gender in translation

[Sibelan Forrester]

As John's post suggests, the intention or genre of a text can 
predominate over a language's or literary tradition's usual tendencies. 
It's telling that you mention Wodehouse, John: wordplay of this kind 
tends to correlate to humorous writing (at least, it does in English). 
On a similar note, though perhaps without connotations of gender play, 
the English-language poet whose play with rhymes seems most similar to 
Mayakovsky's is Ogden Nash, though on the whole Russian and 
Anglo-American rhyming practices tended to diverge in the 20th century.

Regards,

Sibelan


On 7/29/10 6:22 AM, John Dunn wrote:
> 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.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------
 Use your web browser to search the archives, control your subscription
  options, and more.  Visit and bookmark the SEELANGS Web Interface at:
                    http://seelangs.home.comcast.net/
-------------------------------------------------------------------------