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I think the graphic is OK. Warning for stronger language still:
But that’s not quite right, because the word being translated as ‘fuck’ here is khuy. Idi nakhuy (иди наxуй
– ‘go to dick’ or, more loosely, ‘go sit on a dick’ – is what the Ukrainians (and the road signs) have been saying.
Translating swear words is never simple. In this video of a Ukrainian soldier warning and threatening Russian troops, the words blayd (‘slut’ or ‘whore’), pizdetz (‘a messed-up situation’, deriving from pizda, or ‘cunt’), and khuy – three of the four words that form the basis of mat – are all translated as ‘fuck’, while ebat (which really does mean ‘fuck’, and is the root of the word Boris Nemtsov once used to describe Putin’s mental state) is never used. If that matters, it’s because in Russian khuy is stronger, by far, than the word for ‘fuck’. Tell a Russian acquaintance to fuck off, and he’s likely to laugh it off. But even among old friends, khuy and pizda are no laughing matter. (Pizdetz, on the other hand, is rather mild.)
‘Иди наxуй is the worst thing you can say,’ my sister Mariana tells me. She lives in Europe, and my Russian’s OK but hers is still fluent. ‘You can’t say it in jest, unlike pizdets or ebat. You can play with those two words. You can’t play with idi nakhuy. It’s a really aggressive, serious swear word.’
In that sense, ‘go fuck yourself’ isn’t wrong. (Mariana: ‘Pick the worst thing you can say in English.’) ‘Go the fuck, you fucks’ gets us closer, but only a bit. The truth is, there’s nothing in English that goes quite so far. (In Spinal Tap terms, our curses go up to ten, but Russian words go to eleven.) There’s no elegant solution, just as there is no way to convey the historically specific sense of resignation – of weariness and resolve – that I hear in that ‘nu, vsyo’ from Snake Island. As a Soviet-born man with Ukrainian grandparents, it’s something I feel in my bones, but can’t capture in English, even though ‘that’s it, then’ is close on a literal level.
https://www.lrb.co.uk/blog/2022/february/idi-haxuj
– ‘go to dick’ or, more loosely, ‘go sit on a dick’ – is what the Ukrainians (and the road signs) have been saying.
Translating swear words is never simple. In this video of a Ukrainian soldier warning and threatening Russian troops, the words blayd (‘slut’ or ‘whore’), pizdetz (‘a messed-up situation’, deriving from pizda, or ‘cunt’), and khuy – three of the four words that form the basis of mat – are all translated as ‘fuck’, while ebat (which really does mean ‘fuck’, and is the root of the word Boris Nemtsov once used to describe Putin’s mental state) is never used. If that matters, it’s because in Russian khuy is stronger, by far, than the word for ‘fuck’. Tell a Russian acquaintance to fuck off, and he’s likely to laugh it off. But even among old friends, khuy and pizda are no laughing matter. (Pizdetz, on the other hand, is rather mild.)
‘Иди наxуй is the worst thing you can say,’ my sister Mariana tells me. She lives in Europe, and my Russian’s OK but hers is still fluent. ‘You can’t say it in jest, unlike pizdets or ebat. You can play with those two words. You can’t play with idi nakhuy. It’s a really aggressive, serious swear word.’
In that sense, ‘go fuck yourself’ isn’t wrong. (Mariana: ‘Pick the worst thing you can say in English.’) ‘Go the fuck, you fucks’ gets us closer, but only a bit. The truth is, there’s nothing in English that goes quite so far. (In Spinal Tap terms, our curses go up to ten, but Russian words go to eleven.) There’s no elegant solution, just as there is no way to convey the historically specific sense of resignation – of weariness and resolve – that I hear in that ‘nu, vsyo’ from Snake Island. As a Soviet-born man with Ukrainian grandparents, it’s something I feel in my bones, but can’t capture in English, even though ‘that’s it, then’ is close on a literal level.
https://www.lrb.co.uk/blog/2022/february/idi-haxuj
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