Making the wage-slave happy

[ulvesang.livejournal.com]

What is the name (по-русский) of the Russian employee-of-the-month board-thing at work? I don't know if they still exist or not... that was other times (СССР).

Спасибо

Comments

[oryx_and_crake]

по-русски, not по-русский

In the Soviet times they said "Его фотография была помещена на доску почета", this was not done monthly though. I am afraid that at these times there was no such concept as "employee of the month". I may be mistaken though. Another possibility is "Победитель социалистического соревнования по итогам месяца".

[helge9210.livejournal.com]

Доска почета

[jillain.livejournal.com]

передовик, ударник

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

доска почёта is the exact equivalent of "the board-thing", though it sounds a bit soviet-fasioned

one could just put a header "работник месяца", which is the direct equivalent of "employee of the month"

[oryx_and_crake]

"работник месяца" does not sound good to me

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

ok "сотруний месяяца"
they wright it in mcdonald's and it looks ok, i find

[oryx_and_crake]

That's clearly a calque from English and sounds awful like most other calques that were brought into Russian along with Western-style business management.

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

why not?
although i would prefer it to be spelled in english then. our cyrilics is a problem

[ulvesang.livejournal.com]

While ideas can travel, their names often can't do it (gracefully).

No matter how proficient a translator is, it's more of a socio/pyscho-linguistic talent to appropriately translate "жужжание-слови" ("buzzwords" [in literal translation]).

Maybe a perfect bilingual/bicultural could do it, but international corporations...?

Reminds me of McDonald's "youth-outreaching" "i'm lovin' it" slogan... turned into "ich liebe es" in Germany, which is so utterly bizarre referring to food in a high-register form but yet not properly formatted... even a simple "ich lieb' es" could have been marginally better.

[ulvesang.livejournal.com]

At least it's not as bad as пиар, which seems to me a demotion from even маркетинг

[msk01.livejournal.com]

I think, It's ok. How do they call them in McDonnald's? Smth like this.

[oryx_and_crake]

McDonald's, as I have already mentioned, uses a rough calque from English which does not sound good at all.

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

песня года sounds ok?

[oryx_and_crake]

Yes, песня года sounds OK. Работник месяца does not.

[phineus892.livejournal.com]

maybe лучший работник месяца sounds better, otherwise it's a little incomplete and unclear.

[oryx_and_crake]

Possibly. But "работник месяца" reminds me of the tale "Двенадцать месяцев" where a girl was working doing chores for the months (them being personalised as 12 brothers: January, February etc.)

[phineus892.livejournal.com]

hahaha yeah I know that story

[olydiagron.livejournal.com]

but they say сотрудник and not работник. It sounds more team spirit.
im talking about mcDo

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

сотрудник/работник месяца

[freiburg234.livejournal.com]

"Ударник" is the colloquial term that I've come across.

In addition, I've heard the argument that, generally, an "ударник" is a very cultured person, "очень културный человек" who reads and washes himself everyday, "он читает книги и моется каждый день." He doesn't smoke on the trolleybus. "Он не курить в троллейбусе."

Maybe not quite a literal translation of employee of the month, but certainly a model employee from the point of view of management, which is what the employee of the month is supposed to be.

[oryx_and_crake]

Ударник is OK (slightly outdated though) but it does not convey the "of the month" part.

[oryx_and_crake]

P.S. кулЬтурный
он не курит (no ь here, it is not an infinitive but a present tense form)

Антисоветское поведение

[freiburg234.livejournal.com]

Thanks for those catches, i.e. "культурный" and "курит".

I figured that "ударник" was dated, Soviet era jargon.

Probably, a lot of modern Russian managers prefer something Western sounding, such as "Лучший сотрудник месяца".

At the end of the day, the terminology may change, but the essence remains the same. Based on the thread author's title "Making the wage-slave happy", it seems to me that he wanted to capture the Russian CULTURAL equivalent of "Employee of the Month" (as a sort of glorified wage-slave). So, in that context, I think Russians will know what you mean if you say, "Я ударник" - a person who seems to be the Russian equivalent of a glorified wage-slave. Although, as you said the term is dated, so many of the younger generation will not necessarily be aware of what precisely an "ударник" connotes. At the same time, I have noticed that many Soviet era terms have survived into current times.

For example, I recently heard a young man being scolded by his older boss for "антисоветское поведение" relating to quasi-subversive activities that the young man had been caught engaging in at his job. Obviously, both participants clearly understood the Soviet era connotations, even though at least one of them was only a child when the Soviet Union became defunct.

Re: Антисоветское поведение

[phineus892.livejournal.com]

so is "ударник" an officially acknowledged..er..title(can't think of what else to call it) or is it a term that a person just assigns to themselves or their team-mates assign to them?

Re: Антисоветское поведение

[freiburg234.livejournal.com]

Don't know if it's "official" or just "colloquial". Just about everyone knows it, but I can't say that I've heard managers officially call their "best wage slaves" "shock workers".

[megilla.livejournal.com]

Corporations use доски почета nowdays. I saw it in one large Moscow building company.