Gratuitous Russian

Everything About Fiction You Never Wanted to Know.

Being pretty much a subtrope of Gratuitous Foreign Language and it's Exactly What It Says on the Tin. Used with, but not limited to:

Примеры применения ломаного русского

Аниме и манго

Anime and Manga

  • Jubei-chan 2 has gratuitous Russian, as half-Russian Freesia Yagyuu will lapse into heavily accented Russian at times, especially when Obfuscating Stupidity.
  • The Theme Song to Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex 1st gig is mainly in Russian (and Latin). 2nd gig added some English.
    • The Russian isn't that bad though, virtue of the singer being Russian.
  • The ancient OVA Crystal Triangle had an impressive scene where a KGB agent (who was also a direct descendant of Rasputin) gives a passionate speech about mysticism triumphing over rationalism... in almost flawless Russian! Of course, the seiyu's pronunciation is heavily accented but the grammar and wording, however archaic, are on the spot.
  • The soundtrack to Fullmetal Alchemist has a song in Russian titled "Brothers" ("Братья"), which plays quite a few times throughout the series. However, it's also Surprisingly Good Russian; it's actually sung by Russian children.
    • Although it IS really schmaltzy and the Russian is still stylistically questionable.
  • The Sakura Taisen OVA also features a few lines in Russian courtesy of the Russian-Japanese character. The actress's pronunciation is painfully bad, but the grammar is okay.
  • Balalaika and her boys in Black Lagoon. At least until Rei Hiroe hired an actual Russian as a consultant by the time the second season got to be animated. It turns into a Surprisingly Good Russian afterwards.
  • In Seikon no Qwaser the hero and several other characters speaks Russian, justified by being Russian Orthodox Christian.
  • In Planetes manga Leonov's mother speaks to Hachimaki in almost perfect Russian. The only possible flaw is calling her son by last name only. Bilingual Bonus is required to understand it, because nobody cared to translate it. Probably justified by the fact that Hachimaki didn't understand her words too.
  • The second season of Darker than Black is set partially in Vladivostok, so most of the visible writing is in Russian, and the title is translated into Russian, too. Spoken... not so much.
  • Durarara!!, with Simon Brezhnev and Orihara Izaya.
    • Grammatically it's perfect. Their accents are truly deplorable, though.
      • To the point of being almost unintelligible for actual Russian speaker.
    • Well, you can forgive Izaya, for Russian is foregin language to him. In Simon's case it's harder to bite.
  • Axis Powers Hetalia does this with Russia. Justified since he's...well...Russia, but it's usually lmited to "Da" and "Comrade". Fanfic usually takes this Up to Eleven, to the point that mnay hetalia fics have to include translations because he says plot critical things in his own language.
  • Dunno about other versions of Trapeze, but the very first episode of the anime has a great aversion - one of the foreign trapeze artists speaks perfect Russian (no accent and colloquial too boot - must be a native speaker voicing that)
  • Last Exile: Fam, The Silver Wing suffers from the same problem as Black Lagoon and Durarara!!: Its Russian is almost perfect in grammar and usage, but the accents are... pretty thick to say the least. Except for Viola, whose voice actor is a native Russian.


Комикса

Comic Books

  • Colossus of X-Men used this a lot during Chris Claremont's first, long run. Notably, he does prefer 'tovarisch' to 'comrade.'
    • And he still does, because it caught on.


Кино

Film

  • Gratuitous Russian was used as a plot device in A Fish Called Wanda.
  • The 60s comedy The Russians Are Coming, The Russians Are Coming has an astounding amount of completely untranslated Russian... no subtitles, even. This troper found it very amusing to watch with their Russian partner.
  • In Independence Day, something that appears to be a Russian weather forecast features the nonsensical text "Tucha fznamznon" (maybe they were going for "cloud phenomenon"), and the map shown is the map of... the Soviet Union. In 1997. The three city labels on the map are "Moskva" (correct Russian name of Moscow), "Petrograd" (the name of St. Petersburg between 1914 and 1924), and "Novosyoyrsk" (apparently supposed to be Novosibirsk). To add insult to injury, the locations of Moscow and Novosibirsk on the map are completely off.
  • Salt has it to the point that a track features Ominous Russian Chanting.
  • Jungle Cutter from Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull. Hasbro released a 1:18 scale model of this imaginary wonder of Soviet machinery, where you can study all the details at leisure. Including some cylinder attached behind, marked with strange pictogram and (correctly formed, but obviously non-existent in a living language) adverb from the word "diesel-locomotive" - as in "[it's very] diesel-locomotivous".

