Comments on: “The killer has not yet been accused, but we know who he is.”

By: mab

mab — Thu, 11 Oct 2007 08:59:47 +0000

Yeah, there are a lot of creeps, too. It was funny — the Russian cops didn’t even consider the GAI to be in the same profession. They considered them a sub-breed. “Raise baton, stop car, take money. Raise baton, stop car, take money…” They were utterly contemptuous of them.

By: Irishman

Irishman — Thu, 11 Oct 2007 08:09:02 +0000

”Like Arkady Renko?”

Gosh, its a while since I saw Gorky Park, but William Hurt was cool in that film. The wife of course totally dismissed the film in much the same way Russians dismiss any western portrayal of the country. But I enjoyed it.

Friend of mine from Fili knows a cop – wont say where -but he has that type of attitude, obsessive. I suppose being a good cop anywhere is a vocation as much as a profession. Sadly, in both Ireland and Russia, a lot of pretty useless thugs do end up as policemen.

By: mab

mab — Thu, 11 Oct 2007 08:00:08 +0000

In the 90s I was working on a pilot for a cop show and we had a consultant who had been in MUR. I was also getting robbed about every week, and got to be friends with the guys in one precinct (who even used to use my Zhiguli to catch bad guys at night when they couldn’t find another working car…) The ex-MUR guy was a pr agent’s dream come true — his parents were both academics and professors, he was very well educated and looked like a friendly bear. They were honest (never took bribes) and could talk for hours about how they caught some low-life or other. And when I’d ask them why they wanted to be cops, they all said, “романтика”. And man, could they drink. I usually could remember how the evening started, but rarely how it ended.

On the translation — none are quite right, are they? I think россияне is stressing citizenship and not ethnicity, so I’d probably go with fellow citizens.

By: Michael Averko

Michael Averko — Thu, 11 Oct 2007 04:29:39 +0000

“Chrisius Maximus on October 10, 2007 7:19 pm

Never fear, Ivanov. I only use my mighty deductive powers to fight the forces of evil (like Mike Averko), not those of good. I’m sort of like a Jedi that way. Your credit card receipts are safe – unless, that is, you move over to the Dark Side.”

****

Leave it to the above quoted Chris Doss to confuse evil with good. He intentionally does this unlike some others, thereby making himself all the more evil.

By: ivanov

ivanov — Wed, 10 Oct 2007 23:58:32 +0000

What about “people of Russia”?

By: Chrisius Maximus

Chrisius Maximus — Wed, 10 Oct 2007 23:06:01 +0000

“My countrymen and -women” just sounds lame. It’s not pithy.

By: db

db — Wed, 10 Oct 2007 21:49:21 +0000

“My countrymen”?

… and women.

By: Chrisius Maximus

Chrisius Maximus — Wed, 10 Oct 2007 21:31:45 +0000

“But translation gets tricky when it’s, say, Yeltsin addressing a crowd Россияне! It would be easier to translate into French — I think it’s like Citoyens! If you translate as Russians! it sounds dumb and ethnocentric. If you translate as My Fellow Citizens, it’s sounds like Jimmy Carter. Ah, it’s those easy words that are hardest of all…”

“My countrymen”?

By: Tim Newman

Tim Newman — Wed, 10 Oct 2007 20:06:15 +0000

I’ve met a couple of what I call real cops here — the kind who are real “romantics” — ie they want to catch bad guys and put them in jail — and they are really obsessive about what they do.

Like Arkady Renko?

By: Chrisius Maximus

Chrisius Maximus — Wed, 10 Oct 2007 19:19:20 +0000