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You are talking here about a state of seclusion. Smith, of course, was talking of "privacy" as a right, a freedom from intrusion.

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Try to find a Russian equivalent for "privacy" in these contexts.

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mricon.livejournal.com

Решение опубликовать медицинские данные пациента было тяжким нарушением его прав на конфиденциальность.
Блюстители права на личную тайну выразили тревогу по поводу...
Не лезь в мои дела и не трожь мою почту.

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Of course, you can convey the general meaning. You can't translate "privacy" as a single word though, there is no equivalent Russian word.
Конфиденциальность is as close as you can get and it is not a real equivalent.

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all these are just proving his point - there is no universal translation for this word.

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mricon.livejournal.com

Right, but Smith used this as a means to convey the impression that Russians have no concept of "privacy" which is simply absurd. The simple fact that Russian language uses different words for different semantic meanings of the English word "privacy" has no underlying implication of the mentality of Russian people. We use the word "рука" when talking about things English speakers would differentiate into "shoulder," "arm," and "hand," but that doesn't mean that our upper appendages are any different from those observed elsewhere in the world.

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mwuahaha 8))
that is certainly right ;)

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Smith was talking about such phenomenon as коммуналки ¹. Then he went something like this: "No wonder that there is no Russian word for 'privacy'".
Of course, he didn't imply some kind of innate inability of Russians to appreciate privacy. He meant that in the Soviet society this important right was not nearly as appreciated as in the Western democracies, which, of course, was true.

Коммуналки ¹ (communal apparments) multiroom apparents in which each room was occupied by an entire family and everyone shared the same facilities - a single kitchen and a single bathroom.
Understandably this caused constant tensions and nearly daily fights between the residents and privacy was all but non-existent under such conditions.
This kind of accomodations was especially common in Moscow and Leningrad until the 60s and gradually became less and less common afterwards, although as I hear it still exists to this day.
As Bulgakov's character said in the 30s: They are, in fact, good people, it's the appartment problem that corrupted them.

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nadyezhda.livejournal.com

Право на личную тайну-- right to privacy; invasion of privacy, вторжение в частную жизнь.

I don't know how well "privacy watchdog" would translate- but I think you could easily use either of the two phrases above to communicate what you're trying to say- and that's the point, right? Some cultures have one word for a concept; others do not.

For instance, Georgian has one word meaning "that which failed in the process of becoming" (arshemdgari). Sure is easier to say one word, but it doesn't mean the culture doesn't have the _concept_-- english does, it just takes longer to say.

Now, if you want to say Russian doesn't have a SINGLE word, that's fine, I won't argue with you.

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When someones says that the word X does not exist in the language Y, he means, of course, a single equivalent word.
It is clear that the concept can still be explained in several words.

As to the point Smith was trying to make, I explained it here (http://www.livejournal.com/community/learn_russian/220975.html?replyto=2715439).

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nadyezhda.livejournal.com

I posted directly from my e-mail notification and missed your explanation, which I have now read.

I never take for granted what people mean to say when they say something; it can get you into a lot of hot water ;)

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mricon.livejournal.com

Russian is not alone. For example, there is no direct equivalent of the word "privacy" in French either. It's usually translated as "intimité" or "confidentialité".

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well, considering how close French and Russian were during 17-19th century, if there would've been such a word in French, it would be adopted in Russian as well 8)
//damn that's an ugly sentence =)

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logodaedaly.livejournal.com

Sounds just fine to this native speaker of English. :-) The only change I would make would be "had there been such a word" instead of "if there would've been such a word". Also "the" before "17-19th centuries".

Hope you don't mind the correction; my Russian improved leaps and bounds through the corrections of LJers. :-)

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hell no, I always knew that conjugation of tenses is my weak side ;)
that's why I generally try to avoid long sentences.

(deleted comment)

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skeptikos.livejournal.com

What about "Свобода и воля" philosophical concept? The meaning of the "воля" is much more delicate.

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noser.livejournal.com

Don't make a mistake of thinking that concepts of "freedom" and "will" are intertwined in a Russian mind, because воля has both meanings. Those two are separate things and which one applies is determined from context. Just like uhh... e.g. English "tall" and "toll" are unrelated concepts in the mind of Engish speakers, though they sound the same.

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zhenyach.livejournal.com

При этом в субтитрах, сопровождающих в фильме на DVD эту песню, написано "nazda rovie".

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kutsuwamushi.livejournal.com

The working language of this community is English. If you'd like to comment in Russian, please provide a translation for the non-Russian speaking members.

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zhenyach.livejournal.com

OK.

In the DVD subtitles of that movie they wrote "nazda rovie" for "на здоровье" (which, of course, doesn't make any sense at all).

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skeptikos.livejournal.com

:)))

As Sharikov said, "Ну, желаю, чтобы все!" This is from Bulgakov's "Dog's heart".
When we drink in our company here, we usually say just "Ну давай" or keep silence at all.

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yms.livejournal.com

but what about this (http://www.google.com/search?q=%D0%BF%D1%80%D0%B8%D0%B2%D0%B0%D1%82%D0%BD%D0%BE%D1%81%D1%82%D1%8C)?

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You will have a hard time finding it in any text dated before the 90s, while privacy in Eglish is an everyday word.
The word приватность was somewhat unnaturally imposed on Russian to represent the word privacy.
Moreover, it was created from the (also unnatural) adjective приватный.
The context for this word was like this:
Городские чиновники приватно сообщили, что они против этого мероприятия.
City officials privately said that they oppose the event.
mirrored the word , which is only loosely related to privacy as one of the recognized rights.

I doubt that you would find the world приватность in any Soviet text at all, and you definitely won't find it meaning a right to be free from intrusion.
Linguistics asides, such phrases as "privacy watchdogs" or "the government violating individual's privacy" didn't exist in the USSR on the conceptual level.

