Tag: Russia

The Evolution of Mermaids in Russian Folklore: From Legged Creatures to Aquatic Tails | August 08 2026, 02:15

WOW, it turns out that mermaids in Russia actually had legs, and if you asked about the tail, they would tickle you to death or drown the curious in the nearest pond. A specific feature — tousled blonde hair, hence the phrase from Dal “walks like a mermaid.” The name itself, however, is not from the type of blonde hair, but from “rusalki” — a spring commemorative festival.

And the tail actually came from sea maidens (mermaids). Mermaids are an invention of peoples living by the sea. In general, how mermaids merged with them in our perception is unclear, but it happened relatively recently.

Although there is one assumption. In Andersen’s tale, the little mermaid — literally a sea maiden (Den Lille Havfrue). But in Russian translation, it was called “Rusalka.” Lermontov has a poem “The Mermaid” from 1831, where she swims in a river. Surely the modern reader imagines a tail. There’s also a tale by Orest Somov, where the mermaid runs away from her mother, and her unfaithful lover—the Pole, was tickled to death by mermaids.

I illustrate with an 1871 painting by Ivan Kramskoy. With legs and Makovsky’s “Mermaids” (1879) – Makovsky painted it on an estate on the border of Chernigov and Poltava provinces, near Dikanka — that very Gogolian Ukrainian night, i.e., the same literary source as Kramskoy. They would have been very surprised by a tail. Also adding Prushkovsky’s Mermaids” (water nymphs) from 1877. Also attaching a drawing by Ivan Bilibin (1934).

By the way, those who depict mermaids with tails on trees – think about how she climbed up there.

Deciphering Tolstoy: Lost in Translation | August 06 2026, 21:36

I wonder what word our Leo Tolstoy had in mind in “War and Peace,” “lost the wolf” or something harsher? I take the English translation off the shelf, there it’s b——ed, apparently buggered, so it’s definitely “lost the wolf.”

Navigating Translation Traps: A Dual-Language Reading of “Gone Girl” | August 04 2026, 03:14

Bought Gone Girl in English in Spain, very interesting, reading it. But I keep a Russian translation on my phone, so if anything difficult comes up, I don’t have to go to a dictionary, but to the translation. And after a third of the book read – blood from my eyes. I don’t know who can like the Russian translation – only those who haven’t seen the original.

Eng: I’m using this journal to get better: to hone my skills, to collect details and observations

Rus: Работа в журнале — временная, она нужна, чтобы оттачивать навыки, копить наблюдения…

Darn, journal – it’s a diary! If they meant “journal”, they use magazine.

Eng: Nick prides himself on his packing skills: He is (was) the loader of the dishwasher, the packer of the holiday bags.

Rus: Ник гордится своим умением укладывать вещи. Ведь он работал (как-то!) загрузчиком посудомоечной машины, собирал сумки для пикника.

Darn, worked as a dishwasher loader… Nick is Amy’s husband, he just helped around the kitchen at home.

Eng: Amy’s cell was being monitored

Rus: Банковская ячейка Эми под наблюдением

Darn, translator, cell [phone] – it’s a phone!

Eng: dropped out of college and moved to Manhattan

Rus: в конце девяностых закончила колледж и перебралась в Манхэттен

Translator, dropped out means she left college halfway through. Not graduated from college.

Eng: I have a dash of ADD, and I’ve always found my wife a bit dazzling

Rus: Хотя у меня есть такой грешок — все преувеличивать

The translator clearly didn’t catch what ADD is 😉 It’s Attention Deficit Disorder

Eng: We have a cold-cut tray if you want, sweetheart

Rus: Там есть лоток с колотым льдом. Если хочешь, бери, дорогой

Cold cuts – that’s sliced meat. The curiosity is intensified by the fact that a page later Nick himself says: “we mainly live on cold cuts” – the translator translated the same word correctly, failing to notice the connection.

Eng: The awakening was mechanical. A spooky ventriloquist-dummy click of the lids: The world is black and then, showtime!

Rus: Обыденный механический процесс. Как будто фокусник распахнул черный ящик. Только что мир окутывала тьма, и вдруг — бац! — свет

Actually, spooky ventriloquist-dummy translates as creepy ventriloquist, and lids – it’s the doll’s eyelids. What’s with the magician darn.

