Translation and language comparison

[Jim Yingst]

> Cool, but it was Omar who used the term.
D'oh! That's what I get for trying to think when I should have been working. All right - I have no idea why Omar used that spelling; he has no excuse.

[Mapraputa Is]

Originally posted by Jim Yingst:
I suppose one could suggest that they're being further improved.

And Jim probably think it was a joke. It was not. It is what Walter Benjamin states in his famous "Die Aufgabe des �bersetzers", "The Task of the Translator":
"Every time life of the original has fuller blossoming in them"
("them" refers to translations)
The great irony of Benjamin's text, as Paul de Man pointed out, is that it is itself untranslatable - it is an example of what it states. For one thing, "Die Aufgabe des �bersetzers" is not only "task", but also "capitulation" - the translator gives up (der �bersetzer gibt auf).
[ January 10, 2002: Message edited by: Mapraputa Is ]

[Thomas Paul]

Douglas Hofstadter (yes, the GEB guy) wrote an article about translation. I will give a hint of what he is talking about. Imagine that you are translating a novel from Russian into English. The story has a character walking down the biggest and most important street in Moscow. For some reason this is crucial to the story. What do you do? Since it is unlikely that the typical reader will be aware of Russian street names, do you translate it to, "he was walking down X street, which is the biggest street in Moscow." Or "He was walking down the Broadway of Moscow." Or do you move the story to Manhattan and have him walk down Broadway?
Since in any story there will be aspects that are understandable only to speakers of the original language, how do you impart some of the things that the non-native speaker will otherwise miss?
For those with interest in the subject, I heartily recommend: "Le Ton Beau De Marot: In Praise of the Music of Language" by Douglas Hofstadter. In this book, Hofstadter talks about the problems of translating a nice little French poem (Le Ton Beau De Marot). The poem is very cleverly written in that it uses a lot of wordplay. So how do you translate it? Do you try to recapture the wordplay? But what about rhyme? And overall feel and meaning? The poem uses a repeating number of words also. How do you capture all of these things and still make a translation worth reading? Can it truly be translated? He also talks about the problems of translating "Godel, Escher, Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid" into other languages.
[ January 11, 2002: Message edited by: Thomas Paul ]

[Mapraputa Is]

See, Jim, "Le Ton Beau De Marot" is also required reading for advanced MD now. Sorry for that.

[Cindy Glass]

OK, Thomas, I have to ask. By what bit of serendipity did you happen to read this obscure book?

[Jim Yingst]

It's not really "serendipity" in this case. Thomas has recommended the book several times in the past, and Map has said she plans to read it (which may or may not have happened by now). I knew it was about translation, so that's why I mentioned it in this thread.
Incidentally, the other article Thomas mentions is in fact part of Gödel, Escher, Bach. pp. 379-80. Since I know a number of other people here have copies, in varying stages of completion...

[Mapraputa Is]

Tom, we won!
We made Jim to read GEB!
No, I haven't read "Le Ton Beau De Marot" yet.
[ January 11, 2002: Message edited by: Mapraputa Is ]

[Thomas Paul]

Originally posted by Cindy Glass:
OK, Thomas, I have to ask. By what bit of serendipity did you happen to read this obscure book?

Douglas Hofstadter is the author of GEB which I discovered a number of years ago. He then took over Martin Gardener's "Mathematical Games" column in Scientific American renaming the column to "Metamagical Themas" (also a book by Hofstadter). When I find an author that I love I follow his writing and when "Le Ton Beau..." came out, I of course had to read it.

[Marilyn de Queiroz]

JY - Originally posted by Jim Yingst:
Other notes - I'm intrigued by the notion of a special verb tense just for God's actions. Does it always carry the association of timelessness?

MQ - not timelessness but of continuation into eternity

JY - Would you use it for all of God's actions, or just the timeless ones?

MQ - everything that is a continuous process

Or is it really just God who gets to use it? (And in the Greek version - which god? Demigods too? Or maybe just creator types?)

The Greek aeroist tense has a beginning but no ending. God doesn't "use" it. But the verb tense is used to describe certain things that God has done and that are continuous.

There is really no English equivalent of this verb tense.

[Mapraputa Is]

People on the Ranch will never cease to amuse me. Marilyn, did you study Greek?

[Jim Yingst]

Thank you, Marilyn. You rule. Now, if only I could find someone qualified to answer the question regarding Russian...
Hmmm... another question - does the Russian usage predate St. Cyril, or was it imported along with the alphabet? (It seems odd to me that any language would evolve such a verb tense, much less two, so a connection of some sort seems plausible.)