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yms.livejournal.com

I'm talking about modern texts only. It seems that the statement about lack of Russian word for privacy is no longer true. Obviously, it was created just to translate the English term, but there are many and many other Russian words obtained in the same way from French, Latin etc, and they didn't sound much more natural (remember examples from Evgeny Onegin). The time when there was no Russian word for "privacy" has gone.

"the government violating individual's privacy" = "вмешательство государства в частную жизнь". I wish I could google Soviet pre-perestroika books for this phase :)

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I left the USSR before its collapse and somehow I missed the imposition on the word "приватность".
But I think it is quite telling that not only every Russian speaker around me (that is, people who live in America), but also people who have always live in Russia and whose journals I read, always use the English word (even if sometimes spelled in Cyrillic letters - прайваси) rather than this new word. I think this speaks volumes as to how natural this word is to their vocablary and to language in general.

"the government violating individual's privacy" = "вмешательство государства в частную жизнь". I wish I could google Soviet pre-perestroika books for this phase :)

Forget Google, do you really think this kind of phrase made sense in the USSR? (well other than, maybe, denouncing some evils of a Western country, and even then...)

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On the conceptual level, I personally would avoid needless generalizations.
I know many people of my age (I'm 37) who grew up during the hopelessly Soviet times -- in separate apartments, or in private houses in the country, where everything was just fine with their privacy, and they had trouble with the lack of privacy during their military service (just like I did) while their less (or more?) lucky mates who grew up in communal apt.'s had less problems, etc. etc. etc. --
this all only saying that people were different, are different, and will be.
This all doesn't make the single word for privacy appear in historical sense, because now we have such word, приватность.

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I didn't say that the notion of privacy didn't exist on the conceptual level. For example, if someone was sitting on the toilet it was well understood that it would be inappropriate to peek.

The notion was very limited though. You would have а hard time trying to explain the concept of privacy to people who lived and even grew up in коммуналки.
Moreover, privacy as a right to be free from government intrusion was probably comprehended by no one but dissidents.

This all doesn't make the single word for privacy appear in historical sense, because now we have such word, приватность.

Well, kind of. (http://www.livejournal.com/community/learn_russian/220975.html?replyto=2723631) I really doubt it made its way into everyday language and my wife, who left in 1996, agrees.

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Being extremely respectful towards you and your family, I nevertheless daresay that 1996 is nine years away from now. Quite a long time for the language reality which sometimes changes within months, not even years.

>privacy as a right to be free from government intrusion was probably comprehended by no one but dissidents.

I never regard my family as a dissident family, but, according to this logic, it must be a dissident family all right. And it wasn't the only one I knew that felt this way, I daresay again.

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Quite a long time for the language reality which sometimes changes within months, not even years.

I think you exaggerate, but a decade is definitely a long time. Nevertheless, as far as I can see, the usage of this word is mostly confined to such contexts as "Privacy agreement", "Privacy policy", "Computer privacy" and mostly to official documets. People in their journals, where they try to mirror everyday language, would rather resort to spelling the English word in Cyrillic (прайваси) than using this new word.

I never regard my family as a dissident family, but, according to this logic, it must be a dissident family all right.

Even if we forget for a second the KGB for which there were no limits - something, that on the other hand was never admitted publicly - there still were such openly and publicly working entities as местком (local comittee), партком (party comittee), профком (professional comittee) and товарищеский суд (the court of comrades). All these entities, of which the first one was probably the most intrusive, would hold public discussions and pass judgement over one's private affairs. This was of course expressly endorsed by the state and even if your family felt it was wrong I am sure they knew better than to speak out publicly against that - exactly because it was considered a dissident opinion.

Beyond vague feelings and emotions, nurturing an explicit idea that the goverment has no business in a citizen's private affairs was definitely characterisitic of dissidents, as well as, for that matter, any idea meant to limit the rights of the state and expand the rights of the citizens.

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I think that over the course of years, especially when it's already closer to one generation's life (my son was born in 1989, for example,) people tend to overestimate the "totality" of Soviet regime in its varied incarnations (KGB, партком, местком etc.) In genereal, especially in its later years (from, say, 1980-1981,) Soviet regime was way weaker and rusty than some people tried to picture it. For instance, my ONLY "close encounter" with the regime was the mandatory military service. As far as I could remember (which was as far as early 1970s,) my family never had any privacy-penetrating encounters with the regime. Which, of course, wouldn't mean that such things never happened. Of course they did, but not always and not to everyone.
The quota of the "close encounters" with the regime in my family was, the most probably, exceeded by my grandfathers - both spend several years in the prison camps, one in Komi and the other in Kazakhstan (Criminal Code article 58.10, both.)
Please get me right. I'm not trying to say that you're wrong or inaccurate. I'm only trying to say that in Russia (or in any other large multi-national, multi-cultural country) you cannot generalize the cultural or political concepts, however good they are described by wise analysts. The picture of life is always broader and more diverse than it appears from one's prospective. Maybe I'm just lucky: all my jobs have much to do with the exploration of other people's prospectives. But I also cannot state that I see the whole picture, I just happened to see that there was more than just one color.

Sorry for this long essay, I just needed to explain my point. English is not my native language, and I don't use it too often, so it's a lot more difficult for me to express my opinions in it and still sound sincere.

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sovok.livejournal.com

I always used приватность in exactly this meaning. Anyway the root is borrowed from Latin, not English, and there is no anti-Slavic crime here. It's not a very popular word but quite legitimate and any educated Russian for sure will inderstand it as "privacy".

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See above. (http://www.livejournal.com/community/learn_russian/220975.html?replyto=2718511)

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