Several readers expressed concern about Ukrainian soldiers using "gay slurs" in recent vid…

Several readers expressed concern about Ukrainian soldiers using "gay slurs" in recent videos I published, asking them to be changed. However, translation is translation, the point of it is to interpret the meaning of a word as close to the original as possible, and trust in a translator is earned through being precise.

But it is also important to understand the context of translation, and in this case, this gay slur is not used to describe someone's sexual orientation. This word stems from decades ago, it is widely used in Eastern Europe, but nowadays it is most often used to grievously insult someone (although it is still used in the original meaning).

In fact, this slur "pidor/pidory" is a generalisation that Ukrainians picked up for Russians in this conflict, and is convenient to use in a rush. It's fairly similar in its intent to the Russians calling Ukrainians "ukrs/hohols".

However, it is most certainly not used to describe someone's sexual orientation on the battlefield: after all, no one's walking around asking captives about their sexual orientation just to use this slur exclusively for them.

Ukrainians are a modern, respectable society, which they have proved on numerous occasions in the past 15 months and much earlier.

The closest equivalent to this slur in the English language would probably be "motherfucker" or "cunt", with the latter being particularly suitable due to having few syllables.

While I am not a big proponent of replacing words in translations, I may stick to one of the equivalents in the future, just in case readers don't know the context.

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#Ukraine #military #Russia