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Jutrzenkapolska · VIP Joined: 16 Sep 2004 Posts: 534

My English teacher choose, of all things to read this term, "A Clockwork Orange" by Anthony Burgess.As if the book wasn't hard and impenetrable enough, it is written half in English, half in fake teenage 1960s Russian slang.For the first assignment,we are supposed to 'translate' the first paragraph. So please guys, help me wow my English teacher with my superior knowledge of Nadsat Very Happy

.

To start with:

babooshka=granny
Bog=God
chelloveck=person
chepooka=a trifle?
cravat=tie
deng=money
devotchka=girl
droog=friend?
goloss=voice?
horroshow=good
kartoffel=potato
korova=cow
litso=face
malchik=boy
malenky=tiny?
mesto=place?
moloko=milk
mozg=brain
nochy=night
nozh=knife?
ptitsa=bird?
pletsoes=shoulders
rooker=hand
skorry=fast
slovo=word?
smeck=laugh?
starry=old
veshch=thing?

Any ideas what cyclaman, vellocet, synthemesc, drenrom, peet, pot, prod, polly, tolchock, veck, viddy, kupet, rot, zoobies or cheenas could be? Laughing

Skip · Posted: Tue Feb 08, 2005 5:50 am Post subject:

Nope... choosing just one of your translations... potato sounds wrong to me somehow... definitely corrupt Twisted Evil

Camrade · Posted: Tue Feb 08, 2005 2:22 pm Post subject:

2Jutrzenkapolska

maybe not "chepoka" but "shepotka"? That means "a little bit of smth"
cravat' = bed
malenkiy = small, tiny Smile

nochy = nightS...

for the other words - you transliteration of some words is non understandable
maybe peet is a verb pit' which means - to drink
pot = sweat
prod it's maybe prood which means pond
tolchok = push
rot = mouth

Camrade · Posted: Tue Feb 08, 2005 2:24 pm Post subject:

kupet = kupit' = to buy
zoobies = zuby = teeth

Keoki

chepooka - nonsense

droog - friend

goloss - voice

malenky - small

mesto - place

nozh - knife

ptitsa - bird

slovo - word

smeck - laugh

veshch - thing

synthemesc - sounds like a drug, from mescaline

peet - drink

pot - sweat

prod -this is an English word; don't know what it could be in Russian

tolchock - push

veck - century

kupet - to buy

rot - mouth

zoobies - teeth

Camrade · Posted: Tue Feb 08, 2005 5:45 pm Post subject:

2Keoki

Crabman · Posted: Tue Feb 08, 2005 5:58 pm Post subject:

ptitsa = bird, but in the British/eng sense: a "chick" in Am/eng

viddy = to see

Crabman · Posted: Tue Feb 08, 2005 6:15 pm Post subject:

I read this a long time ago and my recollection is hazy. I think "prod" was just a shortened version of the english verb "produce".

Also you didn't include it, but there was also the expression "P and M" or "pee and em". This was a reference to "father and mother". From the latin Pater and Mater. Smartass Brits used to refer to their parents this way.

polly = money (pretty polly), cockney rhyming slang (rhymes with lolly - a Brit term)

synthmesc (synthetic mescaline - Keoki seems well versed in drugs Very Happy

), vellocet (speed, I'm guessing ), and drencrom (no clue what the derivation is) were drugs.

Dr-Fauste · Site Admin Joined: 23 Nov 2004 Posts: 654

Read the biography of Burgess and you will realize that this book is a partial autobiography. His wife was raped and killed by British Soldiers in Gilbratar. So the rape scene that was in the movie actually happened to him and his wife. This part of the book was confessional or relieving the hatred that he had. Thus the book had its purpose, but it was more to get rid Anthony's personal daemons. Not is the book about free will, but it is about hate. That is why I think he picked Beethoven with his negative past. Wagner would be too much racial.
The question is why did he pick the slavic language like Russian?

