Last set of questions... Honest.

[quem98.livejournal.com]

История народа, научно воспроизведенная, становится приходной-расходной его книгой, по которой подсчитываются недочеты и и передержки его прошлого.

My translation:
The history of the people (nation?), scientifically reproduced, becomes the input/output(????) of his book, by which the deficits and overexposures of its past are calculated.

In this sentance, how would one translate приходной-расходной? The definitions I found were something to the effect of income-payment, but that makes absolutely no sense in this context. The whole sentance is, as always a bit wonky... But whatever.

Also, how does one convey the nuances of:
народ, народность, национальность, and этноса in English? For the first two, there aren't any exact translations, but how do you get the idea across?

Comments

[rednameless.livejournal.com]

becomes the input/output(????) of his book

book (journal) of his imcome/expenses

"приход" - он же "доход", "прибыль"
"расход" - он "расход" и есть. =)

народ, народность, национальность - imho, here is no difference.

[quem98.livejournal.com]

That makes sense...

[rednameless.livejournal.com]

oh, no, "народ" also may be translated as just "people".
But in phrases like "наш народ" it means more "nation" than "people".

[oryx_and_crake]

These words have different meanings.
народ is people or ethnic group (btw, people is a very exact translation)
народ and народность are very close; национальность means ethnicity; you can say малый народ/малая народность (meaning that there are not many people who belong to this ethnic group) but you cannot say малая национальность, it does not make sense.
As to этнос, I am not really sure, but probably same as nation/ethnic group.

Please be careful and do not mix up национальность and nationality. Nationality in the Western sense is citizenship, while in Russia it means only ethnicity. If somebody carries a Russian passport, he is Russian by nationality, but his национальность can be anything from Uzbek to Ukrainian to Jewish.

P.S. I know it's complicated. Good luck!

[oryx_and_crake]

And, I think, for приходно-расходная книга, you can just say "general ledger" or whatever is that they use in accounting. The phrase means essentially that the history of a nation, being recorded, becomes a collection of records, as in accounting, by which you can trace the outgoing and incoming flow of people/ideas/national wealth/art/culture/use and abuse/you name it.

[oryx_and_crake]

for недочеты и и передержки I would say "shortcomings and abuses"

[yms.livejournal.com]

The definitions I found were something to the effect of income-payment, but that makes absolutely no sense in this context.

History is compared to book-keeping, you see.

[welgar.livejournal.com]

Народность and этнос mean an ethnic group. Народность is often used as "малая народность" and likewise. Этнос is a scientifical term.
Национальность is ethnicity, ethnical identification.

[yers.livejournal.com]

приходной-расходной его книгой

It's a feature of literary Russian (though falling slightly out of use) that you can inject a possessive pronoun between an adjective and a noun. It's the same as "его приходно-расходной книгой" except more bookish. Writers do (or used to do) this kind of thing semi-intuitively to improve the prosaic rhythm of the sentence.

[simonff.livejournal.com]

Oh no. You ran into something worse than bad journalism: high-falutin' liberal arts writings. :) Don't expect some phrases to make sense at all - they may be just compilation of important-sounding words. The style of this sentence is cheesily archaic, so if the article is modern, its author probably does not know how to write clearly and tries to appeal to historical roots with his/her style instead.

I've just read a discussion between Russian people about whether Russians are really народ, or нация, or something else yet, and how these terms may mean different things when applied for Russians and other Europeans. So your confusion is perfectly normal.

Note that этнос is sometimes used in wistful, almost religious way: русский этнос has a taste of an indefinable quality that makes your eyes water and your soul yearn for the divine. No kidding. :( I think a historian Lev Gumilev is partially responsible for this.

[quem98.livejournal.com]

So... Where can I find Russian articles that aren't erudite or badly written?

[simonff.livejournal.com]

Are you looking for a specific subject or just for something readable to translate? For the former, it will depend on the topic, but for the latter, I heartily recommend polit.ru (www.polit.ru). In addition to the newsfeed which you can ignore, they publish a lot of highly intelligent analytical articles on all things concerning Russian economy, society and culture. Look for the bars on the left and on the right of the newsfeed, especially the "Аналитика" section.

