The Volokh Conspiracy
[Eugene Volokh, May 13, 2008 at 12:48pm] Trackbacks
Could This Be the Anthem of RICO?

Seen on the song list of this CD set: "The march of racketeers" (plus "The rackets are always at the post").

Of course, this is another example of the translator's false friends. In Russian, "rockets" (as in "the rockets' red glare") are "rakety," and "rocketeer," in the sense of a soldier in charge of firing rockets, is "raketchik." (No, "-chik" is not always a diminutive; don't let "boychik" fool you.) So a poor translator of the song list -- the disk set is "Patriotic Songs," by the Alexandrov Song and Dance Ensemble of the Soviet Army -- translates "raketchikov" as "of racketeers." How embarazada.

Quasi-Linguist (mail):
Interesting. But I just looked at your old post for the first time and noticed something. The word "magazin" isn't exactly a "false friend" with respect to the English "magazine" in the same sense as you are thinking. The words are related.

"Magazin" simply means "storage house" in Arabic (Mahazin), French (Magasin), Greek (Magazi), etc. This word is where the English "magazine" comes from -- it's a storage house of articles. Of course, they don't mean the exact same thing, but they share a common origin.

As for "emabarazada," it sounds like it would mean "embarassed," not "embarassing." So "How embarazada" doesn't really work. Maybe something like "I'd be embarazada" or the "the translator should be embarazada."

Anyway, just random comments.
5.13.2008 1:43pm
ys:
One should also make sure not to confuse "rakety" and "rakity" - another mainstay of Red Star patriotic songs, in this case typically performed by a "young pioneers" rather than a grizzled soldiers choir. The latter word is a regional (dialectal?) term for "willows"
5.13.2008 5:55pm
Dilan Esper (mail) (www):
There can be only one anthem of RICO:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nx64_N4AA04
5.13.2008 9:16pm
Stephen Humphrey (mail) (www):
My wife used "embarazada" as a FALSE-false-friend as an undergraduate (at UCLA, in fact). Newly pregnant with our first child and taking an intermediate Spanish class, she purposely made a mistake just so she could feign that she was "embarazada." It played out perfectly: the instructor corrected her, and she in turn was able to insist that, no, she really WAS embarazada. The class cheered.
5.15.2008 4:10am

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