Eng: My life was alarmless

Rus: У меня вообще беспорядочная жизнь

Actually, the author plays with the word alarm (alarm/clock, alarm). Nick means a life without alarm clocks and alarms (alarmless). The translator, however, delivered an abstract “disordered life,” completely losing the author’s irony.

Eng: Greedy journalists with knowing smirks and hollow legs, getting the free buzz before they go somewhere better.

Rus: Жадные журналисты усмехаются и

переминаются с ноги на ногу в ожидании халявного хавчика и бухла — напьются-нажрутся и свалят куда-нибудь еще.

Let’s put aside hollow legs – it’s actually an idiom, meaning the ability to drink a ton of alcohol without showing signs of intoxication, but darn where does shifting from foot to foot come from?

Eng: I was a writer who wrote about TV and movies and books

Rus: Я привык зарабатывать писательским трудом, сочинять романы, сценарии для кинофильмов и телевизионных программ

AAA! Nick wrote about movies and books — he’s a journalist, a pop culture critic. In translation, he became a novelist and screenwriter, which directly contradicts all further text (he himself tells the police: “journalism, pop culture”).

Eng: So there it came, out of nowhere, as Rand begged for his daughter’s return: a killer smile

Rus: Вот она, откуда ни возьмись, улыбка, о которой просил Ранд. Улыбка, так необходимая для его дочери. Улыбка убийцы

Rand didn’t ask for any smile 🙂 he was pleading for his daughter’s return, and at that very moment Nick flashed a smile. The translator invented “Rand’s request,” ruining a key scene of the first part. Plus, the wordplay is lost: a killer smile — primarily “a knockout smile” (see urban dictionary), and the ambiguity here is Flynn’s entire trick.

Eng: …people whose brains don’t work quick enough to blog or link or tweet…

Rus: …недостаточно гибкие, чтобы уйти в блогеры и городить всякую чепуху…

Is this because Twitter got blocked? 🙂

Eng: You guys not close?’ she asked. ‘We are the definition of not close.

Rus: — Ну, парни, не пора ли закругляться? — спросила детектив. — По-моему, пора

It seems the translator got carried away with creativity 🙂

Eng: A number of women – friends of my mom’s, friends of Go’s – had invited Amy to book clubs and Amway parties and girls’ nights at Chili’s.

Rus: Кое-кто — подруги моей мамы, друзья Го — приглашали Эми то в книжный клуб, то на заседание общества «Американский путь», то на вечерний девичник в «Чилиз гриль-бар».

For the translator’s information, Amway is a cosmetics company, which nobody translates into Russian as “American Way” 🙂 And Chili’s is indeed formally known as Chili’s Grill & Bar, although it seems no one knows it by its full name. It’s just a roadside restaurant chain.

And so – the whole book. This is just what I’m listing next to where I decided to make notes with a pencil, and only then, when I looked at “how interesting this was translated.” When I realized that such good stuff comprised half the book, I stopped marking it.

Exploring the Quirks of Whisper Large-V3’s Russian Decoding | July 26 2026, 18:49

It’s funny that the Whisper Large-V3 (OpenAI) voice decryption model, when working with Russian, occasionally replaces a random fragment of what it heard with one or several consecutive phrases “The point is that all speeches today speak of the most monstrous disgrace.”

Apparently, it’s also funny that many don’t care about the outcome of the transcription.

At least a thousand examples are found by Yandex and Google

Navigating Online Chaos: Reflections from a Russian-Language Group | July 10 2026, 00:08

I’m writing to a Russian-speaking group every day (essentially posting the same content as in my Engineering Zen group, but slightly less often and sometimes more concisely). The audience there is 100× larger, and to put it mildly, more diverse. The comments are very typical for Russian-speaking groups and resemble this story from the net:

“…An ad appeared in one chat: ‘Selling shoes, red, size 41. Worn once. 2500 R’…”

Barely 10 seconds passed and it began:

— Worn!!!!!

— red flippers, cow.

— And how much do they cost, why is it so hard to write the price right away?!

— It should be written as worn correctly.

— I am a mother who has birthed twenty children, twenty times, I have nothing to wear to school meetings. I’m already at your house, crawling through the gutter, open the vent! Give me the shoes!!

