Thursday, September 30, 2010

Cursing in Russian translation difficulties


I was just browsing the web, trying to find out how to translate a sentence to Russian for the purpose of a short story I'm writing and I stumbled upon your blog and wondered if you would help me. (...) The sentence in English is, pardon the rude word: "Fucking corpse stealer".

Google Translate came up with this (I need a phonetic spelling since the story won't use Russian alphabet) :
"Trahat' mertvyh vor." How accurate is that?

The context is that the speaker is supposed to be insulting another character, who happens to be stealing dead bodies.

Best wishes Paul B.

It is a tricky question ))) as cursing (Mat in Russian)
is apparently the strongest form of obscene profanity used in Russian and other Slavic language communities...and I try not to use this Russian language on my site as there are a lot of subtlety in the context of cursing in Russian.

However I will help you in this one )))


If I understood correctly it is an insult...so if it is not an act and just addressed to a men and has to be very offensive it must be strong..... something like :

"Ebanyi voryuga trupov"


P.S. Never say anything like this in the face of Russian man....you risk to get immediate feedback