[Mapraputa Is]

Jim, if there was no writing system before Cyril and Mefody in Russian, how can we know what verb tenses Russian guys used? They could tell us, of course, but they all are dead by now, I am afraid

[Axel Janssen]

Originally posted by Jim Yingst:

Italians wrote gof-pattern book of sound international trading institutions.
So, what does this refer to anyway, Axel? Just curious...

Hi Jim,
I took the concept institution from a theory frame in Economics which is called New Institutional Economics. This is founded in Public Choice theory. Public Choice theory has as aim to apply economic theory and the included black view on mankind (people are greedy and lazy) on the interpretation of the mechanisms behind political decision.
Now because people are greedy and lazy we need some rule based system to care for durable cooperation among people to get something done (like in this forum, we don�t have to many rules, but we have rules). Don't said that the contributors are greedy and lazy. Its just the theory.
The rule based systems which care for cooperation are called institutions. A lot of things can be institutions. The use of double entry bookkeeping might be an institution. The people know and support the rules of double entry bookkeeping. They cooperate on this basis.
Leading cultural attidudes might be an institution too. If many people in the U.S. believe in the following point of view:

Originally posted by Michael Ernest:

I'm saying those of us who care about everyday grace in the U.S. -- we're, uh, we're challenged right now. Yeah, that's it, challenged. And anyone can come take a look, from de Tocqueville and on, and decide for themselves. It's a free country.

its a basis for constructive cooperation.
Now Italian city states at the end of the economically very splitered Middle Age were the first who builded something like a trading-with-remote-countries attitude (mostly with what is now known Middle East, but also with China, India and Northern Africa). In this process they invented things to back the trading. They needed to invent insurance companies for example, because there are aditional risks involved in international trading compared to local trading. Other copied this ideas later. Its really exagerated to call this gof-book of nowadays international trading institutions. Perhaps we can compare it to �first Smalltalk programmers�. Gof book was the founding of the GATT in 1947.
Axel
[ January 12, 2002: Message edited by: Axel Janssen ]

[Axel Janssen]

Never read so much german here at JavaRanch. If some of you might be users of this language sometimes we have a very cool internet-dictionary, which is growing constantly.
It became a standard like google as search engine.
http://dict.leo.org

[Jim Yingst]

Jim, if there was no writing system before Cyril and Mefody in Russian, how can we know what verb tenses Russian guys used?

Well, Cyril and Mefody, being themselves literate, could conceivably written something about it, e.g.: "Design notes for Cyrillic Alphabet, Release 1.0 beta... Hey, look, these godless heathen barbarians actually have a verb tense which is like the aeroist which he know and love from Greek. Imagine that!"
OK, this may be somewhat unlikely. But I bet that a lack of actual evidence hasn't stopped Russian linguists from forming theories anyway.
Actually, there probably is evidence, implicit in the language itself. Linguists would look to see if there are additional similarities between the verb tenses in the two languages, beyond the mere concept of a timeless verb tense. Are the sounds employed in constructing these tenses similar? Do any neighboring languages employ similar patterns? Are there examples of other languages n the world which seem to have developed such a verb tense independently? Etc. While it may well be that no one knows for sure, I'm betting that there are some compelling arguments one way or another. Offhand, it seems likely to me that the whole idea did indeed come from the greeks - unless there's evidence somewhere to suggest otherwise.

[Mapraputa Is]

I tried to provoke you.
"Offhand, it seems likely to me that the whole idea did indeed come from the greeks" - it seems to me too. Too bad I do not remember the name of this tense to check...

[Mapraputa Is]