Dr-Fauste · Site Admin Joined: 23 Nov 2004 Posts: 654

2. THE NADSAT

***************

The use of a completely new syntax is utterly magnificent - a stroke of genius. And it proves oncce again Anthony Burgess's remarkable ability and facility with languages of all kinds and with words in general. At a first glance the vocabulary of anti-hero Alex sounds incomprehensible: "You could peet it with vellocet or synthemesc or drencrom or one or two other veshches."
Or: "So I read all about the scourging and the crowning with thorns and then the cross veshch and all that cal, and I viddied better that there was something in it. While the stereo played bits of lovely Bach I closed my glazzies and viddied myself helping in and even taking charge of the tolchocking and the nailing in, being dressed in a like toga that was the heighth of Roman fashion."
Then the reader, even if he knows no Russian, get to grips with it, and it's a very expressive and colourful read. Some of the meaning becomes clear from the context: "We gave this devotchka a tolchock on the litso and the krovvy came out of her mouth", which approximately translated means, we gave this girl a blow on the face and blood came out of her mouth.

Anthony Burgess has not used Russian words 'literatim', but with deliberate abuse. Some expressions (grahzny bratchny = dirty bastard; lubbilubbing = making love) and single words (gullywuts = guts) sound more accomplished than in English language, and have a touch of magic spell. The light-handed transformation of golova (head) into gulliver - with its Swiftian associates - is only one of many brilliant inventions. Alex and his 'droogs' are addicted to drugs named drencom, synthemesc, vellocet... Other words of the Nadsat are roughly anglicized: khorosho (good or well) as horrowshow; iudi (people) as lewdies; militsia (militia or police) as millicents. Pooshka (cannon) indicates a pistol; rozha (grimace) turns into rozz - one of the words for policeman; samyi (the most) becomes sammy (generous); soomka (bag) is an ugly woman.

This Slav argot is seasoned with rhyming slang and gypsy's bolo. Alex' way of speaking includes the repeating phrase "O my brothers" and words like crark (to yowl), cutter (money), golly (unit of money), sharp (female), filly (to play or fool with), etc. The 'gypsy talk' interfuses with a rhyming slang, which contains expressions like pretty polly for money (rhyming with lolly or current slang).

Occasionally there are inevitable associations, such as cancer for cigarette, pan-handle for erection, mounch for snack and charlie for chaplain. Various neologisms are produced by simple schoolboy transformations: appy polly loggy (apology), baddiwad (bad), jammywam (jam), eggiweg (egg), skolliwoll (school), and so forth. Other words are amputations: guff (guffaw), pee and em (pop and mom), sarky (sarcastic), sinny (cinema).

"But most of the roots are Slav," explains a doctor in the novel. "Propaganda. Subliminal penetration."

"Russian loanwords fit better in English than those from German, French, or Italian. English, anyway, is already a kind of mélange of French and German. Russian has polysyllables like zhevotnoye for beast, and ostanovka avtobusa is not so good as bus stop. But it also has brevities like brat for brother and grud for breast. The English word, in which four consonants strangle one short vowel, is inept for that glorious smooth roundness. Groodies would be right. In the manner of the Eastern languages, Russian makes no distinction between leg and foot - noga for both - or hand and arm, which are alike ruka. This limitation would turn my horrible young narrator into a clockwork toy with inarticulated limbs. As there were much violence in the draft smouldering in my drawer, and would be even more in the finished work, the strange new lingo would act as a kind of mist half-hiding the mayhem and protecting the reader from his own baser instincts. And there was a fine irony in the notion of a teenager race untouched by politics, using totalitarian brutality as an end in itself, equipped with a dialect which drew on the two chief political languages of the age."
(From: A.B., You've Had Your Time, pag. 38. Grove Weidenfield, New York, 1991)

As we know, Alex' picturesque vocabulary is largely used in Stanley Kubrick's cult movie too. If we analyze the book and the movie, we can see that some items transformed themselves from one to another 'text'.
In the book Alex ends up as a free individual with all his criminal impulses and, incidentally, his love of music returned. He is considerably matured and ends optimistically saying:
"Tomorrow is all like sweet flowers and turning vonny earth and the stars and the old luna up there and your old droog Alex all on his oddy knocky seeking like a mate."

