What does "peredelok" mean?

February 11, 2008 12:34 AM

What does "peredelok" mean?

The Financial Times has an interview with Mikhail Khodorkovsky where he says that "Rosneft is Yukos after three years of peredelok."

Is this Cold War standard jargon that I'm just too young to understand? Google only come up with plenty of Russian and people quoting the FT. Помогите! (As translate.google.com would say :))

posted by themel to writing & language (7 comments total)

It's Russian for "alterations" or "changes."
posted by epimorph at 12:38 AM on February 11

Fun. Any idea why the FT or its translator would have this Russian word in the middle of an otherwise English language transcript? (Which reminds me that I have no idea whether they'd interview Khodorkovsky in Russian or English...)
posted by themel at 1:31 AM on February 11

Any idea why the FT or its translator would have this Russian word in the middle of an otherwise English language transcript?

Precision. In the same way that the English word "restructuring" does not encompass the whole meaning of the Russian word "perestroika", Khodorkovsky's use of "peredelok" refers to corporate restructuring in an era without any rule of law - corporate or otherwise.
posted by three blind mice at 3:52 AM on February 11 [1 favorite]

I disagree with three blind mice. In the first place, "peredelok" is not the dictionary form of the word, it's the genitive plural of peredelka 'alteration.' What he said in Russian was "Роснефть — это ЮКОС после трех лет переделок," which (if for some reason you wanted to keep the Russian word) would be translated "Rosneft is Yukos after three years of peredelkas." If a Russian talks about проблемы перестройки, you render it "problems of perestroika," not "...of perestroiki" (the genitive singular).

But there is no reason to keep the Russian word—it's not some special Russian thing like perestroika or glasnost, it just means "alterations" or "adaptations," though it's also used colloquially for 'mess, fix, jam": попасть в переделку 'to get into a jam.' I'm pretty sure what happened here is that the translator wasn't sure how to handle the word, left it to deal with later, and forgot to deal with it.
posted by languagehat at 8:45 AM on February 11 [2 favorites]

At least for me, peredelok has the connotation of fixing something after a mistake more than just a neutral transformation.
posted by RandlePatrickMcMurphy at 8:49 AM on February 11

Yeah, it definitely has that connotation here; the sentence might be rendered "Rosneft is Yukos after three years of attempted fixes" or something. But "peredelok" is just stupid—it conveys less than nothing to the English-speaking reader.
posted by languagehat at 8:54 AM on February 11

Any idea why the FT or its translator would have this Russian word in the middle of an otherwise English language transcript?

Yeah, I think the translator simply didn't recognize the word. Worse mistakes have been made by more reputable translators.
posted by Krrrlson at 11:34 AM on February 11