informative our friends at wikipedia
are:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Skank




--- msr2003 at COLUMBIA.EDU wrote:

> Esteemed colleagues,
> 
> Please pardon the apparent crudity of the subject
> line.  Thing is,
> I'm working on a literary translation in which these
> terms are
> juxtaposed with one another.  Can anyone tell me
> (off-list, I
> guess, unless this is a topic others are burning to
> know more
> about) what the English equivalent might be to "Ya
> shlyukha, no ne
> kurva"?  And what English word or phrase would
> convey "shalava"?
> 
> Thanks in advance,
> Margo Rosen
> Columbia University
> 
>
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