Anyone able to translate these two Russian-language bumper stickers?

July 31, 2005 8:09 PM

CyrillicFilter: While parked on a side street eating my lunch in between meetings, I spotted these bumper stickers, in what I presume to be Russian. Translations, anyone?
posted by baltimore to Writing & Language (7 answers total)

My born-in-the-USSR friend translates the second one (longer, red text) as, approximately, "I'm going to drop everything and switch into the right lane!"

He doesn't know one of the words in the first sticker, so he isn't comfortable offering a translation for that one.
posted by TPIRman at 8:46 PM on July 31, 2005

I am completely talking out of my ass here, since I failed Russian miserably in college, but I do know how to sound out cyrillic words, and two of the words on the red sticker sound an awful lot like "perestroika" (openness) and "pravda" (truth). It isn't actually those words, but really close (e.g. opening vs. openness). Anyway, I'm sure someone will come along soon and set us all straight ...
posted by intermod at 9:53 PM on July 31, 2005

OK, here's my take on the stickers:
1) "Hold on tight to the (female) driver, you sheep!" (I think it's a play on words, adapting a common phrase "Hold tight to the wheel, driver!", switching the words wheel and driver, so that they now mean different things.)
2) "I've had it with everything, and I'm switching to the right lane!" (as in "Who needs the stress of the fast lane?")
posted by rob511 at 10:28 PM on July 31, 2005

My wife says that the first one is "Hold tight behind the chauffeur, sheep!" I don't believe her, though.



Must be an idiom.
posted by mr_roboto at 10:37 PM on July 31, 2005

My Russian coworker says that the "Hold tight to the wheel, driver!" quote is from an old 50's (?) song. And the bumper sticker does a word-swap which makes the words become "driver's wife" and "sheep". This word for "sheep" also translates as slang for "dimwit". So it's a pun that sort of makes sense, maybe.. :)
posted by jozxyqk at 5:21 AM on August 1, 2005

Response by poster: Heh. This was something of a crapshoot, not knowing what would emerge. Glad it's silliness and not some kind of political diatribe. Thanks!
posted by baltimore at 5:29 AM on August 1, 2005

Yeah, it's a play on
Крепче за баранку держись, шофер
[krepche za baranku derzhis', shofyor]
where derzhat'sya za is 'to hold on to,' shofyor is 'driver,' krepche is '(more) tightly,' and baranka (literally a ring-shaped roll) is the colloquial word for 'steering-wheel.' But baranka looks like baran 'ram, sheep' with a feminine ending (-ka), and baran has a slang meaning 'dumbass,' so if you switch the baran and the shofyor you get 'hold onto the (female) driver, dumbass!'

For chrissake, intermod, what is the point of posting a wild guess that was extremely unlikely to be right when you must have known there were people who actually knew Russian who would actually answer the question? Do you just like the sound of your own voice? If you don't have an answer, don't answer.
posted by languagehat at 6:33 AM on August 1, 2005