Vulgar Slang in English and Romanian. A Few Notes on Romanian Hip Hop Lyrics Translated into English
Journal Title: Argotica - Year 2014, Vol 0, Issue 1
Abstract
While definitions of “the almost undefinable” slang (Partridge, 1974: 293) vary widely, authors also disagree about lexical categories: Partridge distinguishes vulgarisms from slang, for Andersson and Trudgill slang comprises “both colloquial and vulgar language” (1992: 69), and even dictionaries separate slang from vulgar. Having recently translated samples of Romanian hip-hop lyrics into English for a European survey (Doboş, 2013), I have come to consider the difficulties related to the study and translation of slang, including a large pro-portion of vulgarisms. Translating slang between Romanian and English can raise insurmountable difficulties due, first of all, to the quantitative disparities between the two respective language stocks; on the other hand, the translation of vulgarisms should, in principle, be much easier, given the concrete denotations. In Romania, hip-hop is an imported cultural marker which has been perfectly adapted to the current, mainly violent, social context and “the sexualization of speech” (Cesereanu, 2003: 12). But language is culture and culture is language; as a result of this vulgarisms and obscenities do not have the same effect across cultures. Based on the translated hip-hop samples, the study analyses the effect of vulgar slang against the background of the two respective cultures, English, and Romanian.
Authors and Affiliations
Daniela Doboș
Keywords
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