[bgmt.livejournal.com]

Nonsense. Record your own speach (people rarely know how they talk!) and you'll see a lot of occurrences of such a construction. The degree of inversion in РР (Разговорная речь, аs opposed to КЛЯ - кодифицированный литературный язык) is very high. "А главная её забота - ..."

[bgmt.livejournal.com]

Well, one question of yours becomes, if you discuss it with Russians, ideological. They tell you here that национальность means ethnicity. No it does not. It means an unalterable state, a label, that serves in Russia to mostly mark somthing corresponding to "ethnic origin"... though not necessaryly: since during many years one coud choose between one's father's and mother's национальность, it may, after a long chain of such choices, correspond to nothing real in the eyes of a Westerner. Or, for that matter, in the eyes of a Russian before Revolution (when only the religion mattered). Russians mostly just do not notice the lack of real content of this word. In Russian, one cannot become "Russian" in the национальность sence. A typical example: an ad in the last issue of "Русская мысль" ( a Russian-language Paris weekly) : "Женщина 40 лет, корейской национальности, говорит по-русски и по-французски, ищет работу". I bet she does not know Korean. SO what does it mean she "is Korean"? It simply means she came from Russia recently and keeps using the word национальность as is common in Russia. It is not even racist, it is bureaucratic-mythical-racist.

I came across somebody in LJ, a visiting professor, who thought it his duty to inform American collegues that those of the faculty whom they though being Russian are in fact Jews. To him, a person of Jewish origin cannot be Russian. He thought he was correcting a mistake.

[yers.livejournal.com]

Thank you. You're on time. Just when I needed something or someone to leisurely tear apart.

One. «А главная ее забота» is pureblood K.L.Ya. What on Earth were you using it as an illustration for? A person speaking genuine R.R. would go something like «самая у нее главная забота — это...» (with a typical plummeting intonation, and swallowing the endings).

Two. I never brought up colloquial speech in the first place. I was talking literary language vs. very literary language. I was talking about one particular construction rather than the entire phenomenon of inversion. If "nonsense" is your battle-call, I must be the nearest thing to a windmill you've ever met.

Three, as a bonus. I am very speech-conscious. Sorry.

[bgmt.livejournal.com]

Well, there is such thing as implicit statement. When you say "It's a feature of literary Russian", the natural implication is "as opposed to spoken language". Otherwise, why mention "literate"?
As for PP, I discussed your original statement last night with a couple of friends. We all heard such constructions from each other many times. Your "genuine" PP example corresponds to a somewhat different speach pattern, corresponding probably to a lower level of education, in which I would expect to find sentences like "сама она из Твери" where "сама" does not indicate any contraposition. But intellectuals speak PP, too, though somewhat different. To me, the questions "Ты читал последнюю его книгу?" and "Ты читал его последнюю книгу?" are freely interchangeable.

As for being speach-conscious: have you tried to record your speach or haven't you? Whether you are a lay person like me, or a professional, we are all very bad in realising how we speak. A friend of mine, a poet, educated in philology, very speach-conscious, thinks he speaks St Petersbourg. In fact, he very often pronounces "снех", "крух" which is typically Moskovite. He insists he never swallows "г" in "когда" or "ль" in "только". He does.

[yers.livejournal.com]

Points to consider: 1.the difference between random and patterned inversion (patterned inversion of this particular type is absent from the spoken language, where a pronoun can get jammed between an adjective and a noun if the adjective carries the semantic stress and so is pushed forward; this is never done for rhythmic effect, or we'd all be speaking with the intonations of Andrey Bely's The Silver Pigeon.). 2.«самая» in my example does very well indicate a contraposition, and the whole phrase is about two levels of education higher than «сама она из Твери». If you're as bad at hearing your own speech as you're saying, perhaps try at least to listen to the people around you? 3. this made my day: a Muscovite would NEVER say "снех" or "крух" unless they're originally from Rostov or Krasnodar. I mean... do you ever bother to know what you're talking about? =)