/lit/ - Literature

[Anonymous No.12274719]

How do Russian translations of A Clockwork Orange work?
How do translations of Ulysses and Finnegans Wake into any language work?
Are there any good translations of either of them?
Just curious

[Anonymous No.12274723]

they dont

[Anonymous No.12274731]

>>12274719
Do russians do proper translations of are they just running the original texts through google translate?

[Anonymous No.12274739]

>>12274719
Finnegans Wake is untranslatable.

[Anonymous No.12274740]

it's all business. pseuds want to pretend that they've actually read The Great Works of World Literature but they either can't or simply don't want to learn more than one language. thus, the editorial industry steps in and offers them easily available cultural capital that lets them play the fantasy of having engaged with said literary works while the industry makes money through sales, government subsidies, awards, grants, etc.

[Anonymous No.12274747]

>>12274719
I know there are spanish translations of all three, usually multiple ones. One that does a weird backwards translation, trying to get the origin of the new word to create a proper version, and it's usually horrendous; one that just leaves it in english making it impposible to understand if you couldn't just read the original in the first place, and a literal one that follows an arcane logic that only the translator could get.
ACO sort of survives this process, BNW and 1984 do too. I never dared check FW, I feel I'll get a quick laugh and then sink in a terrible depression.

[Anonymous No.12274754]

>>12274747
i feel like fw in spanish could be very interesting if the translator just did a version of it themselves, like a whole new book.

[Anonymous No.12274770]

>>12274719
>How do Russian translations of A Clockwork Orange work?
english loanwords embedded in russian instead of the other way around. the russian in clockwork orange is basically random nonsense. the point is just to make the speech seem strange, so you can replace it with anything else and get the same effect.

[Anonymous No.12274782]

>>12274754
but that's like a garage band doing a Queen cover
like, it could get an interesting result, but chances are it's just a pale imitation.

[Anonymous No.12274812]

>>12274782
when anybody from this shit board reads anything it's already a pale imitation of what it should be on account of the reader being fucking illiterate. remember that thread where multiple people admitted that when they read a novel their brain involuntarily visualizes all the events in anime form? the translator's the least of their problems.

[Anonymous No.12274820]

>How do Russian translations of A Clockwork Orange work?
The better older translation just leaves the jargon as is in Latin script, the newer shittier one replaces them with ordinary terms and flips different words from Russian into silly cyrillified anglicisms making it basically unreadable.
>>12274770
>the russian in clockwork orange is basically random nonsense
No, it isn't, you fucking mental midget. Nadsat is quite brilliantly constructed and is an absolute delight if you actually speak both languages.

[Anonymous No.12274851]

>>12274812
don't get mad at kids being kids, you become better at anything as you keep doing it.
translating is a differnt thing, you're creating something that won't be compared to the original because most people can't do so. Do you remember all the discussion about english Tolstoi just being a housewife doing free interpretation at the rate of 10 pages a day? Even respectable smart people were scammed out of it.

[Anonymous No.12274864]

>>12274812
>involuntarily visualizes all the events in anime form
lmao

[Anonymous No.12274889]

>>12274719
>>12274739
I read a recent article about finnegan’s wake being translated into Chinese and the Chinese population went crazy over it. I think it was the #1 book in China for about 4 weeks. The translator spoke about how she did it and she said that she broke about every rule of the Chinese language while translating it. Adjectives like tantalizing can’t be paired with nouns like hands or anything other than a food item and she broke the rule anyway. I’d link it if I had the article, although I doubt it’s hard to find. Just imagine reading this in Chinese
>The fall (bababadalgharaghtakamminarronnkonnbronntonnerronntuonnthunntrovarrhounawnskawntoohoohoordenenthurnuk!) of a once wallstrait oldparr is retaled early in bed and later on life down through all christian minstrelsy. The great fall of the
offwall entailed at such short notice the pftjschute of Finnegan, erse solid man, that the humptyhillhead of humself prumptly sends an unquiring one well to the west in quest of his tumptytumtoes:
and their upturnpikepointandplace is at the knock out in the park where oranges have been laid to rust upon the green since devlinsfirst loved livvy.

[Anonymous No.12274896]

Look at the translation for Bottoms Dream. John E Woods is insane.

