Ebonics in Russian translation?

[Romy Taylor]

Okay, I see the Cyrillic did not come through.

Here is the passage:

Jimmy: Da ia khochu nynche zhe sdelat' ei predlozhenie! Nynche zhe!

Momsie: Momzi rad, synok, ochen' rad. Tebe poluchat' khoroshii  
zamechatel'nyi devushka! Oi, gospodi, da nikak uzh vosem' chasov! Nu,  
synok, ia dumal, ty ne khotet' delal predlovhenii v kupal'nyi khalat,  
- tak stupai naverx, priodevaisia, Dzhun (June) togo i gliadi soshel  
vniz.


Quoting Romy Taylor <romy at PETUHOV.COM>:

> Hi Seelangs,
>
> I wonder whether linguists and others good at text analysis can give  
> their thoughts on a translation of Black dialect into Russian?
>
> The author, Wayland Rudd, was an Afr-American living in Moscow, and  
> his play is about African Americans circa 1930.  Unfortunately, I  
> don't have the original in English.  But in the Russian translation,  
> educated African Americans speak standard Russian, while the servant  
> "Momsie" speaks something like the foreign characters in an old  
> "Tintin" book, or like an old Hollywood caricature of a foreigner.
>
> Here's an example:
>
> ??????: ? ???? ????? ?? ??????? ?? ???????????! ????? ??!
>
> ?????: ????? ???, ?????, ????? ???. ???? ???????? ???????  
> ????????????? ???????! ??, ???????, ?? ????? ?? ?????? ?????! ??,  
> ?????, ? ?????, ?? ?? ?????? ????? ??????????? ? ????????? ?????, -  
> ??? ?????? ??????, ???????????, ???? ???? ? ????? ????? ????.
>
> I guess one question is: how standard was it to translate Black  
> American dialect as ungrammatical / foreigners' mistakes?
>
> And my second question is: is this related to the way that some  
> Soviets (including Trotsky and Stalin) saw African Americans as  
> national minorities (speaking a distinct language and requiring  
> their own homeland) as opposed to ethnic minorities?
>
> Yours gratefully,
> Romy Taylor
>
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