words that don't exist in English

[Victor Steinbok]

Actually, it's worse than that.

There is a difference between "Ne zabyvaity!" and "Ne zabud'te!". Your
translation corresponds to the latter.

"Ne zabyvaite!" can be closely translated as "keep not forgetting!"
(even "don't keep forgetting!" would be wrong).

For example, these are different:

"Ne zabyvaite pisat'!"
"Ne zabud'te napisat'!"

The first literally means "Don't forget to write!" (keep writing letters
to "me"), while the latter is also "Don't forget to write!" but only
applied one--perhaps either to write a report or a letter to someone
else or memoirs--whatever, but something you only do once. If you're
asking someone to maintain correspondence, you use the former.

Another meaning of "Ne zabyvaite!" could be "Don't you forget
it!"--meaning that the other person has been confronted on the subject
of his error and he's reminded not to repeat the same error. None of
this can be conveyed compactly in English with a choice of words that
corresponds directly to the original. This does not mean that the ideas
cannot be communicated compactly.

     VS-)

On 5/19/2012 4:20 AM, Wilson Gray wrote:
> ... Once, in San Francisco, which has a
> large Russian enclave, I overheard the following brief exchange
> between A, offloading the cable car, and B, staying aboard:
>
> A. _Ne zabyvaite!_
> B. _Ne zabudu!_
>
> C. "Don't forget!"
> D. "I won't!"
>
> C-D is certainly a reasonable translation of the exchange. But, it
> would probably necessitate at least a couple of paragraphs to explain
> exactly what each speaker-hearer meant and what each speaker-hearer
> understood, such as why it was that B used _ne zabudu_, when, if he
> had said _ne budu zabyvat'_ or _budu ne zabyvat'_, to the naive
> American ear, the English translation - hence, the "meaning" - would
> be the same, though to a Russian, these variants may have no meaning
> at all. Likewise, the difference, for a native-speaker of English,
> between "come _to_ me with a knife" and "come _at_ me with a knife"
> isn't easily expressed by simple translation into something that
> otherwise seems to make perfect sense in another language.
> --
> -Wilson

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