[Anonymous No.12274914]

>>12274719
>How do Russian translations of A Clockwork Orange work?
Just read fucking Wikipedia.

[Anonymous No.12274941]

>>12274719
My family owns polish translations of both Ulysses and Finnegans Wake.I am not the one to judge them, am yet to delve into Joice's stuff. I read first maybe 100 pages of Ulysses, and it was readable, although, as you might suspect, weird. But holy shit, I tried casually reading FW few times, and I never got past through 1st page. At this point I am merely more or less confident I somehow understood first paragraph, and frankly, I can't comperhend how one could translate it, but it's commonly respected here, and guy worked over 10 years translating it.
But all these poseurs who shit on translations on this board so much ain't know shit, I say about linguistics, translating (of course some of them are scams/low quality, but isn't it the case with everything?) and probably don't read either.
>I swear I totally learned portugese on native level to read Book of Disquiet! Took me 3 weeks, fuck translations!
lmao.

[Anonymous No.12274964]

>>12274719
Can why explain why Ulysses is untranslatable?

[Anonymous No.12274972]

>>12274964
You explain why*

[Anonymous No.12275070]

>>12274820
>Nadsat is quite brilliantly constructed and is an absolute delight if you actually speak both languages.
okay, here's an example from the first page: to drink is to "peet". please explain the brilliance of this construction as well as the delight you derive from it, because from what i can tell he just took the infinitive "пить" (pit') from a dictionary, changed i to ee to avoid confusion with the english "pit", was either unaware of or ignored the fact that the "t" is soft (and not present anyway except in the infinitive) and just jammed the resulting letters into english grammar, producing shit like "we were peeting milk" or whatever. so now to an english speaker this is just a weird noise that means nothing (except the context tells you it's drinking) and to a russian speaker this is also just a weird noise that means nothing because that hard "t" plus the complete disregard for slavic grammar mangles the word beyond recognition (except the context tells you it's drinking so you can realize what he did and groan at how lame it is).

this is all he ever did. he looked up random russian words and put them in the text in mangled transliterations. moloko, droog, mesto, litso. none of it makes any linguistic sense, none of it reveals any actual knowledge of russian beyond possession of a dictionary, it's purely a device to alienate the reader and knowing russian does not reveal any hidden layer to the text at all. he wrote litso instead of face because лицo means face. that's it. what an "absolute delight".

[Anonymous No.12275153]

>>12275070
>so now to an english speaker this is just a weird noise that means nothing (except the context tells you it's drinking) and to a russian speaker this is also just a weird noise that means nothing
But it's not a weird noise to those of us who aren't subhuman monolinguals. Russian terms are quite nicely syntagmatically embedded, make sense semantically in duolingual context and most certainly aren't "random nonsense". Also horrorshow makes my weewee tingle, you nincompoop.

[Anonymous No.12275263]

>>12275153
i'm obviously talking about a russian reading the clockwork orange in english and therefore not a monolingual. try to keep up.

>quite nicely syntagmatically embedded
that's an incredibly cunty way to say "substituted". place becomes mesto, face becomes litso. noting is happening there other than blunt dictionary substitution and the entire point of it is to be jarring, not "nice".

>make sense semantically in duolingual context
that's an incredibly cunty way to say "if you speak russian you will know the russian words" but you still have not explained what hidden layer of secret delight you are accessing when you recognize that litso means face because i knew litso meant face when i read it and yet all that was revealed to me was that the guy owned a dictionary.

>most certainly aren't "random nonsense".
they certainly function as alienating nonsense words in the novel and their function as alienating nonsense does not depend on their being derived from russian, which was my initial point. knowing russian makes the novel worse both by disrupting that function and by distractedly reminding you, a dozen times a page, how lazy the author was to not even bother learning the basics of russian grammar to do something actually interesting with this "russified english" concept instead of just adding "-ing" to russian infinitive verbs.

[Anonymous No.12275273]

>>12275263
*distractingly

[Anonymous No.12275426]

>>12275263
>noting is happening there other than blunt dictionary substitution
A great deal of words make use of cross-language agglutination, false friend homophony and orthographic adaptation quite creatively.
>what hidden layer of secret delight
I made no claims about some deeper insight from my multilingualism in this particular case. I merely found Nadsat aesthetically pleasing in a number of ways.
>knowing russian makes the novel worse both by disrupting that function
It's not disrupted in any way. As you pointed out the terms are quite alien from the viewpoint of both languages and they do remain alien to those able to speak both. The knowledge only affects the amount of pleasure one derives after deciphering.
>how lazy the author was to not even bother learning the basics of russian grammar to do something actually interesting with this "russified english"
But he did. You just keep parroting the same stuff about "litso". Did you actually read the book or just the annotation blurb?

