Template:Untranslatable ideas

There are two ways you can tell when a man is lying. One is when he says he can drink champagne all night and not get drunk. The other is when he says he understands Russians. —Charles E. Bohlen, former U.S. ambassador to Moscow

Russian is a very rich language. In English one word may suffice to convey an idea, while Russian will have several words to choose from, each with a slightly different shade of meaning. This presents problems for interpreters and translators, as well as possibilities for misunderstandings.

Many words and expressions in one language simply do not exist in the other. Aleksei Mikhalev, a Russian translator of American literature, says that differences in language and literature—two significant products of a nation’s thought and psychology—demonstrate that English speakers and Russians are not very much alike. He cites the impossibility of finding precise Russian equivalents for the simple English word privacy, a concept that does not exist in Russian (nor in many other languages as well). Other untranslatables from English to Russian listed by Mikhalev include take care, have fun, make love, efficiency, and challenge.168

Even translatable words are sometimes mistranslated, especially when idiomatic language is involved. Kornei Chukovsky, one of the best-known translators from English into Russian, cited several such bloopers. In one, an experienced Russian translator, translating a work by American poet Langston Hughes, wrote about the passionate love of a black man for a black woman who had rejected him. Actually, Hughes had written about a “black maria” (police van) that he hoped was not coming to get him. Another example cited by Chukovsky, from Galsworthy’s The Forsyte Saga, had a young man, Michael Mont, rowing a boat with his girlfriend across a river when he suddenly “caught a crab” (a rowing term indicating a faulty stroke). The Russian translator had Mont fishing for crabs in the middle of an ardent conversation with his sweetheart.