Lots of terms for people have regionally specific origins, and many in turn never leave such confines. The term irredentist, for instance, which my computer loves to underline in red to let me know is at least questionable if not an outright mistake, will be clear to anyone who has studied Italian unification or the contested borders of the eastern Adriatic in the final years of the Habsburg Empire.
Kin deploys dozens of such words, and these are interspersed with other, often regionally specific, terms for family members, the local or long-time inhabitants of cities or regions, or newcomers to them. There are three basic strategies for dealing with such locally specific lexical items: translate them into something that exists in English, explain them, or incorporate the non-English word into one’s text so that readers learn it. Each of these strategies has its own strengths and weaknesses.
Translating the word to one that is in use in English makes it familiar, but can give also it erroneous connotations. For example, the word kuferaš (plural, kuferaši), which comes from the German Koffer (bag, suitcase), was applied to the many skilled workers who came to Bosnia when the Austrians annexed it in the latter part of the nineteenth century. An English equivalent like “carpetbagger,” which has the advantage of also being formed from the bags they brought with them, has the big disadvantage of being associated with the post-Civil War American South. Explaining the term by saying something like, “they used a disparaging term based on the suitcases they brought with them,” could work if the term was used only once or twice. But when it is used many times, you need something short and repeatable, preferably something that can be used in various combinations, in singular and plural, perhaps as an adjective and an adverb. Using the foreign term in the English text helps with all those things but removes any sense of intimacy and, especially when it appears just once or twice, might lend a rather token exoticism to a text. Each of these has to be weighed and considered with every term, and as I noted above, this books has lots of these. Here’s a partial list:
Vlach, Swabian, Chetnik, Ustasha (pl. Ustashas) or Ustaša (pl. Ustaše), Turks (who are not Turkish but rather Bosnian Muslims, likely of Slavic descent), Sarajlija (pl. Sarajlije), who are the long-time residents of Sarajevo, Ragusan/s (from Ragusa, as opposed to Dubrovnik), gospar/i (see Ragusans), gospoda (gentlefolk, in older Turgenev translations), and gospodja/đa (madam or madame or Mrs.), otata and omama (great-grandma and great-grandma, sort of), amidža (uncle), tante and teta (both meaning auntie), stric (another kind of uncle), rodica (girl cousin), rođak (boy cousin or just plain relation), Ilidžan (person from Ilidža), dajdža (yet another kind of uncle), komšija (neighbors), domobranac (Home Guardsman), and there are more. I think most of these I have managed to work into my English text. It is a thousand pages long after all, so anyone with the patience and courage to persevere–it is worth it–will learn what they mean, a little like readers of Vassilis Aleksakis’s Foreign Words learns the words of Sango that pepper his novel, such that by the end they can decipher the final twenty lines or so, which are all in that language.
Then there are the Turkishisms, which float in and out of the text depending on the characters involved, the places where the action takes place, and the historical moment.
And so one might encounter teferič or teferičiti se, komšija, meraja, mejdan (megdan), avlija, dimija, jelek, dajdža, mahala, presamiti se, kasaba, kazan, komšiluk, amidža, ćoškast, čaršija, telal, birvaktilski (one of my favorites), tuč, fajda, jorgan, potaman, dulum/dunum, dirinčiti/ati, kirija, hamal(in), behar, taman, bašta, dindušman, javašluk, šehit, kaldrma, ćepenak, sulunar, muhurleisan, rahatluk, ćumur, memla, čaršaf, kandža, badava, kaldrmisan….
I love these words. They linger on my tongue as I am reading aloud, and I have no idea, generally, how to evoke them in English. (I shall do my best, Miljenko.)
Editing time, in about a month and a half, will be when I make definitive decisions about most of these. For now, I just keep lists.
Russell Scott Valentino 