[Anonymous No.12275461]

>>12274812
fuck, you got me

[Anonymous No.12275468]

>>12275426
did YOU read the book? because it sure seems like you're frantically googling linguistic terms to sound clever without naming any examples from the book, articulating your experience with the book or really talking about the book directly at all. i gave you examples of trivial substitution from the very first page so how about you substantiate your claims about "brilliant construction" and "absolute delight" by going through a paragraph or two and showing me what i'm missing because so far you're just fronting.

[Anonymous No.12275524]

>>12275468
>intimidated by babby linguistic terms
>n-no it's you who's googling them!11
Getting a bit pathetic.
>substantiate why you personally find something aesthetically pleasing
Can you substantiate why you're so upset by it?

[Anonymous No.12275569]

>>12274739
Nothing is truly translatable. Wow.

>>12275070
>>12275263
>>12275468
You look like a massive sperg.

[Anonymous No.12275800]

>>12275524
oh man, as soon as i ask you to talk about the book in specifics you retreat into this ruseman persona? i suppose i must have guessed right and you really only saw the movie or something. anyway i wanted to clarify some things even if i can't expect anything useful from you at this point.

firstly you actually did give me an example - horrorshow - which is of course the one everyone knows because it's the cleverest one, but the rest of the book lacks this sort of wit and like 95% of nadsat words are just direct russian transliterations like the ones i listed. not that being more clever with the substitutions would have helped with the real limitation, which is his refusal to engage with russian grammar, where the real fun would begin.

secondly, of course the effect is ruined when you know russian, because outside of the mangled verbs the latin transliterations of russian words - and therefore almost all of nadsat - are immediately understandable to a russian speaker. therefore the actual function of nadsat, to confuse the reader with seemingly nonsensical lingo and force them to piece the meaning together from context, ceases to function and what you get instead is just this stylistic device where the book is code switching between two languages you speak anyway. the menace of a hostile and incomprehensible youth culture is obviously sabotaged when the reader is in the know.

[Anonymous No.12275865]

How do you translate Bolano to English ....
Wow what a fucking retarded question.

[Anonymous No.12275935]

>>12275800
"Nadsat is a fictional register or argot used by the teenagers"

Used by teens is the operative part of the sentence you dunce. Of course it's not supposed to be as smart as you want it to be you autist, it's oh-so-secret code between juvenile delinquents.

[Anonymous No.12275942]

>>12274754
>if the translator just did a version of it themselves, like a whole new book.

How Borges-Menardian of you

[Anonymous No.12275998]

>>12274964
>>12275865
Okay, more specifically then, how would Oxen of the Sun be translated? Would it be done as pastiches of how Sterne, Swift etc are translated into the language in question? Is 'Deschil Holles Eamus' not translated? How is the bit at the end of the chapter where it devolves into Americanised slang translated?
>>12275800
Not him but 'horrorshow' isn't the only particularly good word, 'starry' also comes to mind. Some of them are hilarious to look at transliterated, 'zoobies' made me laugh out loud.

[Anonymous No.12276194]

