gender in translation

Thu Jul 29 15:14:33 UTC 2010

Another nice example of playing with gender in poetry is Vera Inber's poem Moja devochka.

- Завтра, значит, будет праздница?
- Праздник, Жана, говорят.
- Всё равно, какая разница,
Лишь бы дали шоколад.  

- Будет всё, мой мальчик миленький,
Будет даже детский бал.
Знаешь: повар в старом валенке
Утром мышку увидал.  

- Мама, ты всегда проказница:
Я не мальчик. Я же дочь
- Всё равно, какая разница,
Спи, мой мальчик, скоро ночь.

Olga Bukhina
obukhina at acls.org

-----Original Message-----
From: SEELANGS: Slavic & East European Languages and Literatures list [mailto:SEELANGS at bama.ua.edu] On Behalf Of anne marie devlin
Sent: Thursday, July 29, 2010 11:19 AM
To: SEELANGS at bama.ua.edu
Subject: Re: [SEELANGS] gender in translation

I was wondering if there have been any attempts to 'de-gender' such emotive words.  As we know, English has been trying to replace words such as chairman with chairperson - however research has shown that where chairperson is used by the press that it usually refers to a female!.  In French the word professeur can now be grammatically masculine or feminine.  Madame la professeur is now in use.  So would it be possible to use Умница or убийца with a masculine adjective, or what about a masculine ending past tense verb?

AM

> Date: Thu, 29 Jul 2010 11:02:39 -0400
> From: aisrael at AMERICAN.EDU
> Subject: Re: [SEELANGS] gender in translation
> To: SEELANGS at bama.ua.edu
> 
> 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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