Another example to support Jim Yingst thesis about a translation that enriches the original can be found in Maria Spivak's translation of J. K. Rowling's "Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban" into Russian. (Masha is on the right)
Chapter 3 "The Knight bus".
"...With a yell, he rolled back onto the pavement, just in time. A second later, a gigantic pair of wheels and headlights screeched to a halt exactly where Harry had just been lying. They belonged, as Harry saw when he raised his head, to a triple-decker, violently purple bus, which had appeared out of thin air. Gold lettering over the windshield spelled The Knight Bus."
In Russian translation the chapter is named "Grandulet" and it was my excitement about this word that made me look up the original to check which word gave a birth to this gem.
The first part "Grand" sounds foreign but can be unmistakenly read as "big" or "great". The last part "ulet" is a slang word with its meaning close to "cool", literally "fly away". The whole word is only one letter different from "drandulet" - very humorous word that designates a dangerous, usually old and ugly vehicle. It's humor serves to soothe passengers anxiety
If you read the book, you know that this meaning is perfectly justified.
quote:
"One by one, wizards and witches in dressing gowns and slippers descended from the upper floors to leave the bus. They all looked very pleased to go."
If it's still not enough, bus driver's name is Ernie Prang
Finally, "Grandulet" is structurally close to "samolet" (plane) the word that is made out of two: "samo" - self and "let" - "fly". Considering how fast the bus was moving...
This brings us back to Walter Benjamin's article "Die Aufgabe des Ubersetzers" ("The Capitulation of the Translator"). Walter wrote that any natural language is only a subset of one ideal superlanguage, and that languages supplement each other. Translation is an act of such supplement; the task of the translator is not to covey the meaning of the original -- such meaning is always incomplete due to language limits -- but to discover "supermeaning" that in its entirety can only be expressed in the superlanguage.
Later comment. I missed one nuance. "Grand" also has meaning it has in English - "stately, imposing". Its combination with deteriorative "drandulet" gives amazing self-deprecating effect.
This one word would justify the whole book
[ January 12, 2002: Message edited by: Mapraputa Is ]

[ersin eser]

an interesting essay
...

[Guennadiy VANIN]

I am sorry to interfere. I just was looking on translator application download from between English and French/German
https://coderanch.com/t/131351/gc/links-free-download-phrases-translator
and got to this thread without the beginning and the end (at least, how I managed to get it).
Where is the beginning?
Mapraputa,

The more textures and specific connotations a word has, the less abstract you can get. How abstract/philisophical can you get in Russian? Can you talk about a 'thing' without getting any more specific than that? I recall something or other about Romans writing stuff in other languages because latin wasn't flexible enough. Words with gender also interfere with political correctness (not that I care).

I just couldn't believe my eyes. Really? Aren't you ashamed of in driving people to such sublime conclusions, deductions and generalizations about Russian?
First of all, Latin is not similar to Russian. English is derivative of Latin.
2)You wrote that "Old Russian" (that one that is called ancient Greek-Slavic? ) is" almost incomprehensible". Strange enough, it is comprehensible to most Balkan peoples (Croats, Serbs, Bulgarians, et al). You also may read many ancient original texts, including Bibles in Greek, if you know it. I was surprised but Portuguese has more common words with Russian than English, French (or, there is no much sense to mention it, German).
IMHO, it is pointless to compare English and Russian because Russian is a mixture/compendium of various languages and has the size of hundreds of "English"es. Correct me. .
I'd like to know what did you mean by: " My first impression from English ..."? I (honestly) tried to recall my "first"... Is it that you have learned first distorted pronunciation of letter "A" and got that, or before that or after that? Was it something similar to love-hate from the first sight?
I thought a little about my "first": really it was long before I knew "ABC" and it remained: it is just a commodity and it should be gotten with me along. Just the feeling from chewing and swallowing. Just pointless to compare soap with a needle. Correct me.
[ December 06, 2002: Message edited by: G Vanin ]
[ December 06, 2002: Message edited by: G Vanin ]

[Thomas Paul]

Map, did you ever read "Le Ton Beau De Marot"?
Map:

This brings us back to Walter Benjamin's article "Die Aufgabe des Ubersetzers" ("The Capitulation of the Translator"). Walter wrote that any natural language is only a subset of one ideal superlanguage, and that languages supplement each other. Translation is an act of such supplement; the task of the translator is not to covey the meaning of the original -- such meaning is always incomplete due to language limits -- but to discover "supermeaning" that in its entirety can only be expressed in the superlanguage.
The difficulty for the translator becomes discovering what is the supermeaning. What aspects of the book are crucial to understanding and what aspects are superficial. So which is better, a translation that is not faithful to the original but is enjoyable to read or a translation that is faithful but is a complete bore?

[Mapraputa Is]

Tom: Map, did you ever read "Le Ton Beau De Marot"?
I'll start today!

[Mapraputa Is]

Originally posted by G Vanin:
Where is the beginning?