>>12274719
Clockwork Orange is like this
>Hy, чтo жe тeпepь, a? Кoмпaния тaкaя: я, тo ecть Aлeкc, и тpи мoих druga, тo ecть Пит, Джopджик и Teм, пpичeм Teм был и в caмoм дeлe пapeнь тeмный, в cмыcлe glupyi, a cидeли мы в мoлoчнoм бape «Korova», шeвeля mozgoi нacчeт тoгo, кyдa бы yбить вeчep - пoдлый тaкoй, хoлoдный и cyмpaчный зимний вeчep, хoтя и cyхoй. Moлoчный бap «Korova» — этo былo zavedenije, гдe дaвaли «мoлoкo-плюc», хoтя вы-тo, бллин, нeбocь yжe и зaпaмятoвaли, чтo этo были зa zavedenija: кoнeчнo, нынчe вeдь вce тaк cкopo мeняeтcя, зaбывaeтcя пpямo нa глaзaх, вceм plevatt, дaжe гaзeт нынчe тoлкoм никтo нe читaeт. B oбщeм, пoдaвaли тaм «мoлoкo-плюc» — тo ecть мoлoкo плюc кoe-кaкaя дoбaвкa.
Russian translation of Ulysses is of a very good quality, though obviously you can not transfer all the nuances of English text into Russian
>>12275153
I was about to write about the brilliance of 'horrorshow', but you had anticipated me
>>12275998
>Oxen of the Sun
It is good, the chapter begins with old Russian, which is barely comprehensible, I think this chapter is more intelligible in English, to be honest
>>12275800
As said above, for some reason reading Russian words in Latin alphabet is entertaining, it is as inexplicable as why Russian people employ a single, a triple or a quintuple right bracket instead of a colon with a bracket.
Other language is another mode of thinking too, that is why you probably do not get it.

[Anonymous No.12276248]

>>12274889
I couldn't read an entire book of this shit and I fail to see the appeal. Color me pleb I guess.

[Anonymous No.12277778]

>>12276194
>этo былo zavedenije, гдe дaвaли «мoлoкo-плюc»
Гдe ты тaкyю хyйню oткoпaл? Пpaвocлaвный пepeвoд мoжeт быть тoлькo c moloko.

[Anonymous No.12277833]

>>12274719
I just cried remember a boy I like talking to me about something he read about the art of translating. I wish I could remember what text he was talking about.

[Anonymous No.12278139]

At least Russians get to read Lolita in Nabokov's own "translation"

[Anonymous No.12278153]

>>12277833

>>12277833
Sounds interesting

[Anonymous No.12278160]

>>12277833
was it that bad?

[Anonymous No.12278175]

>>12274812
you make a good point,,,

[Anonymous No.12278177]

>>12274812
I carefully and deliberately storyboard out every scene in my head, tyvm

[Anonymous No.12278185]

>>12274964
>>12274972
It's not that it's untranslatable, it's that the words used are a very important part of the artistry. Compare to genre fiction, where the most important part is the plot, or philosophy, where the most important part is the ideas. You can translate into a different language without losing plot or ideas. But when you translate you lose ALL of the word choice (barring cognates, I suppose).

[Anonymous No.12278561]

Finnegans Wake is partly "translated" (retold was the word the author prefered to use) to Russian. As a native Russian speaker I can say that it's certainly more intelligible and as much fun as the original. Very quotable. Shame it's only a hundred pages at most.

[Anonymous No.12278752]

All three has been translated to Hebrew and the translations are equally if not more readable. Too bad most countries don't have writers/translators from most of the western world...

[Anonymous No.12278779]

>>12275935
this sort of argument from realism isn't going to get you anywhere because it just opens up the real can of worms, which is how this dialect is supposed to have come into being in the first place. it's too selective and arbitrary to have come from genuine cultural contact (or soviet subliminal messaging which i seem to recall is suggested in the book - why would these soviet propagandists not know what an infinitive is?), it's implied to be used very broadly so it can't be some elite secret code, and learning all this foreign vocabulary seems like a daunting task for minor criminals to go through when it doesn't have these built-in mnemonics like in rhyming slang. you get this absurd image of near-illiterate street thugs taking a break from gangraping a lady to visit the local library and look up words in a russian dictionary, maybe make some flash cards for later.

it bears repeating that, despite his boasts, burgess did not actually speak russian, struggled to decipher cyrillic and never consulted any speakers of russian when writing the book, all of which is obvious from the work itself. nadsat looks the way it looks because of these limitations, not because of a choice on his part. that's why this russian-based criminal slang does not have russian swearwords or even colloquialisms - those were simply not included in the dictionary that was his only source of the language. for example, not knowing any russian slang words for "woman" - not even cyкa - he just translated the british slang term "bird" as ptitsa. this gets to a level of comedic incompetence when murderous street thugs insult each other with the word "matrimonial" - you see, he wanted them to say something like "bastard", but looking it up in his very polite dictionary he only found a formal word meaning "extramarital" from which he chopped off the prefix to make it snappier so now a street thug stomping someone to death is yelling "die! you're RELATED TO MARRIAGE!"

and then there's the real monstrosities like "govoreeting" where he not only demonstrates that he doesn't know what a russian infinitive is but also makes you doubt his grasp of english. why the hell would a dumb thug replace a nice simple word like "talk" with that complicated mess when real english slang normally tends towards monosyllables?

