Ebonics in Russian translation?

[ameliede at EARTHLINK.NET]

-----Original Message-----
>From: Romy Taylor <romy at PETUHOV.COM>
>Sent: May 29, 2011 3:03 PM
>To: SEELANGS at bama.ua.edu
>Subject: [SEELANGS] Ebonics in Russian translation?
>
>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.
>
>
>I guess one question is: how standard was it to translate Black  
>American dialect as ungrammatical / foreigners' mistakes?
>
Many years ago I browsed through a Russian translation of Huckleberry Finn.  I remember clearly
that Jim's "Who dat?" was translated "Kto tam?"
Jules Levin
Los Angeles

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