piatiknizhie in English Pentalogy

[Evgeny Steiner]

No pentaptych would be big enough to cover up the body of mother Russia.

ES

On Mon, Oct 26, 2009 at 6:14 PM, Olga Meerson <meersono at georgetown.edu>wrote:

> 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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