TIME quoting Putin

[Victor Steinbok]

  Comments interspersed...

On 9/12/2010 1:02 AM, imwitty wrote:
> I like better the combination "beat with the billy club (or night
> stick) on the noggin"...

Well, we agree on the "noggin".

> The difference between "dubina" and "dubinka" is not so subtle as it
> seems: former is much bigger than latter and besides the former was
> used not just as a primitive weapon, but also as a tool (lever, etc.)
> "Dubina" has also second (and very popular since old times and until
> today) meaning: it's a (very often used) definition of the extremely
> dull/stupid person.

I was going to mention the latter in my post, but then thought better of
it since it was not really relevant. And it is absolutely clear that the
quoted Putin statement has no relation to the "second (very popular)
meaning". But he did use "dubina" quite unambiguously:

> Где нельзя, бьют дубиной по башке.

So why all this charade? Yes, the context suggests that he /meant/
"dubinka", but that is not what he said. And the goal of the
translation, in this case, is to know what he said, not what he was
supposedly implying.

> Putin definitely means "dubinka" (since their OMON units
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OMON do use "dubinka" similar to the
> billy club (see http://www.vokrugsveta.ru/telegraph/technics/551/ for
> the history of this "democratizator" worldwide and in Russia.)

Again, this is all background stuff on the issue, but it does nothing
for the actual translation.

> The word "bashka" *NEVER* was considered vulgar, just a common
> parlance, even in the old times. Probably, it wasn't used very often
> by the old Russian aristocracy at the high level receptions, but
> otherwise...

I mean "vulgar" in more Latin sense, not that it was something to be
censored. In this case, "vulgar" was short for "common slang".

> It does have Turkic origins ("bash" in Tatar means "head"; "bashka"
> means in Tatar "other" or "another", according to the famous Vladimir
> Dal's dictionary, but in the old Russian sayings they are used
> sometimes as equivalent terms (i.e. in the idiom "bash na bash" -- "an
> equivalent exchange".)

I think, we are in agreement concerning the origin. I did cite Turkish
because it is a more readily available language than Tatar. And both
"bash" and "bashka" have a similar meaning in Turkish to the ones in Tatar.

> Besides -- as any other language I know, including English -- Russian
> "assimilates" foreign words creatively, transforming them to be more
> "fit": Russian suffix -k- is one of the often used for different purposes.

To be honest, I really don't need a lecture on Russian. Or is it "I
don't really need"? ... It doesn't matter. And we're talking about 800
years of assimilation here--there have been plenty of opportunities for
"creatively transforming".

But, after all this, I actually suspect that Putin might have
deliberately said "dubinoi" rather than "dubinkoi". The weapon, in this
case, is more metaphorical than real. Which is why he follows it up with
another metaphor: "Poluchi, teby otovarili." The closest English
equivalent I can think of is "You get what you pay for".

VS-)

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