Книги писать

Literature

  • Dale Brown loves making characters lapse into untranslated Russian from time to time, even if they are English-literate.
  • Barrayar in Lois McMaster Bujold Vorkosigan Saga was colonized in large part by Russians, and it shows. Unfortunately, while LMB did study some Russian some time ago, it apparently bacame rather rusty, so we are in for several rather amusing bloopers.
    • Not as many as you would think. The biggest issue is her choice of honorific suffix. It does not occur to a Russian to pronounce "Vor" as "Phor". And "Vor" with a hard v is "thief" in Russian.
    • There is also an odd minor character Vorobyev. That is a completely valid Russian last name, means something like Sparrow. "Phor Obyev" does not sound plausible anymore.
  • Sanya, a black Russian Knight of the Cross from The Dresden Files, often quips simple phrases like "Da" ("Yes") and "Bozhe moy" ("Oh my God") in otherwise English dialogue. This is particularly jarring, since he often uses them in situations where speaking English all the way (and he is a fluent speaker) is most appropriate.
  • A Clockwork Orange has Nadsat, which actually is mostly real Russian words altered to look like English ones. For example "pony" ("understand") comes from понимать, and "rabbit" (work) is from работать. Burgess really did do the research... although used it in a very weird way.


Теле многосерийный

Live-Action TV

  • Several Russian worlds pop up in some episodes of Stargate SG-1, mostly spoken by Daniel Jackson, who is supposed to be a linguist proficient in dozens of languages (not all human). For example, one episode involved O'Neill being upset that he is forced to go on a mission with a Russian team. His comment that he needs someone whom he can trust to "watch [his] six". Jackson remarks that the Russians will watch his "shest'" (Russian for "six"), even though the phrase is meaningless in Russian. A linguist ought to know that.
    • Another episode features a Russian team going through the gate with SG-1. One of them complains in Russian about the most powerful country in the world making crappy coffee. Unlike the other examples of this trope, the actor in question was Russian, so no atrocious accent.
    • SG-1 gets many things wrong about the Russian language, such as consistently putting women's surnames in masculine forms. Not to mention spelling errors in signs, such as "Не курять" instead of the proper "Не курить" ("No smoking"). Most egregiously, the two submarine crewmen in the episode "Small Victories" spoke with such incomprehensibly mangled accents that the Russian translators were forced to dub over them.
  • The X-Files had many occurrences of atrociously accented and grammatically garbled Russian, especially whenever Alex Krycek became involved.
    • Possibly justified, since it seems Krycek was born in America and Russian is his second language. (He says his parents were Russian Cold War immigrants, but since he's a pathological liar, who knows for sure.)
  • Law & Order: Special Victims Unit had an episode called Russian Love Poem. Ironically, none of the actors who portrayed supposedly Russian characters was actually Russian - they were Serbian. The results were... interesting, to say the least.
  • Criminal Minds surpinsingly averts this in "Honor Among Thieves". The Russian that the characters speak sounds very natural and is, for the most part, free of ridiculous accents. Even Prentiss, who, of course, has an accent, constructs her sentences the way a native Russian speaker would do.
  • Airwolf featured something Russian fairly regularly and butchered it with wild abandon. The prime example is the Stavograd two-parter where the crew come up against General Kirov. The location itself is quite ridiculous as a Russian place name, and the Russian signage is complete gibberish that is occasionally hilarious. There is a huge dial they constantly look at that indicates dangerously high level of what could be best translated into English as "ariesources". (овноурсы, овно- being something related to Aries, the sheep, and -урсы likely the tail end of the word for resources)

Myzыka

Music

  • The song "The Khlysti Evangelist" by Therion has a bit of Gratuitous Russian in the beginning. For starters, this Russian-speaking troper isn't sure if the word "zapovidil" even exists in Russian language. There is a word "zapovedoval", but it roughly translates to "gave the commandments [to smb]". In context, "zapovidil" is probably supposed to mean "has enchanted". But the Russian for "has enchanted" is "ocharoval". Besides, "on uchil sekretniy um" means literally "he taught the secret mind". Doesn't make much sense.


Игра на стол

Tabletop Games

  • The Polish in Twilight 2000 is mentioned elsewhere, but some of the Russian is little better. For example, actual Russian for a polar bear is beliy medved (lit. "white bear"), not severnaya medved (lit. "northern bear" with a grammatical error).
    • It can be construed (rather artificially, but still) as a correct Russian, due to word "медведь" indeed fitting into one of the feminine noun patterns.
    • There is a number of Russian professional dialects where words are forced into feminine patterns. Railroad workers do that, and so do rustic hunters. In a hunting dialect, severnaya medved is a marginally acceptable thing to say.
    • If only by a very wide margin, and if we're talking about dialects. In general Russian, "medved" is a "male bear" and any attributed adjectives are modulated as being male ("beliy medved" mentioned above), while "female bear" is "medveditsa" (медведица) and likewise has the attributed adjectives modulated ("belaya medveditsa" in this case).


