gender in translation

[John Dunn]

Three quick points:

The word oблак is, I think, different from the other examples, in that it was at one time an acceptable alternative to облако (the 17-volume Dictionary iists it as устар.). 

On the question of sex and grammatical gender, it is sometimes possible to use masculine nouns to refer to women (or female animals), but it is much harder to find examples where the reverse happens.  The only instances I can think of are certain nouns of indirect reference, such as жертва and звезда.  This apparent restriction may be one reason why it is sometimes felt appropriate to resort to playful back formations of the type we have been talking about.

Finally, doing clever tricks with word-formation devices is not a game played only by Russians.  As P.G. Wodehouse wrote: '... I could see that, if not exactly disgruntled, he was far from being gruntled ... '

John Dunn.

________________________________________
From: SEELANGS: Slavic & East European Languages and Literatures list [SEELANGS at bama.ua.edu] On Behalf Of anne marie devlin [anne_mariedevlin at HOTMAIL.COM]
Sent: 29 July 2010 11:45
To: SEELANGS at bama.ua.edu
Subject: Re: [SEELANGS] gender in translation

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

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