According to the very first post in this thread, here is the beginning. The question about "translation and interpretation" was raised in a thread that was really about Islamic fundamentalistm, so Jim Bertorelli advised to start a new thread, which I did.
I just couldn't believe my eyes. Really? Aren't you ashamed of in driving people to such sublime conclusions, deductions and generalizations about Russian?
G, you type "Mapraputa" and then quote words that belong to David Weitzman. Since I am confused whom do you want to be ashamed, I'll procede to the next question...
IMHO, it is pointless to compare English and Russian because Russian is a mixture/compendium of various languages and has the size of hundreds of "English"es. Correct me.
Ok. "it is pointless to compare English and Russian" -- read Nabokov's afterwords to American and Russian editions of his "Lolita" quoted in this article,
"I so passionately told to American reader again and aigan about superiority of my Russian to my English, that some slavist can really believe that my translation of "Lolita" is hundred times better than the original. While myself I am sick of rattling of my rusty Russian strings."
<...> This discrepancy reflects the main differnce in historical plane between green Russian language and ripe like a bursting fig English language."
has the size of hundreds of "English"es - I would try to fulfil your wish and correct you, but I have no idea how you define "size". If you mean vocabulary,
"In all dictionaries of Soviet era combined there are 125 thousand words -- this is very little for a developed language, especially for one with great literature past and potential."
http://www.russ.ru/antolog/intelnet/ds.bud.iazyka.html
"The OED2, the largest English-language dictionary, contains some 290,000 entries with some 616,500 word forms. Of course, there are lots of slang and regional words that are not included and the big dictionary omits many proper names, scientific and technical terms, and jargon as a matter of editorial policy (e.g., there are some 1.4 million named species of insect alone). All told, estimates of the total vocabulary of English start at around three million words and go up from there.
Of these, about 200,000 words are in common use today."
http://www.wordorigins.org/number.htm

[Thomas Paul]

I was amused by the comment:
IMHO, it is pointless to compare English and Russian because Russian is a mixture/compendium of various languages and has the size of hundreds of "English"es. Correct me.
English is a compendium of just about every language. The English language is made up of thousands of stolen words. That's the reason we have so many synonyms.
Example:
male - Middle French
masculine - Latin
man - Old High German
boy - Middle English

[Mapraputa Is]

Originally posted by G Vanin:
I'd like to know what did you mean by: " My first impression from English ..."? I (honestly) tried to recall my "first"... I thought a little about my "first<...>Just the feeling from chewing and swallowing.

I tried to parse your confession but failed. Thinking more about it, I got an idea that you were exposed to English in rather early age. Me - I think I was 28 or something.
Was it something similar to love-hate from the first sight?
No hate.
Just pointless to compare soap with a needle. Correct me.
It's more like realizing that your Mom and Dad aren't the best people in the world.

[Shura Balaganov]

Mapraputa Is: Me - I think I was 28 or something.
Darn, so you are saying you are older that 28?

Shura

[Guennadiy VANIN]

Map,
you see, if it is yours, your name is inside of the quotes.

Originally posted by Mapraputa Is:

It's more like realizing that your Mom and Dad aren't the best people in the world.

How did you guess about it. I wanted to write about my mom, also, but then decided avoid overburdening this topic and draw attention to them in vain.
I am back here on 10 December, after reading your links..
By the way, I could not understand whether the task is synonym of capitulation.
Can you give a link? preferably to german text.
I mean "Die Aufgabe des Ubersetzers" ("The Capitulation of the Translator"). I am lost, cannot find anything what you were talking about.
I have a starnge dark suspicion that Cindy did give me wrong link from
https://coderanch.com/t/1793/Ranch-Office/record-day-JavaRanch-unique-users
to the beginning of this
[ December 07, 2002: Message edited by: G Vanin ]

[David Weitzman]

G Vanin wrote:

English is derivative of Latin.

English has been strongly influenced by Latin, but other than words with Latin derivations and the Roman alphabet, they have little in common (except, of course, for those base similarities of all languages). In syntax, word formation, etc., they are tremendously different. English is usually classified as a Germanic language.
Plus see Thomas Paul's comment a little ways up.
G Vanin wrote:

Aren't you ashamed of in driving people to such sublime conclusions, deductions and generalizations about Russian?

Reread my words -- you'll notice that I made no conclusions. I don't know Russian, so I posed a simple question (to which, if you look a few posts down, Map responded).
If anyone around here is getting bad impressions of Russia from the Ranch, I think it would be because of a certain Russian poster...
[ December 07, 2002: Message edited by: David Weitzman ]

[Mapraputa Is]

Originally posted by G Vanin:
Map,
you see, if it is yours, your name is inside of the quotes.