[Anonymous No.12278869]

>>12275998
>Not him but 'horrorshow' isn't the only particularly good word, 'starry' also comes to mind.
"starry" is okay but "horrorshow" is so memorable because it's the one where it works not just as homophony but as characterization: what's "good" for these people is a "horror show" for you. i wouldn't mind how unnatural nadsat is if the artifice reliably had this sort of dramatic purpose, like: fuck it, this is not a real place, this is a theatrical fantasy described in bilingual puns. but that's not what clockwork orange ends up being outside of these flashes of brilliance like "horrorshow".

>>12276194
>that is why you probably do not get it.
i'm not sure what i'm not getting because you're basically agreeing with me. of course code switching can be entertaining, russian or not - that's why movies will have a comedy latino going "that gringo has big cojones!" or whatever. but the function of nadsat is not to entertain you but to confuse you - a non-russian speaker will legitimately struggle to understand many passages and have to realize from context that what these seemingly nonsensical words are actually describing is a scene of extreme violence. for a bilingual english-russian reader, the effect is lost and becomes a purely stylistic device.

[Anonymous No.12279194]

>>12278869
What about 'rabbit'?

[Anonymous No.12279202]

>>12274719
Finnegans wake has been translated into Chinese

[Anonymous No.12279203]

>>12274719
The real question is, how do English translations of Gombrowicz work?

[Anonymous No.12279213]

>>12274889
>the Chinese population went crazy over it
Perhaps there is some hope for literature in the coming era of global Sino-dominance.

[Anonymous No.12279357]

>>12279194
i mean it's better than "govoreeting" but i still find shit like "rabbiting" and "rabbited" incredibly distracting because he's mistaking the infinitive suffix "-ть" for part of the root. if you're going to plug a slavic root into english grammar then "rabbing" would be more sensible if still weird, obviously that would remove the homophony with "rabbit" in this particular case but he has that extraneous "t" in all the other verbs as well and it drives me up the wall. also i will not in a million years believe in "rabbiter" becoming the slavic-derived word for "worker" instead of just "robot". if you told me workers were going to be called "rabbiters" in future britain then i would sooner guess it was a corruption of the german "arbeiter" than this convoluted derivation of the russian "paбить".

[Anonymous No.12279454]

>>12279357
But rabbit in English carries connotations, especially of poverty, sex, and subtly references them as vermin.
Similarly, badgering in English is normally more about aggressive argument than being a badger. Rabbiting is particularly nice because it cannot be used to implying hunting rabbit, as that's commonly called lamping, and obviously above a working comrade's paygrade.

Not the anon you're arguing with but you seem to miss the teenagers have learnt Russian terms like loanwords. It's more like the German words in Russian- you don't spell Hinterland or Endspiel the same in Russian, but you use them like Russian words despite their original sounds and spellings being more Germanic.

[Anonymous No.12279455]

>>12274719
I never read Ulysses, should I pick up a translation or read the original?
I have a fairly good english reading capability, as in I can read modern stuff without a problem, will Ulysses be too difficult since I'm not at a native level really?

[Anonymous No.12279645]

>>12279454
i think the rabbit thing is a stretch because when rabbiting is used as a verb the association is with frantic activity, not tedious labor, and he doesn't really describe the laborers as rabbit-like. i mean, here's a relevant passage:

>there were early rabbiters slurping away at chai and horrible-looking sausages and slices of kleb which they like wolfed, going wolf wolf wolf and then creeching for more.

so they're rabbits... but they're wolfing, and the imagery presents them as distinctly pig-like. if there was an opportunity to use this pun for actual characterization then it was missed. also "creeching" works for me but in the next paragraph he reports buying a newspaper as "i kupetted" which holy shit i wish someone had told him what infinitives were so he could come up with something tolerable like "i cooped" instead because what the fuck is a kupette. seriously.

and sure these are supposed to be loanwords but most of them make zero sense as loanwords. even if you ignore the various blunders he makes while copying shit from a dictionary without knowing what he's looking at, you get this completely unnatural scenario where common words got replaced with often extremely unwieldy alternatives for no reason. that's why he has to hint at soviet mind control as the source of the whole dialect: you'd need to have your brain scrambled before you'd switch from using the world "talking" to "govoreeting". the remaining question is who is in turn scrambling the russian brains so much that they're teaching the english kids not proper russian but inane shit like "kupette". the obvious suspect is the french.

