Profanity in Russian speech WAS Re: HP in translation

[dumbledore11214]

> --- In HPFGU-OTChatter at yahoogroups.com, "constancevigilance"
> <constancevigilance@> wrote:
> > 
> > Common Russian speach is peppered with profanity and vulgarities 
as a
> > matter of course - it is just the way people speak and it is 
part of
> > the native color. Hearing only cleaned up speach in the films 
would
> > sound odd to them, so they usually spiced up the dialog.

>--- In HPFGU-OTChatter at yahoogroups.com, "Catlady (Rita Prince 
Winston)" <catlady at ...> wrote:
>
 
> It seems to me that common American speech is 'peppered with 
profanity
> and vulgarities as a matter of course' but we require that movies 
and
> especially TV shows have dialog that is cleaned up compared to real
> life. IIRC George Orwell wrote somewhere that common British 
speech is
> full of profanity and vulgarity, and IIRC he mentioned Chaucer as 
an
> example.
>


Alla:

Um, what do you guys mean by **common speech**? Because if you mean 
the speech of russian criminals, then sure I would say you are right.

But if you are talking about people who at least have some sort of 
education, then no, not really.

And I am not talking about people who are descendants of Pushkin, 
Tolsoty and Dostoevsky, lol. I am just talking about normal people, 
who at least went to college.


Russian language collection of profanity is very rich indeed. 
Personally I believe it is connected to the fact that during soviet 
regime millions went to prison and those who survived brought it 
from prisons, just my non scientific thought.


I think that was the thing with those movies - action movies, etc. I 
think that was belief of the translators that this is how criminal 
talk would be more recognisable for everybody. Again, just a non 
supported thought.

So, what I am trying to say? Just that I think that this is a bit of 
stereotype, same as russians drink vodka every day, lol.

Sure, many people do - not ALL of them though, hehehe. I grew up 
there ( in Ukraine, but really it all was soviet union) - I tried 
one sip of vodka in my life, literally.

I have to say though that my observations do end at the end of year 
1997, hehe. I had not been back yet, so maybe now all people use 
profanity on the regular basis.


Alla