gender in translation

[anne marie devlin]

The concept of gender in nonuns is so interesting and when talking about animate objects, grammatical gender and sex are easily confused.  I'd be interested to know what you think about umnitsa and molodets. 

AM
 
> Date: Thu, 29 Jul 2010 10:37:13 +0100
> From: Ralph.Cleminson at PORT.AC.UK
> Subject: Re: [SEELANGS] gender in translation
> To: SEELANGS at bama.ua.edu
> 
> The problem is not only one of gender: although the connotative meaning
> of обезьяна is more or less the same as in English (hence обезьянничать и
> т.п.), the denotatative meaning is considerably wider (the Academy
> Dictionary actually defines мартышка as "маленькая обезьяна"). It would
> be interesting to know how translators of Terry Pratchett have got round
> that one.
> 
> In Russian of an earlier period, of course, there is a word which
> satisfies both the criteria of gender and semantics, namely пифик:
> perfect in every respect except that the modern reader probably wouldn't
> know what it meant.
> 
> And finally (I'm surprised that no one has mentioned this before):
> 
> По улице ходила
> Большая крокодила, 
> Она, 
> Она
> Зеленая была.
> 
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