How many nouns should I translate?

Drascus · Sep 3, 2020

Curious to get the community's opinion on this.

My WIP is set in a magical alternate Tsarist Russia, comparable to the Russian Empire of 1850ish. It is not actually Russia, people just refer to it as "The Empire" and other nations won't really figure into things so I haven't named any other countries yet.

Both the POV characters are in the military, and so I've been using Russian officer rank names. For instance, Poruchik instead of Lieutenant.

I'm wondering how far I should take this. Would it make sense to confine it just to titles and ranks? I'm also using Russian and Russian-inspired names for people and places.

Recently in writing I had a scene where an enlisted character felt the need to curse. I struggled to decide if I should use Fuck or Blyat. Should I translate aquebus, squadron, or palace? I'm not writing in Cyrillic so it's got to be all Romanized/phonetic translates of words.

What does AW think? How much Russian is enough for color and setting, and how much is too much?

Sonya Heaney · Sep 3, 2020

I think the swearing in Russian works. People will be able to tell by the context what it means, and it's a way to add flavour to the story without overwhelming readers.

I would use the ranks, but probably not translate too many other words. Some readers won't have a problem with it, but others will. There are readers who complain about British or Australian English in books! My family is Ukrainian, and I sometimes struggle to read Ukrainian words when they're Romanised. They make more sense to me in Cyrillic, but of course that's not possible in an English-language book!

ChaseJxyz · Sep 3, 2020

I think ranks/titles and swears would be fine in Russian. As for other nouns, like squadron or palace, maybe not so much. Does keeping a word in Russian add to the, well, Russian-ness of it? You could say "emperor" but when you say "tsar" you're saying "this is the Russian emperor, specifically." The word should be obvious as to what it is in the context of its usage for someone who doesn't know the language.

Drascus · Sep 4, 2020

I'm glad to hear my instincts were more or less on! The ranks I knew I wanted to do, especially because some Russian ranks don't map perfectly on to American / British ranks. When I added the swearing I suddenly thought, "Where does this end?"

The swearing in Russian might also make it more palatable to English readers than seeing the F word. It's already a fairly aggressively gender-queer book, which I know will put some people off.

How many nouns should I translate?

Drascus

Sonya Heaney

ChaseJxyz

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Drascus