[Anonymous No.12279842]

>>12279645
A clockwork orage isn't about world building, lore or being realistic you autist
Yes they make zero sense as loanwarods, nobody would actually say govoreeting instead of talking. Also nobody would open a milk bar to serve milk with drugs to teenagers in white costumes with enormous white phallus shapes where their dick would be
>i wish someone had told him what infinitives were
So the imaginary slang from that novel isn't realistic and if there really would exist a russian influenced british youth gang slang that may be from russian mind control no, it wouldn't play out like in the fucking book and it would be more grammaticaly correct than what he wound up doing without being a speaker of russian

Fuck me do you people even fucking read? How do you manage to still be such intolerable autists that completely miss the point of everything?

[Anonymous No.12279856]

>>12279842
>nobody would open a milk bar to serve milk with drugs to teenagers in white costumes with enormous white phallus shapes where their dick would be
sad reacts only

[Anonymous No.12279946]

>>12279842
please calm down. i don't care about "world building". i don't actually want to rewrite the book to include a french conspiracy. that was a joke. i already explained that i wouldn't mind the dialect being "unrealistic" if it had an interesting dramatic purpose, but i don't think it really has one beyond just sounding strange. it's neither naturalistic or artificial in an interesting way, just crude and boring.

this conversation started when someone claimed knowing russian revealed that nadsat was "brilliantly constructed", which is nonsense and i'm explaining why. now you're hitting me with this generic rant about illiterate nerds and their lore, which has nothing to do with my posting. please practice what you preach.

[Anonymous No.12280044]

>>12279946
>having your gulliver so far up your yahma you can't stop this autistic crusade no matter what
Find a lewdie that can tolerate you for over a minute and get some lubby-lubbing, before this pan-handle and yarblockos disease spreads to the rest of your plott, faggot.

[Anonymous No.12280071]

>>12279946
I tried reading but you've been going on with this person for posts and posts and I really can't read it all
The interesting dramatic purpose is that it's surreal, strange sounding and spoopy since it's russian
And it's completely okay for an invented slang to only be those things and I would call that being 'interesting dramatic purpose'
My native language is a Slavic one and even I found the slang creating a dark surreal atmosphere in the novel
My 'generic rant about illiterate nerds and their lore' has to do loads with your posting since you're hoping someone would have taught him what infinitives are and somehow 'i kupetted' is not serving its purpose within the slang but 'i cooped' would definitively serve its purpose
You literally typed out
>you'd need to have your brain scrambled before you'd switch from using the world "talking" to "govoreeting"
this is peak reddit nerd le humor
>why would you say govoreeting instead of talking thats just stupid man nobody would say that

I practice what I preach it's just that you're being an autist with this shit here, you'll probably angrily respond to this but really try thinking a bit about what you're saying and you'll realize that you're being an autist

>>12280044
also this

[Anonymous No.12280091]

>>12274719
Why would you read a translation of those works if you already know english?

[Anonymous No.12280111]

>>12274747
Look at this.
http://www.uam.mx/difusion/casadeltiempo/89_jun_2006/casa_del_tiempo_num89_53_56.pdf
Honestly I think it's very ok.

[Anonymous No.12280126]

>>12279842
>Also nobody would open a milk bar to serve milk with drugs to teenagers in white costumes with enormous white phallus shapes where their dick would be

then why is Comet Ping Pong owned by the 49th most powerful person in DC?

[Anonymous No.12280141]

>>12274812
My sides are prepared for ejection into orbit

[Anonymous No.12280565]

>>12280044
my "autistic crusade" is that i find the idea of bilingual fiction very interesting and wanted to talk about it on a literature board. i don't know why a normal conversation is so offensive to you.