— Burn in hell! Shoes are worn!

— Worn! Respect the language.

— WORN!!!!!!

— how much do they cost?

— One should walk barefoot. Preferably through dew, all women’s diseases come from heels. And then they complain about not getting married. Fool.

— Is the size even right?

— Treating fungus later is more expensive, just wear your own beaten-up shoes.

— Ugly shoes. And you are ugly too.

— Prostitutes wear such. When can I pick them up?

— And where do you know from what prostitutes wear?

— Make way! I’ve been a fetishist for 10 years. I’ll give 300 rubles for a picture of your feet.

— Worn!!!!!!!!¡!! ¡!!!!!! ¡!!!!! ¡!!!!!!!!!! ¡! F… s, correct the mistake, I’m having a fit already!!!

— Man, why have fetishists become so poor?

— And what’s a fetishist actually, girls?

— It’s very convenient, by the way, girls. I had such a lover, when I was tired after work, I just put a hair tie on…

— WORN!!!!!!!

— Would someone just shoot her already!!

— Where did you put the hair tie?

— You surely know where.

— Well, I don’t know, your hair tie wouldn’t fit my late husband with your thin hair.

— Did your gynecologist never shout ‘Aaaauuuuu!’ down there?

— Ha ha ha. And an owl from there replied: ‘Uh-huh.’

— And bats flew all over the office.

— You’re probably glad that he finally died, aren’t you?

— Why are you being rude?!

— Let’s go to the next thread, they are selling patent leather boots, it’s boring here.

They leave, dragging along the fetishist.

Only a lonely, beautiful, and tragically grand grammar-Nazi kept standing and standing under the post, like a monument to something great and powerful…

Navigating Presidential Search Results: Putin to Yeltsin and Back | June 16 2026, 01:29

If you type “fifth president of Russia”, “sixth…”, “seventh…” in Yandex, Putin comes up until the hundred first. The hundredth, too, brings up only Putin. But the hundred first – it switches to Yeltsin. And the hundred second and beyond – back to Putin again.

Exploring the Dynamics of Russia’s Kyykka Sport Federation | June 06 2026, 13:49

DID YOU KNOW that in Russia there’s a Russian Skittles Sport Federation with a president, a first vice-president, and a regular vice-president. All in blazers. There’s a presidium, and it has a chairman of the commission on international relations. There’s an entire apparatus for the president of skittles sport with three advisors and a responsible secretary. They hold conferences, at least in 2018 and 2020. They have a skittles march, music by A. Roshchin, lyrics by V. Avdeev, I. Vinogradsky. There are 18 regional departments and 28 regional federations with their own hierarchy.

The website has a section “Anti-Doping”. Interesting, doping in skittles sport… There’s a subsection called “methodological recommendations”. Also, their charter talks about online skittles competitions. Imagine that, online!

In 2024 there was a World Championship in Skittles Sport. Apparently, they are supposed to hold it every three years. And it had a Grand Closing. Apart from Belarus, athletes from Germany and Kazakhstan participated in the world championship. From Germany, in addition to Sergey, Vitaliy, and Konstantin, there was Eugen Schlein, or simply, Zhenya. From the development program for 2026-2029, it turns out that players from Congo, Ghana, Guinea, and Ecuador are actively training now. In the selection criteria for the national team, there is a requirement for “game thinking”. To be admitted, you need to come with a certificate, oh, a certificate of passing the anti-doping education from an institution, whatever that means.

At the world championship, the disciplines are “classical skittles” and “European skittles” (and separately Finnish ones). The goal in both is to knock the skittles out of the town. European ones appeared in Germany because the emigrants from the USSR were told that it’s not customary here to throw three-kilogram stones and were given lighter ones.

In short, it’s all serious.

The Intriguing Life and Science of Ilya Mechnikov | June 02 2026, 11:32

Talk about tons of weird and intriguing stuff about Ilya Mechnikov (biologist). His older brother (Ivan) – a prototype for Leo Tolstoy’s “The Death of Ivan Ilyich.” Another brother (Lev) – an anarchist, sociologist, fought in Italy alongside Garibaldi. Mechnikov himself made two attempts to depart this life: the 1st time — after the death of his 1st wife (who, suffering from tuberculosis, was carried into the church on a chair). Mechnikov swallowed morphine but survived. The 2nd time — when his 2nd wife contracted typhoid. He deliberately infected himself with relapsing fever. Both survived. By the way, this 2nd was his 15-year-old teacher (when he was 30).

