Various questions about Russia in the 1920s - 1940s

[yiskah]

Hi all, I'm doing the final fact-check of a novel I've written set largely in Leningrad between 1917 and 1942. You've been so helpful in the past that I was hoping you might be able to assist in tying up some of my final loose ends

Comments

[yiskah]

Thank you so, so much for all of this - it's enormously helpful!

1. Thank you (and for the link below) - and I will get back to you if there are any specific street names I can't work out.

2. Maybe it will help if I give a bit of background to the scene: I have a teenage boy who, in a moment of frustration (he is in a music lesson and keeps getting something wrong) repeats a very obscene phrase that he has heard an older friend use. In my original draft my 'placeholder' phrase was 'fucking son of a bitch' - ideally I'd like something that's more than one word, a bit colourful if possible! Any ideas would be gratefully received...

3. Right, I have just gone through to see what phrases I would need to replace. The most common is an expression of mild frustration - some equivalent of 'for God's sake' in English. Also an expression of mild surprise (an equivalent of 'oh my God') would be great! The rest I can probably replace with mild obscenity. ;)

4. and 5. - both super-helpful, thank you!

6. On accents - let me link you to my last post on this community which gives some background on the scene I am writing. Basically what I want is a sort of 'give-away' word that exposes where someone is from, if that makes sense?

7. Thanks for this - I don't think Kashchei quite fits unfortunately. Basically I have a scene where two wounded soldiers meet in the woods, and one says something like "when I saw you coming through the trees, staggering and covered in blood, I thought you were a [reanimated corpse]". It's just a throwaway remark and I can take it out easily if it doesn't culturally fit.

8. Thank you so much! Basically it's a fairly standard condolence letter from an army officer to the mother of someone who has been killed, so the full text of it isn't included in the novel, but the English language version of it would probably go something like: "I offer condolences on the loss of your son, he fought with great courage and valour and died quickly and painlessly" etc. etc. In the scene I have one character reading over the letter and telling the person who wrote it, "[word] should be spelled [like this]", if that makes sense?

9. Thank you, that's perfect! Would it be administered orally?

[ilien]

For #7 my husband suggested Упырь: http://ru.wikipedia.org/wiki/%D3%EF%FB%F0%FC

[yiskah]

Interesting - upir is usually translated as a vampire, which suggests something more sophisticated than what I'm trying to conjure up - but if I stick to using the word 'upir' rather than translating it, it might work. Thank you!

[likantropos]

In slavic mythology vampires are pretty much bloodsucking zombies, nothing sophisticated about them. The word "Upir" is usually used to denote someone malevolent, violent, ugly, unpleasant etc. From nazis to annoying boss. Saying "I thought you were some kind of upir" would rather mean "I was expecting an enemy".

[yiskah]

Oh wow, that might be a really nice double meaning, actually, in that when the characters (both Russian soldiers) first encounter each other they're not sure that one of them isn't German. Do you think it could work in that context?

[likantropos]

Yes, it definitely could.

[yiskah]

AWESOME. It's not often you get to include a neat bit of double meaning in a language not your own. Thank you! :)

[marycatelli]

Actually, the zombie of the zombie horror flicks is not very like the follkloric zombie. It much more resembles the medieval vampire, before Stoker et all cleaned them up and made them sexy.

[ilien]

2. The only phrase I can come up it is "ебаный в рот", and I sincerely apologize to the Russian-speaking people here for using it. It's much stronger than "fucking son of a bitch", and it's a very, very bad thing to say. A teenage boy could get in a lot of trouble for using it. That's pretty much why I can't come up with better versions - I hardly ever use mat and not really good at it.

3. "For God's sake" would be "Ради всего святого!", but to express mild frustration one would rather use "Черт возьми", "Черт побери" or just "Черт!". It's also akin of blasphemy because Черт is (among other things) one of the ways to refer to the devil. If a kid says that, an adult would probably tell him "Не чертыхайся!", which literally means "don't mention Черт".

8. I'll give you the correct words with misspelled variations in brackets:
"Примите (премити) мои (маи) соболезнования (сабалезнавания) в связи (всвизи) с гибелью (гибилью) Вашего (вашиго) сына. Он сражался (срожался) с мужеством (мужиством) и погиб (пагип) как герой (гирой). Его (Иго) смерть была быстрой и безболезненной (бизбалезнинной)".
Of course the person who writes the letter won't, most probably, make all the mistakes here, so it would be reasonable to misspell just some of those :)

Also, there's this: http://ru.wikipedia.org/wiki/%D0%9F%D0%BE%D1%85%D0%BE%D1%80%D0%BE%D0%BD%D0%BA%D0%B0 . That's the official note a relative would get upon the death of a soldier during the war. Usually they weren't accompanied with a personal note - there just wasn't enough time to write a personal note for every soldier, especially in 1941-1942.

[brune_hilda]

2. yes, that was the first idea :)
3. "OMG" is "Господи!" "HOspodi!" if we are talking about surprise is not very bad.

[yiskah]

Thank you! How would you directly translate "Господи!" into English?

[ilien]

It's a way to address God: "Господи" is closer to "Lord", and "Боже" is "God" when used to address Him.

If you have an idea about Celtic languages, it would be "a-Mhairi" when addressing someone named Mairi - I think the English term is "vocative case": http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vocative_case

[brune_hilda]

Exactly.

[yiskah]

This is all so, so helpful - thank you very much indeed!

On 1., how would you translate it into English? I just put it in Google translate and it came up with 'cocksucking'...is that more or less correct?

Also, Google translate gives 'for heaven's sake' for "Ради всего святого" - is that roughly correct? And if so, would it be something that a sophisticated young Leningrader would say in the 1930s/1940s? I have read elsewhere (on this community, actually!) that references to 'God' or 'for God's sake' were mainly used by elderly peasant women around that time, and I'm not sure whether that would also be true for 'for heaven's sake' or 'for goodness' sake'. Similarly, for the 'chyert' ones, would it be reasonable to translate that as 'hell' or 'damn' - or do those also have inappropriately religious overtones?

Sorry to keep peppering you with questions - you have been so helpful already! :)

[ilien]

"cocksucking" usually means some sort of involvement from the sucking party, "ебаный в рот" is more like "fucked in the mouth", sucking doesn't have to be involved *blushes* But when it's used for swearing, no one really thinks of the original meaning, it's just a phrase that's used to swear - like, when you say "I hate fucking Christmas sales", you don't really mean that the sales had sex with anyone :)

"Ради всего святого" literally means "For everything that's holy", but yes, if I had to translate it in a novel, I'd use "for heaven's sake". I'm not sure about how it was used in pre-war Leningrad by young people, but I think sometimes it could be used ironically or to show off - if that makes any sense. I can picture a teenager saying something along the lines of "Да бога ради, заткнись уже" - "For God's sake, shut up already".

"Черт" is, in fact, rather neutral, both "hell" and "damn" are okay.

It's really my pleasure - like I said, I find it relaxing after two weeks of stressful work :)

[ilien]

I really can't say anything about dialects, especially pre-war, t's completely not my area of expertise. I probably wouldn't be able to tell where the person is from simply from the way they speak in Russian :)