piatiknizhie in English Pentalogy

[Olga Meerson]

The translation is poor, of course, but the original locution is even "poorer". Pentaptych sounds perfectly adequate but doesn't make me any happier about the original expression. Sometimes a perfect translation lays bare the badness of the original, thereby expressing condescension--in this case, towards Russian colleagues who use a word in such a bad taste so liberally... I would opt for covering up for my colleagues' bad taste. Although neither ethnically Russian nor even a citizen of Russia, I feel somewhat patriotic when it comes to these matters. It is like covering up the body of Noah, if he happens to be your father.
o.m.
____________
Olga Meerson wrote:

> Pentalogy certainly sounds good--much better than piatiknizhie does
> in Russian!

In that case, it's a poor translation. ;-)

I'm leaning toward "pentaptych," which comes across as an obscure, 
arcane term devised by someone trying to show off; it's not an everyday 
word like "diptych." (well, it /would/ be an everyday word if you were 
an artist...)

I actually had a chat with an artist a couple of months ago on this very 
question:
	"You know what a diptych is, and a triptych, right?"
	"Sure..."
	"OK, so what do you say if there are four, or five,
		or six panels?"
	"Um, er, uh, ... hunh. I don't know. Let me think..."
He finally settled on "five-panel installation," but he wasn't very 
happy with it.

-- 
War doesn't determine who's right, just who's left.
--
Paul B. Gallagher
pbg translations, inc.
"Russian Translations That Read Like Originals"
http://pbg-translations.com

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