Kevin

[lizinka.livejournal.com]

I'm practicing my Cyrillic by attempting to translate names and checking them with a computer translator. Most of the time, we agree. However, when I was working on the name Kevin, I came up with something different.

Which is correct?

Кэвин (Mine)
Кевин (Computer)

Thanks!

Comments

[piglet-the-4th.livejournal.com]

Кевин is better.

[lizinka.livejournal.com]

Thanks for the help!

[http://users.livejournal.com/_nikki/]

I would think Кевин, but I'm only a beginner at this. I've read that while е will normally end up palatalising the previous consonant, in foreign names, people will use the э sound anyway and that э is actually quite a rare character compared to е.

If someone is reading this who knows I'm wrong, please correct me!

[lizinka.livejournal.com]

Thanks for the explanation.

How is the "e" supposed to be pronounced?

[noser.livejournal.com]

Like the English one, but K is usually palatalized, which is not a big deal. med99 did a great job explaining it below.

[pogoda.livejournal.com]

damn. is russian THAT difficult?

would never thought about the palatalized consonants...

[noser.livejournal.com]

With that attitude, you're in for many surprises. My personal opinion is that Russian is much easier than English pronunciation-wise.

[pogoda.livejournal.com]

I'm just a native-speaking russian. Normal one, not a linguist.

[med99.livejournal.com]

essentially right.

Additionally, the convention is to use "э" when transliterating the English a as in 'bat', which is why it's not used for Kevin.

Foreigners tend to be over-preoccupied with palatalisation when it comes to transliterating names. The essential thing to remember is, palatalisation is something so natural for a Russian speaker that most of the time, they don't even notice it. The hard and the soft version of a consonant are, for all practical purposes, two different shades, or flavours, of the same sound - not two different sounds. There's no problem with an occasional palatalisation creeping into a foreign name (though indeed palatalising everything would sound uncultured).

I remember Disney's Gummi Bears dubbed into Russian, - the boy Kevin's name was always pronounced with a soft 'k'. That was perfectly OK, not like anyone would suppose it's spelt "Kyevin" in English.

[http://users.livejournal.com/_nikki/]

Good to know that I'm not on another planet already!

I think I know what you mean about putting too much emphasis on whether or not something is palatalised. I'm British and (assuming I'm understanding palatalisation right) we palatalise the t in Tuesday, stew, stupid and student, the s in consume, the b in beautiful, the d in dew, the f in few and feudal, the h in huge, the n in new, the m in music and mute, etc. whereas Americans don't always (maybe they pronounce some of them the same as me, I don't know). If someone says "stoo-pid" or "nu" I know what they mean, I rarely even notice (although if I do, it sounds very American). We don't usually notice that Tuesday sounds a lot like we're saying "chews day", it's still a t to most of us.

[wolk-off.livejournal.com]

>assuming I'm understanding palatalisation right
Hmmmm not quite... at least not in Russian sense of the word. How you pronounced Tuesday would be transliterated as Тьюсдей in Russian, BUT the Russian idea of palatalisation is closer to Тюсдей (стью=стю, бьютифул=бютифул etc.) when it comes to English words. There is not a hint of a [j] sound after Russian palatalised consonants, while there defenitely is more than a hint of that sound in the pronounciation you describe above.

[wretched-girl.livejournal.com]

Usually when translating, people use "e". It is really correct either way, because Kevin is not a Russian name

[med99.livejournal.com]

not quite... there are Cyrillisation conventions more or less set down by the Akademiya nauk, which it's a good idea to follow

[wolk-off.livejournal.com]

There is a good book called "Foreign Names and Toponyms in Russian Text" ("Иностранные имена и названия в русском тексте") which I normally use for the reference as an editor (I have no problems with English or French names but occasionally run into hard Portuguese, Hungarian or Dutch cases.) There are some exclusions in English transliterations caused by 18th and 19th century traditions (like Douglas=Дуглас, Henriette=Генриетта etc.; I feel that when transliterating Harry Potter's classmate Hermione as Гермиона, they follow the same tradition.)

[wildernesscat.livejournal.com]

Would you suggest Хермиони, unless tradition were to be followed? ;-)

[wolk-off.livejournal.com]

I would suggest Хермайони as it sounds, but in this case the first three letters form an obscene Russian word 8-(( , so it's better to leave it as it is (given the fact that it already is Гермиона in millions of copies of Russian translation of all five books, and it's Гермиона in the Russian translation of all three movies.)
Unfortunately, this is the case with all foreign names starting with Her-, so we have to avoid is as we can (Herbie->Хэрби, Herman->Герман etc.)

[rimokon.livejournal.com]

Sorry to jack this comment thread, lol, but how on earth are you supposed to palatalize К, М, З, and П? People tell me "Like you palatalize the other consonants", but that doensn't really help me much...I mean, for example, palatalizing Л is easy because you use your tongue in the hard version, and to make it soft, all you have to do is move your tongue to a different place, right? But the consonants I mention earlier don't use your tongue at all..so what are you supposed to do in that case?

[wolk-off.livejournal.com]

In Mь, you just form a longer pipe with your lips that the one you do with the hard M :) In Kь, you use a different part of your tongue, not the middle part closer to its root, but closer to the tip. In Зь, your tongue goes up to form a narrower space than in З with the middle part of the tongue also used rather than just the tip. And in Пь, you just move your tongue closer to the upper teeth than in П. Maybe the pro linguists can explain it better.

[rimokon.livejournal.com]

Ohh I get it now. Thanks.

[welgar.livejournal.com]

Do it the way you pronounce cute, mute, Zeus and pupil.

[rimokon.livejournal.com]

Ahh..I see. Thanks. :)