The first edition of A Clockwork Orange in the U.S.A. had the last chapter missing. This was a decision of the American publisher and in no way endorsed by Mr Burgess. The publisher also included a Nadsat glossary, which was also against Mr Burgess's wishes. By using Nadsat, Burgess hoped the readers would see far beyond the mere description of the various violent acts, as this would tend to straight-jacket their feelings for Alex and therefore prevent them from uncovering any deeper meanings behind the work. Star director Kubrick based his film version on the American edition of the book, and this fact modified the balance of Burgess's original story. Also many translations in other languages often miss the real purpose of the Nadsat.

"In Italy, where the book became Arancia all'Orologeria, it was assumed that the title referred to a grenade, an alternative to the ticking pineapple."
(From: A. B., prefatory note to A Clockwork Orange: A play with music. Century Hutchinson Ltd., 1987)

But why had the first American edition the last chapter missing? Perhaps, given American mores and morality, the publisher thought that having Alex (of his own free will this time) become "good" wasn't the right thing and so he snipped that important final chapter. Burgess disliked this editing not only because of the general principle of not tampering with an authors work, but also because he had planned the novel with exactly 21 chapters. We must remember that Burgess was a passionate musician - he wrote a couple of symphonies - and arithmetic has a great weight in the classical music. The number 21 is very important for the structure of A Clockwork Orange. 21 = three sections of seven chapters. And Alex & Co. find their redeeming (and redemption) at the age of 21. The whole novel is based on numbers and symbols, beginning with the title.

"These juveniles were primarily intrigued by the language of the book, which became a genuine teenage argot, and they liked the title. They did not realise that it was an old Cockney expression used to describe anything queer, not necessarily sexually so, and they hit on the secondary meaning of an organic entity, full of juice and sweetness and agreeable odour, being turned into an automaton. The youth of Malaysia, where I had lived for nearly six years, saw that orange contained orang, meaning in Malay a human being."
(From: A. B., prefatory note to A Clockwork Orange: A play with music. Century Hutchinson Ltd., 1987)

Although Anthony Burgess said that A Clockwork Orange was intended to be a study about how the State affects the lives of the citizens, its unique language and the formidable character of Alex gained cult status. Director Stanley Kubrick later witdraw his movie following a moral panic about a 'copycat killings' allegedly performed by a youth wearing the costume of Alex and his 'droogs'.

A Clockwork Orange is considered one of the best novels of the Twentieth century, and I agree with this general opinion. But I've read quite all works by Anthony Burgess in the last years and would affirm that Earthly Powers, A Dead Man in Deptford, 1985, The End Of The World News, Tremor of Intent, as well as the 'Enderby'-trilogy, are to compare with A Clockwork Orange for brilliancy, depth, insight and innovation.

Mr Burgess has written more than just one masterpiece...

AliceFromMoscow · WayToRussified Joined: 10 Jul 2004 Posts: 411

babooshka=granny
Bog=God
chelloveck=person, a man
chepooka=a trifle?, i guess you meant chepooha, it means something unimportant, insignificant thing
cravat=tie, did you mean krovat'? if so, it means bed.
deng=money, dengee
devotchka=girl, would be more appropriate to say that devochka means baby-girl
droog=friend?
goloss=voice?
horroshow=good
kartoffel=potato
korova=cow
litso=face
malchik=boy
malenky=tiny? small
mesto=place?
moloko=milk
mozg=brain
nochy=night
nozh=knife?
ptitsa=bird?
pletsoes=shoulders, i have no clue what pletsoes mean. definitely not shoulders. shoulders are plechi. or a shoulder(single) plecho
rooker=hand
skorry=fast, quick
slovo=word?
smeck=laugh? smekh
starry=old
veshch=thing?

Any ideas what cyclaman - cyclamen? Smile

vellocet - veloseeped?(bicycle),
peet - to drink,
pot - sweat,
tolchock - a push, shove,
veck - vek - century,
kupet - buy,
rot - mouth,

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