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Soviets: Borschtisov - name meaning?

IvanIvanovitch
Member
#1 · Posted: 7 Jun 2008 05:17
[Spun off from another thread...]

Hi, Borschtisov,
Where is your username from? Or have you explained it on that thread in the Member's Lounge?
Borschtisov
Member
#2 · Posted: 7 Jun 2008 05:31
Okay, this is off-topic, but... I have explained my name before (though not in the proper thread), and no, it doesn't have anything to do with the similar sounding name of a beet soup.
Borschtisov is the name of one of the criminals in Tintin in the Land of the Soviets.
Balthazar
Moderator
#3 · Posted: 7 Jun 2008 22:06
Is the Soviets baddie called "Borschtisov" in Hergé's original French, do you know?
Or is it an English translator's pun about the paucity of food in Soviet Russian restuarants? (Borsch - 'tis off.)
Borschtisov
Member
#4 · Posted: 7 Jun 2008 22:53
It seems to be a curious innovation of the translators, Balthazar.
In the French original this baddie is named "Boustringovitch"!
A mouthful, indeed!
jock123
Moderator
#5 · Posted: 26 May 2022 12:29
Borschtisov:
no, it doesn't have anything to do with the similar sounding name of a beet soup.

Well, yes, it does, more than you might think! ;-)
Borschtisov:
It seems to be a curious innovation of the translators

Not so curious an innovation as you suggest, after all.
A "boustring(ue)" is a pickled herring in the dialect of Brussels, made to look "Russian" by adding an "–ovitch".
Whilst this joke would have been obvious to his readers when it was first published, it doesn't carry over into English - it probably doesn't really play outside Brussels!
So the translators took the opportunity to make another, different, food-related joke - "Borscht's off!" being presumably a play on the "Soup's off!" cliché, used to say a meal is over, or that the kitchen is closed, which the English reader could get.

It actually pairs quite nicely in the original with "Wirchwloff" (who became "Vlipvlop" in English).

His original name is another food-based play on words, this time "witloof", the name of a kind of chicory, popular - and produced - in the region around Brussels.

This time a food reference seems to have been beyond even Michael Turner's legendary skill with matching Hergé's puns, but "Vlipvlop" is of course a "Russian"-ized version of "flip-flop", used of a spy turning from one side to another, or in this case going from disguise as an innocent bystander to exposure by Snowy, so he still got a good gag in in its place, I think.
Mikael Uhlin
Member
#6 · Posted: 28 May 2022 18:43
jock123:
A "boustring(ue)" is a pickled herring in the dialect of Brussels, made to look "Russian" by adding an "–ovitch". Whilst this joke would have been obvious to his readers when it was first published, it doesn't carry over into English - it probably doesn't really play outside Brussels!

Throughout his career, Hergé created character names (and languages like Syldavian and Arumbayan) in that way, i.e based on the dialect of Brussels. It's interesting that he did this already in the first Tintin adventure.

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