Театральный

Theatre

Za vasha zdorovia
Heaven bless you both, nazdrovia
To your health and may we live together in peace


Играть видео

Video Games

  • Parodied in Strong Bad's Cool Game for Attractive People with Putchnya Shotski, who spouts such elaborate Russian phrases like: "BREZHNEV!!!" "LYSENKO!!!" "GLASNOST!" "SOLZHENITSYN!"
    • Also with Where's An Egg?
  • First trailer to Modern Warfare 3, America, featured extremely bad Russian: "Odin. Unichtozhit' vrazhnuyu nadezhdu na pobezdenie!". Some of the forms of the words used do not exist in Russian: "vraznuyu" should be "vrazheskuyu", "enemy's", and "pobezhdenie" should be "pobedu" to get "One. Destroy enemy's hope for victory." The rest were fine, though, even accent was not very heavy.
  • The RTS game World in Conflict features Reds with Rockets and their Mnogo Nukes as The Evil Army, so gratuitous Russian is abound. The most (in)famous monologue, given by a Soviet general standing in his tall fluffy hat near the ruins of Seattle, has since become a meme in Russian internet. In-game, Russian units confirm orders with heavily accented Catch Phrases like "Tak tochno!" (Literally "Exactly so!", equivalent to "Yes sir!") and "Affirmative, tovarishch komandir!" ("Affirmative, comrade commander!").
    • In addition, the NATO forces are a mix of European forces and as such, the units give out quite a bit of Gratuitous German, French and Italian. And Norwegian in the campaign. There is even some French dialogue in cutscenes.
    • The Norwegian is actually pretty good, although their English is amusingly bad. Not surprising considering that the developers were Swedish.
  • Jagged Alliance has an aversion in Ivan Dolvich, who in the first two installments only speaks Russian. By Jagged Alliance 2 he has taken a course and speaks a little English, but mostly Russian. His Russian is always subtitled with Cyrillic letters. His Russian is completely fluent and unaccented, though.
  • Everyone in the second chapter of the DS rerelease of Dragon Quest IV.
  • Red Alert contains a whole lot of this, naturally.
    • Well, first off all, the Russian-language signs met in the FMVs... Or are they Russian? Let's see. The post-battle cutscene after the second mission of Allies, a bunch of truck overruns a sign 'АПОСНО! НЕ ВЪХОДИТ!' (lit. DARGEN! KEAEP OU!). Makes the ones who know the language ROFL.[2] Also, did you noticed another sign in the Red Alert 3's trailer, 'ИЗМЕНЕНИЕ' (Changing), when in the current context, 'ИЗМЕНА' (Betrayal) would fit best.
    • The spoken Russian in FMVs is pretty Яussian as well. The above mentioned fashion of saying 'comrade' instead of 'tovarisch' even in the scenes where the heroes are obviously speaking this language is still here. Seen with Nadya in RA and with general Topolov in Retaliation.
    • Also by him: "ЗА РОССИЮ! (gulps a glass of vodka) ЗА ЖЕНЩИН! (gulps another one) ЗА РУССКИХ ЖЕНЩИН! (does the same)".[3]
    • Tim Curry's portrayal of Premier Cherdenko was... interesting. He did use the phrase "do svidania", which roughly means "until we meet again", correctly when he told the player that he will not say "do svidania" because they will not be meeting (only someone who knows the language would understand this). Most American shows and films usually do not do their research and simply use it on par with "da", "nyet", and "na zdorovye", although, considering the above example, EA just didn't do it fully.
  • There are also funny Russian writings all over the Red Alert series. One of the books in Stalin's study is labeled "БРЭТ ЖОПА" (lit. Brett Ass). The Tesla armor is labeled "БИТЧ" ("Bitch", in English but written in Cyrillic letters).
  • Dark Sector features first aid medical kits with "скорая помощь" written on them. "Скорая помощь" means "ambulance" (lit. "rapid aid"). "Аптечка" or "первая помощь" would be the correct label.
  • Ace Combat: Assault Horizon is choke-full with Gratuitous Russian, bordering on Bilingual Bonus. Particularly notable is a dialogue scene late in the game that reveals the Big Bad's motivations and is voiced completely in Russian (with English subtitles).
  • Played with in spy RPG Alpha Protocol, which is peppered by a lot of amusing linguistical in-jokes, including the infamous fire alarm button marked with the timeless words: "In an event of fire: steal, kill, fuck geese, wait for return buzz".


Онлайн оригинальный

Web Original

  • The Chaos Timeline has some of this. Teddy bears are mishkas, blitzkrieg is molniya (Russian for 'lightning'). Justified in that Russia became a world power earlier than in our history. But also fell deeper.
  • Generally, anything that got here.
  1. ↑ "iron" here meaning "device for ironing"
  2. ↑ More correct translation. 'DANGER! KEEP OUT!' -> 'ОПАСНАЯ ЗОНА!' (something like this to fit the context) -> 'DANGER ZONE!'
  3. ↑ For Russia!... For women!... For RUSSIAN women!
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