About adjectives and lazy translators

Once, at the dawn of the Internet, all those who are not lazy were engaged in the translation of English texts and words, mostly techies. As a result, a whole body of translated semifinished products, ill-adapted to Russian grammar, syntax and style, entered the Russian language. The same problem, by the way, is related to business. Poor, poor Karamzin and Belinsky, who once got out of their skin, creating good Russian analogs of foreign terms ...

The most common and deplorable example of this problem is adjectives. In English, a word is usually both a noun and an adjective, and in the same form. In Russian, adjectives have suffixes and endings. This was well known in the Soviet era, when professionals were still engaged in translation. It was then that words such as computer , processor , touch , display , diode, and many others appeared in the Russian language. If these words were borrowed in our day, it would be terrible to think what would have happened.
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But the translators of the 1990s, which were almost all active users of the Internet, no longer knew about adjectives. They simply rewritten English words as they saw in English: Internet site is an Internet site (and well, with a hyphen and a small letter), business project is a business project . Yes, the form of an indeclinable adjective attached by a hyphen exists in the Russian language, but it is not native (for programmers: not native), it specifically exists for those rare exceptions when for some reason a full-fledged adjective is impossible, for example, abbreviations. But in the computer and business areas, this rule has actually become the main one. But nothing prevented from the very beginning to adapt these words to the grammar of the Russian language: Internet , business , etc. The first form, by the way, officially exists alongside the Internet (Efremov Dictionary, 2006), but no one uses it.

Some turns and forms now, in principle, cannot be translated adequately at the grammatical level. Take, for example, web-based . To adequately translate such a word, today we have to roughly redraw the whole sentence. But how in Russian are called aircraft that land on the deck of an aircraft carrier? Deck-based aircraft . Similarly, we get web-based . Elegantly, competently, completely in Russian and completely with preservation of meaning. If hearing cuts a little, it is solely because they are not used to it. If we had borrowed the web from the very beginning not blindly, but with the formation of grammatical forms (at least, adjectives and adverbs), today such forms would be taken for granted, like a motherboard , a network worm , a skeleton of a site and many others outlandish terms. Habit is second nature. But because of the laziness or indecisiveness of the person who once did not think about the adjective form of the English web or was afraid to use it, we now have a colossal and absolutely artificial problem out of the blue. ( Web-based is just one of the possible options to be discussed. I'm trying to find a more concise and concise version instead of the heavy structures that are being proposed now. In any case, the purpose of this example is primarily to show the flexibility of the word web in the form of an adjective, although I already foresee greasy jokes on this topic.)

All this leads to the fact that computer slang gradually loses the grammatical forms of adjectives. A modern computer geek doesn’t know adjectives at all. Why an online store , not an online store (also available in the Ephraim dictionary)? Why is a hosting provider , not a hosting provider or hosting provider ? Why there is a holding , but no hosting ? Why not a hosting provider ? And well, if at the same time at least hyphens are used, but often this is not. And already on quite serious sites you can see: web designer, design studio, internet marketing, internet business, multitouch display (and even 3D multitouch display ), content provider, service provider, audio equipment, video shooting, USB port, LCD display, SMS messages, 3D movie and even auto products . ( Automotive , cinema or audio equipment is a different kind of phenomenon, it is a good partial reduction, but today these forms have begun to break into two halves following the general trend.)

Words like the Internet and business that have forgotten to come up with an adjective are only half the problem. The second half is worse. Today, there is a displacement of Russian adjectives that have long existed in the language, their traced analytical counterparts. Why did the service center suddenly become a service center ? And what happened to the service center ? Why did the design studios all turn into design studios ? What evil director prohibits a marketing plan and requires a marketing plan ? The word mass existed in Russia for more than a decade, so where did the mass start suddenly come from? What kind of unprecedented technological breakthrough caused stereo films to become 3D films (and even stereo films )? Where did the adjective premium , which is an adequate translation of the English premium in the meaning of the adjective, so that we are now forced to say premium class and premium something ? (The one who first wrote premium in Russian simply forgot that the translation of the word premium in Russian is still from Soviet times. The fact that today everyone says premium is something and that premium has entered the dictionaries as a separate meaning is the result someone's elementary forgetfulness. In the end, let's say premium . But no, this is also impossible.)

Why is all this bad? Yes, because the Russian language has lost a whole layer of means of expression. One can’t say, for example: “Different companies work in the new science city: medical, nanotechnological, Internet”; “What is your online or regular store?”; "Industrial companies differ from the Internet in higher costs." Now it is either impossible, or you have to duplicate the word (“regular store or online store?”), That is, to create unnecessary redundancy. Due to the lack of a natural Russian adjective form, the word is deprived of flexibility, universality, “valency”, the ability to enter into various relationships with other grammatical and lexical units. As a result, the task of the translator is immediately complicated. The Internet is just one example of so many.

Sometimes you can hear: it is made specifically from the desire to simplify the language and reduce the number of letters. First, as shown in the previous paragraph, these trends do not simplify at all, but, on the contrary, complicate the language. Saying one or two extra syllables (usually one) is a small problem and not at all a high price for the sake of flexible and powerful word formation. Secondly, something tells me that those people who first wrote an Internet project or business plan do not speak at the same time with a credit card , mobile phone or computer store . No, they did it solely because of illiteracy and laziness; they simply did not think about the adjective form. After all, we will never tell a computer store , but we say an online store . Why? Both of these phrases are equally unnatural for a Russian person, equally disgusting for Russian grammar. A Russian person wants to use adjectives, and so he pulls him to say: writing , multitouch , etc., - this is evident in all forums. But no, we are told, it is impossible, not allowed. Here's a hyphen, everything else is taboo. And we are accustomed, resigned. And forever lost the chance to create wonderful, flexible, natural and completely Russian forms of words. Instead, we have scanty tracing-semi-finished products that do not know how to behave in Russian sentences. The whole IT sphere is literally raped with translated hyphenes, not typical for the language and inconvenient for speech and writing. Fine multimedia type words are rare exceptions. Why did this happen? Only because of someone's illiteracy and a banal laziness 10–20 years ago.

And this trend, I fear, is irreversible. Even if a modern Karamzin intelligently and creatively (or even creatively) adapts all the web and Internet to the Russian language, then alone he will not be able to implement these decisions. It is unlikely that this task can be done by Lebedev and the Other together. It would be possible to organize a reform from above, as they are trying to do in France, but so far no gestures are visible in this direction. Illiteracy and language laziness spread from IT and business throughout the language, like cancer, emascuating a language, depriving it of artistic expression, grammatical logic, destroying its arsenal of means of expression. And today even conscientious translators are compelled to play by these rules, and on my website I don’t even write a completely legitimate Internet word, because I understand that it is shocking to the reader. And this is especially sad. We lost, adjectives lost, Russian lost.

PS The lion's share of the comments below are devoted to borrowing. I am by no means against borrowing. Borrowing is inevitable and often mandatory, especially in the field of IT. This also applies to ordinary words, and especially abbreviations. The article is not about borrowing, but about the artificial impoverishment of the grammar of the language.