Odessa. The country’s first bacteriological station on Leo Tolstoy street 🙂 An employee there botched a vaccine for anthrax and a whole flock of sheep died. Scandal => M emigrated to Paris.

Paris. Came under the wing of Louis Pasteur (the father of pasteurized milk). P supported M’s theory, gave him a lab in his institute for 28 years. M worked there for free.

M advanced the theory that not everyone who gets infected becomes sick and dies. Basically, it’s all about (of course) the gut microflora. To prove it, he deliberately drank cholera vibrios. Nothing, he got lucky (“lucky as you were”, M thought)

Not satisfied. To prove that it was about the microflora, he made his lab assistant Latapie drink cholera. Hmm, then M gave the culture to a second person, the biologist-watchman J.-B. Joupié. Joupié nearly died. Mechnikov: yay, it works: different microfloras, the microbe works differently (hmm).

Result – Nobel Prize for phagocytosis (cell immunity). And he is also the “father of gerontology”: M proposed that for longevity, one needs to quell “bad bacteria” using probiotics (hmm).

In the end, he still died after the third heart attack. In Paris, his ashes are kept in the library of the Pasteur Institute. Also, in English Wikipedia, he is Élie Metchnikoff. Hard to guess.

In the photo, Mechnikov is persuading Leo Tolstoy that he is not a charlatan.

Vodka and Revelations: Notes from “Project Hail Mary” Unseen in Film | May 25 2026, 04:15

I’m almost finished with Project Hail Mary. I’ll write separately about my impressions. Today – some notes along the way that somehow didn’t make it into the movie.

Russian engineer Olesya Ilyukhina drinks vodka from a frighteningly large glass at a meeting, and during the rocket launch, she joyfully screams and downs one shot after another. In her personal baggage for the space flight, 5 liters of vodka in bags are found. Grace directly asks the Russian scientist Dmitry: “Are all Russians crazy?”, to which he smiles and replies: “Yes. It’s the only way to be Russian and happy at the same time.” Ilyukhina, planning her own death, asks to be provided with heroin. She wants to die from an overdose to experience “maximum pleasure” before death (while the Chinese Yao pragmatically chooses a gun). During the launch of the ship’s modules (cabin, laboratory, and sleeping compartment), broadcasted from the Flight Control Center in Moscow, Russian cosmonaut Olesya Ilyukhina drinks vodka and yells at the TV: “Don’t screw up my home, bastards from Roscosmos!” But overall, Russian space technologies are occasionally even praised – for instance, it is claimed that experts from around the world have recognized the Russian “Orlan” spacesuit as the safest and most reliable, so it is used in the mission.

When the main character (Grace) sees the Black American scientist Martin Dubois, he turns to the project director Stratton: “Dubois turns out to be Black! Surprising that you allowed that! Aren’t you afraid he’ll ruin the mission with talk about rap music and basketball?”

When they decide to send Grace to space forcibly, they lock him in a special room at the Baikonur Cosmodrome. This room resembles a college dormitory but has a steel door and bars on the windows. The hero quips about this: “Why is there a prison cell at the Baikonur launch complex? I don’t know. Ask the Russians.”

Grace complains about how the work with malfunction reports is organized during the spaceship’s preparation. Instead of sending an email, they bring him stacks of paper documents. Grace: “Because Russians do things a certain way, and it’s easier to work with them than to complain about it.”

Out of scientific curiosity, Grace decides to observe how his alien friend Rocky eats. It turns out, Rocky is a “monostome”, meaning he both eats and excretes through the same opening in his body. Grace watches as a gray lump falls out of the alien’s stomach with a moist sound, after which Rocky tosses pieces of fresh meat into the same opening. Grace concludes: “The subject defecates from the mouth… Yep, that was pretty disgusting.”

The caricature nature of the characters, stereotypes, fantastic coincidences, and “plot contrivances” like deus ex machina are somewhat annoying.