Translation of Flora/Fauna

[William Ryan]

Paul Gallagher wrote: 'doesn't always work when you're dealing with folk 
names and slang'.

Very true, and a point worth making. When I was trying to sort out the 
names of some Russian plants used in magic (and medicine - much the same 
thing) I very quickly discovered that most of the plant names could be 
applied to different plants in different parts of Russia, so that even 
if you can identify the actual plant in one place, and find the Linnaean 
term for it, you cannot necessarily use that to establish an English 
translation for occurrences of the word in contexts where the identity 
of the actual plant cannot be verified.
And Russian folk terms for plants are also complicated by the use of 
diminutives. "Solyonenkaya travka" is in fact a good example. Dal' (s.v. 
sol') lists sol'nik and sol'noe-zel'e which he translates as Anthyllis 
vulneraria; he also gives sol'nik as meaning Salicornia. Any of these 
could easily be a variant of "solyonenkaya travka" (and there are more 
plant names with sol' as the basic lexeme in the same entry - 
bab'ia-sol', zaiach'ia sol'). Names which include colour or taste words 
can have particularly wide usage - Dal' does not list "chernukh" as a 
bird but confidently identifies "chernukha" as a plant (Nigella or 
Githago), a fish (Scardinius erythrophthalmus) or a mushroom (Agaricus 
necator) - and the number of plants and creatures with 'chern-" as part 
of their folk name is enormous.
One can say much the same about popular names for plants and birds in 
English (and no doubt most other languages), quite apart from the 
different usages in British and American (or other) English which have 
been discussed in an earlier thread on birds (buzzards if I recall 
correctly). These are, of course, problems for translators - even if you 
can determine what plant a Russian popular plant name refers to, do you 
then seek an English popular name, and if so which? If the English names 
are regional you risk confusing an already confused situation (i.e. 
would it make sense to translate a Siberian word with a word found only 
in Yorkshire?); and if instead you use a learned term in a popular 
context you will have a stylistic absurdity.
Even if you know exactly what a plant is you can still have a problem - 
how do you translate Russian "pelargoniia" - pelargonium (for the 
knowledgeable or pedantic) or geranium (as most people know it)?
I am sorry if these jottings do not offer a solution but I don't think 
there can be a general all-purpose answer to this question.

Will Ryan


Paul B. Gallagher wrote:
> nataliek at UALBERTA.CA wrote:
>
>> Cumbersome, but effective - I used this method when writing an 
>> article  on folk medicine and trying to find the equivalent of 
>> Russian and  Ukrainian medicinal plants.
>>
>> Take the Russian word.  Look up the Latin equivalent.  From the 
>> Latin  equivalent, go to the English word.
>
> Good practice, but doesn't always work when you're dealing with folk 
> names and slang.
>
> In this case...
>
>>> Two types of birds:
>>>
>>> nochnaya ptitsa-kovyrun
>>> ptitsa-chernukhi
>
> No listings, or even near misses, for either term or any of their key 
> components, in my best source:
>
> Словарь названий животных: Птицы / Dictionary of Animal Names in Five 
> Languages: Birds, by R. L. Bëme and V. Ye. Flint; ed. by V. Ye. 
> Sokolov. Moscow: Russky yazyk, 1994. 11,060 names in Latin, Russian, 
> English, German & French.
>
>>> One plant:
>>>
>>> solyonenkaya travka
>
> No listing, or even a near miss, for this term or for "trava 
> solënenkaya" in my best source:
>
> Russian-English Botanical Dictionary, by Paul Macura. Columbus, OH: 
> Slavica, 1981. About 40,000 entries.
>

-- 

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Emeritus Professor W. F. Ryan FBA, FSA
Warburg Institute
(School of Advanced Study, University of London)
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