gender in translation

[Alina Israeli]

1. I must say that I am a lot happier with the ironic statement of  
Ivanov. I firmly believe that the phrase "великий и могучий" should  
be used only in ironic contexts these days.

As for пёсик it's a nice word, but much too common (as in "common  
man", not "frequent") and terms of endearment have to have pizzazz.  
(Although I would not call песик "corny" — плоско, избито, пошло.)

2. On the subject of Молодца! I am not sure it is feminine.

3. Умница is common gender. Emotive common gender words tend to be  
used in feminine even when applied to men. Here grandfather says to  
grandson: Умница ты моя!

(http://books.google.com/books?id=yC0bAAAAYAAJ&pg=PA45&lpg=PA45&dq=% 
22%D1%83%D0%BC%D0%BD%D0%B8%D1%86%D0%B0+%D1%82%D1%8B+%D0%BC%D0%BE%D1%8F 
%22+%D0%BC%D0% 
BE&source=bl&ots=3pwMAsJOLP&sig=7xfzr0gS6XKOXKWNZILZGvpHuaU&hl=en&ei=z5Z 
RTJzcM4L58Ab_qISTBQ&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=6&ved=0CDEQ6AEw 
BQ#v=onepage&q=%22%D1%83%D0%BC%D0%BD%D0%B8%D1%86%D0%B0%20%D1%82%D1%8B% 
20%D0%BC%D0%BE%D1%8F%22%20%D0%BC%D0%BE&f=false)


On Jul 29, 2010, at 5:04 AM, Alex Shafarenko wrote:

>
> Ivanov concludes his pastiche with a line that explains it all:  
> "Велик, могучий русский языка! "
> Indeed the Russian language is unimaginably mighty. One can  
> construct a word of the
> "wrong" gender and use it. Be warned though that it does not come  
> alone. It drags along
> a whole bunch of phonetic, semantic and semiotic links and will  
> significantly colour
> the sentence it is used in.
>
> Specifically, to call a dog "собак" as a term of endearment is  
> perfectly OK (even though
> the boringly correct word пёсик is every bit as good in my humble  
> opinion).


> On Jul 29, 2010, at 6:10 AM, Stephanie Briggs wrote:
>
>> I have heard people say "Молодцы!" and "Молодца!"
>
> On Jul 29, 2010, at 5:45 AM, anne marie devlin wrote:
>
>> 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.
>>

Alina Israeli
Associate Professor of Russian
LFS, American University
4400 Massachusetts Ave.
Washington DC 20016
(202) 885-2387 	fax (202) 885-1076
aisrael at american.edu





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