200|по встречной

[ugly-boy.livejournal.com]

A recent post reminded me of a question that I had even before I was interested specifically in Russian: The Russian pop duo Tatu's album is called 200|по встречной which is transltated into English (this is off the top of my head, it could be wrong) as 200 kilometers per hour [km/hr] in the wrong lane. How can the Russian title be only three words long while the English one is eight?! Keep in mind I'm a newbie and know hardly anything about the specifics of Russian grammar. Also, how do you say "200" ?

Comments

my thoughts exactly...

[costumier.livejournal.com]

i know! i was thinking the same thing!

Re: my thoughts exactly...

[ugly-boy.livejournal.com]

That's bugged me for so long! Back when I didn't give a rip about Russian, but still liked Tatu, I kept reading it and wondering how that could possibly be.

Re: my thoughts exactly...

[costumier.livejournal.com]

lol :-0

[arden667.livejournal.com]

It translates fairly roughly, actually. "по встречный" is something like "in the opposing (direction)." My dictionary translates "встречный" directly as "approaching, oncoming". In an interesting side note, it also lists the idiom "каждый встречный и поперечныи" for "every Tom, Dick, and Harry". I just think that's amusing :)

Also, 200 gets written out as "двести".

[jaspe.livejournal.com]

Well, the complete and correct sentence in Russian should be "200 километров в час по встречной полосе" so it is 7 words, just like in English (excepting "the").
But the title of the album is a spoken variant of the sentence. In this context Russian-speaking people understand that "по встречной" is "по встречной полосе" the word "полосе" is missing but meant. And as we speak about moving by car we understand that 200 is not just a number but means a speed, so it is "200 километров в час".

Re:

[ugly-boy.livejournal.com]

So it's implied, then? Thank you.

[dhr-eigen.livejournal.com]

it is very clear from the context
take another example, a line from Aquarium's album Lilith (recorded with The Band of Bob Dylan):
Когда идешь 160, и перед тобой стена -
When going 160, and there's a wall ahead -
the rest of the lyrics is very complicated even for most of the native speakers thus it is a good challenge =)
you can download the whole album from here:
http://www.vak.ru/aquarium/lilit.html

Re:

[ugly-boy.livejournal.com]

Cool, thank you.