>>12280071
you're admitting to not reading my posts and not knowing what the conversation is about - one post after screaming at me for "not reading" and "missing the point". think about that. everything you're writing at me now is stuff i've already said above, which you have no time to read but plenty of time to uselessly retype.

i understand the function of nadsat in the novel. i explained it myself, multiple times. we're not talking about that, we're talking about whether a bilingual perspective reveals additional artistry or craft in how nadsat is constructed, beyond the function it serves to a monolingual reader. the answer, i think, is no - it instead reveals an embarrassing lack of craft. the "kupetted" example is about this craft of multilingual prose stylisation. if burgess spent two hours reading about russian grammar he wouldn't have confused the infinitive suffix for part of the root and his craft of multilingual prose stylisation would have benefited from it. if he asked a real russian speaker for help he wouldn't have accidentally used the word "matrimonial" as if it was an insult and so on. that's it. none of this has anything to do with creating a nerdy simulation of "real" russified england, a bizarre idea mentioned by nobody in the thread but you.

[Anonymous No.12281150]

>>12280565
>he wouldn't have confused the infinitive suffix
>he wouldn't have accidentally used the word "matrimonial"
Except this is exactly how loanwords work - completely disregarding any grammatical and sometimes even semantic idiosyncrasies of donor language. Common words for cellphone and projector in German are Handy and Beamer - with former being a general adjective instead of a noun in English with little to no direct relation to mobile technology and latter being a straight up pseudo-anglicism conjured ex nihilo. Cologne in Russian is oдeкoлoн - the mightily butchered eau de Cologne, and gives absolutely no fucks about precise phonology or inflection forms in French, instead cramming it into Russian specifics (as it well should). You're retarded fucking brainlet that doesn't understand basic priniciples of lexicology and historical linguistics and keeps fussing over nothing like a child. On this holiest of nights you should stop shitting up the thread and kys yourself.

[Anonymous No.12281327]

>>12281150
except that i already explained to you that that's not how loanwords work - all your examples happened because a new invention like a cellphone needed a name, whereas the point of nadsat is that basic common words that were in use for hundreds of years already were suddenly replaced by these unwieldy polysyllabic alternatives. where's your precedent in historical linguistics for that? and the nature of the mistakes he made when constructing the language is way too consistent to resemble the randomness of real-world loanwords. this is not like the russians adopting the word кoмпьютep after the discovery of computers - this is as if a whole generation of russians suddenly became allergic to slavic word roots while also all simultaneously making the same bizarre mistake of not understanding what the "to" in "to speak" is - so now they're all walking around saying "я тocпикaю, oнa тoдpинкaлa, oн тoдpaйвyeт" and so on. even russians in this thread admitted to laughing at the language of this book - because it's a comically weird scenario.

this is why i was saying that nadsat needs to be understood as an artistic device and not some realistic simulation of future linguistics - except outside of a few gems the artistic device is pretty weak too. the fact that you're sitting here and actually defending this outlandish fantasy scenario as linguistically plausible instead of just admitting the dude didn't give a fuck and just jotted down some words from a dictionary is pretty mind-boggling to me.

[Anonymous No.12281360]

>>12275569
>You look like a massive sperg.

Seems fine to me. The other guy is clearly a fucking retard who is backpedalling at the speed of light to find some position that justifies his embarrassment. Nothing wrong with the Russo-sperg sperging out if he's correct and simply punishing someone for, effectively, being pretentious and lying about what they know.

[Anonymous No.12281581]

>>12281327
>except that i already explained to you that that's not how loanwords work
You didn't "explain" anything, you presented your sub 20 IQ idea of how loanwords should work that has nothing to do with reality fueled by massive linguistic illiteracy.
>all your examples happened because a new invention like a cellphone needed a name
This has nothing to do with your previous point where you derided lack of consideration for grammatical features of donor language, goalpost moving faggot.
>basic common words that were in use for hundreds of years already were suddenly replaced by these unwieldy polysyllabic alternatives
Nadsat takes about as much inspiration from rhyming slang as it takes from Russian. The whole point of rhyming slang is replacing ordinary words with something in no way semantically related or time-saving. Visit fucking Millwall and ask the locals why it makes sense to say "scarper" instead of "run" and "dog and bone" instead of "phone".
>this is why i was saying that nadsat needs to be understood as an artistic device and not some realistic simulation of future linguistics
It is a structurally plausible jargon. What needs to be understood by you is that slang and argot words aren't necessarily born out of any practical or grammatical considerations. And your rambling about "govoreeting" is no more sensible than arguing that "wazzock" or "awesomesauce" can't exist because "fool" and "great" are so much shorter. Educate yourself instead of rambling nonsense. Then neck yourself, you fucking mediocrity.
>>12281360
Sad and extra pathetic samefag.

