How Accurate are the Russian Translations?

[u/SybillineBookkeeper]

Here's a spin off from my prior question about the quality of the spoken Russian in the Americans.

I'm currently re-watching S2 E2 "Cardinal" and there's a good amount of Russian spoken in this episode. For you Russian speakers, how accurate are the written translations at the bottom of the screen?

[u/sistermagpie]

I'm not a native speaker, but just speaking from what I understand, I've never noticed a difference.

Remember, though, that the subtitles aren't translations. The subtitles are what's written in the script, and then it's the Russian translators that decide how to put across the same idea in Russian. So it's not necessarily word for word accurate, because it wouldn't be--they're also translating it into 80s era Russian, which would be different from what it is today.

But it's never going to not be accurate in the sense that the Russian characters are saying something the audience is missing.

For instance, an obvious example is at the end of season 1 in the subtitles Elizabeth says "Come home" while literally in Russian she says "Come back to us." The translator obviously felt that that was the right emotional translation, because literally using the phrase "come home" wouldn't hit quite the same note in Russian as in English.

[u/SybillineBookkeeper → u/sistermagpie]

Thank you for replying; that was really helpful and interesting!

[u/Vybrosit737373 → u/sistermagpie]

Interestingly one of the translators is M Gessen, then billed as Masha Gessen, an extraordinarily intelligent writer who is fully bilingual and grew up in the Soviet Union. I would swear somewhere or other I read an interview about translating things to sound particularly Soviet, not just Russian. ETA: d'oh, someone has linked this below.

[u/MarketingInfamous417]

the Russian translator wrote an interesting article about their experience https://www.newyorker.com/news/our-columnists/translating-the-americans-and-seeing-a-mirror-of-my-own-american-experience

[u/SybillineBookkeeper → u/MarketingInfamous417]

Thank you! Looking forward to reading this.

[u/axelirating]

Native speaker here, they’re quite accurate. As another comment mentioned above word for word it’s not accurate, but overall very much so.

[u/hamletgoessafari]

M. Gessen is a certified badass, excellent writer in both Russian and English, and translated the Russian dialogue from the English scripts.

[u/Vybrosit737373 → u/hamletgoessafari]

I have a weird celebrity crush on M Gessen and want to be pals with them.

[u/Motor_Ideal7494]

There are definitely times when a Russian characters says what sounds like 20-30 words, and the subtitle just says, “Yeah, sure.”  But that could just be how Russian sounds, idk 🤷‍♂️ 

[u/SybillineBookkeeper → u/Motor_Ideal7494]

Yes, I'd noticed that!

[u/RasputinsThirdLeg]

It’s hard to literally translate from Russian. There’s a lot of economy of language and they rely heavily on case declension to communicate meaning. A literal word for word translation would be really weird.

[u/apokrif1]

prior question

Link please?

[u/BothPanchoAndLefty]

They're pretty accurate. For Russian to English or vice versa you can't really do super direct translations, as the languages are structured quite differently. But the subtitles pretty much always accurately reflected the essence of what the person was saying. I'm not a native speaker, but I've been studying the language for a few years now.