[Anonymous No.12281597]

>>12281581
I am not the Russianist (?) guy, I just saw him typing actual things in response to someone who is clearly backpedalling pathetically and arguing in bad faith, presumably you? Anyway, I felt bad for him, so I read the exchange.

You type like an 18 year old trying to sound impressive without realizing he's embarrassing himself. Especially in your earlier posts, if it's in fact you, where you were throwing around SYNTAGMATIC etc. to try to bluff your way out of seeming like a retard. I'm honestly straining at your posts to see if it's a big parody of that sort of cringey posting, and I'm missing the joke.

[Anonymous No.12281638]

>>12281597
>oh no no no no you used a linguistic term in a discussion about linguistics
>you're trying too hard and embarrassing yourself lmao kek xd cringey parody lul
Thanks for that valuable contribution, buttflustered brainlet.

[Anonymous No.12281736]

>>12281581
so you've now dug yourself into this hole where you have to defend an outlandish scenario from a science fiction novel - which even the novel explains as the unnatural effect of soviet mind control - as perfectly plausible, natural and not even surprising. you're trying to do this with this fallacious tactic where you divide the scenario into tiny individual features ("some words have longer synonyms!"), demonstrate their existence somewhere and claim that this renders the entire scenario plausible, ignoring the fact that the implausibility originates with these features' scale and coincidence. in this way you could defend star wars as plausible because lasers are real, knights existed, people went to space etc etc. it's a waste of your time and mine.

[Anonymous No.12281858]

>>12281736
>presents a potpourri of criticisms on technicalities
>gets told
>oh no no no you're not seing the big picture, addressing every argument is bad, muh star wars
Holy mother of all sophistry and dishonesty... The point of contention was only the intrinsic linguistic soundness of nadsat, you weaseling tard. Each and every one of your silly layman objections and naive ideas about the "shoulds" of lexicology have been refuted. You are wrong. Full stop. The question of plausibility is an entirely separate thing altogether and, as you pointed out, it's quite idiotic to even pose it in the context of a science fiction novel that presupposes the existence of mind control tech. It's absolutely phenomenal that you have the gall to accuse me of digging a hole when you're literally trying to bullshit your way out of a corner in the most disingenuous way possible. Fucking own up to your mental diarrhea, you gigantic pseud.

[Anonymous No.12282243]

>>12281858
>The point of contention was only the intrinsic linguistic soundness of nadsat
nonsense. what you actually objected to is my post about the quality of stylistic craft displayed by nadsat as an artistic endeavor. my "shoulds" were directed explicitly at the writer. my points were that there are various features of the jargon that are the results of his crude dictionary-driven method that strain the credulity of a bilingual reader: the curious absence from a criminal lingo of actual swearwords, that repeated weirdness with the infinitives, the whole idea of tending towards elaborate foreign terms clashing with the teenagers' characterization as semi-illiterate thugs and so on.

the whole notion of the real world plausibility of all this - which i repeatedly indicated i don't give a fuck about - was brought into this by you, implicitly in defense of the writer. that is, i shouldn't doubt his craft because the features of the dialect that i claim strain credulity are actually common in the real world. but since my objections apply specifically to these features as they appear in the work, you need to demonstrate their plausibility in an analogous context and scale - like, not the mangling of a loanword but the simultaneous mangling of a hundred verbs in the same unlikely way. it's the repetition that reveals the artifice and it's the artifice I'm objecting to.

this whole plausibility thing is a hole you dug so you could demonstrate your superiority in this field but your expertise is only relevant if you manage to connect it to the actual topic of the conversation, and that has been writing the whole time. you're the one that brought in these real world examples, escalated by calling nadsat a "plausible jargon" and now you're retreating, now the conversation was never about plausibility, it was just about "intrinsic linguistic soundness". it sure wasn't for me, because i have no idea what that is! i've been talking about the craft of bilingual writing this whole thread and you have written nothing to convince me that the craft that went into this book is anything but poor.