Well, when you put somebody's name at the separate line, it is usually being read as a sign of addressing, which means all what follows is addressed to this person. I was further confused by this your piece of prose:
"I just couldn't believe my eyes. Really? Aren't you ashamed of in driving people to such sublime conclusions, deductions and generalizations about Russian?"
-- it would make much more sense if to think you are referring to me. David doesn't know Russian, so his questions are just what they are - questions. If *I* said what you quoted, then the question would be rhetorical and imply that I believe one cannot get too much abstract/philosophical in Russian.
Can you give a link? preferably to german text.
I mean "Die Aufgabe des Ubersetzers" ("The Capitulation of the Translator"). I am lost, cannot find anything what you were talking about.
The title is translated as "The Task of the Translator" into English. I found neither English translation freely available on the Internet, nor German. Perhaps copyright issues. You can enjoy Russian translation here:
http://wwh.nsys.by:8101/klinamen/fila10.html The very first comment will hint at where you can find German text: Walter Benjamin. "Die Aufgabe des Ubersetzers". Gesammelte Schriften, hrsg. von R. Tiedemann und H. Sehweppenhauser (Frankfurt a. M.: Suhrkamp, 1974-1989), Bd.4 (l).

[Thomas Paul]

England at one time was ruled by the Celts. Then the Romans conquered it. Then the Anglos and Saxons. Then it was invaded and parts occupied by the Vikings. Then the Normans conquered it. So we have the Cetic-Latin-Germanic-Swedish-French. And of course each of those languages had influences from other languages.

[Guennadiy VANIN]

Thomas Paul,
[/b]

Originally posted by Thomas Paul:
The English language is made up of thousands of stolen words. That's the reason we have so many synonyms.
Example:
male – Middle French
masculine – Latin
man - Old High German
boy – Middle English

Russian has no less insertions from any language. For ex., from latin derivatives:
French "sortir" – means in Russian: shit hole
Italian "piano" - means in Russian: deadly drunkard
German "hier und da" – means in Russian (erunda): don't listen to it! It is nonsense
German "Herr" means "shit", worthless
[b]
Just read "War and Peace" and you should, I believe, find pages and pages in French.

[Guennadiy VANIN]

Rita,
the insight about "nationality", from your link, definition is quite valuable. I live in Portugal 8+ years and did not know about. But I guessed something was weird. Untill now I cannot succed to register "Russian born in Ukraine". It appears either "Ukrainian born in Ukraine" or "Russian born in Russia". This will certainly help me avoiding killing someone in their offices in the West.

Originally posted by Map:
has the size of hundreds of "English"es - I would try to fulfil your wish and correct you, but I have no idea how you define "size". If you mean vocabulary,

Nope. I compared languages not vocabularies or alphabets.
Compare the time you needed to study English in order to understand Lolita in English and, respectively, to study Russian in order to understand Lolita in Russian.
When you start combining prefixes, suffixes, endings, genders, cases, conjugations, here happens exponential rise in variations at the same number of entrances.

Originally posted by Map on behalf of ?...
"In all dictionaries of Soviet era combined there are 125 thousand words -- this is very little for a developed language, especially for one with great literature past and potential."

Originally posted by Map:
The OED2, the largest English-language dictionary, contains some 290,000 entries with some 616,500 word forms.

Originally posted by Map:
there are some 1.4 million named species of insect alone).

Impressive: the richness of human life is grossly outnumbered by insects.
So, reverse it: the Russian is just one hundredth of the English.
It is like, in the saying: "Unsolicited guest is worse than Tartar" to reverse "worse" to "better". The sense is the same: just the places of a soap and a needle are exchanged.
OK, Russian is one hundred times more compact than English.

Originally posted by Map...
Thinking more about it, I got an idea that you were exposed to English in rather early age.

How could I? The Voice of America was being dumped. It is because I was early exposed to math. We used there latin letters, absolute cosmopolitanism (curious, where is it came from?). Have not it been dumped... forbidden fruit... I would have never known a word. I think my life has lost a lot without totalitarianism.
My first foreign language was Ukrainian, no so many new letters.
CAN YOU GIVE ME LINKS TO LIBRARIES WITH FREE BOOKS IN RUSSIAN, originals, not translations (with books of Solzhenitsin, Bunin, Dostoyevskii, Pushkin, Nabokov).
Thanks for previous links. Though I am amused about your, with Thomas Paul, sending each other to amazon.com
[ December 10, 2002: Message edited by: G Vanin ]

[Guennadiy VANIN]

Margarita,
I could not open that link
http://wwh.nsys.by:8101/klinamen/fila10.html
Anyway, not interested in the ranslation of translations...

[Mapraputa Is]

Originally posted by G Vanin:
CAN YOU GIVE ME LINKS TO LIBRARIES WITH FREE BOOKS IN RUSSIAN, originals, not translations (with books of Solzhenitsin, Bunin, Dostoyevskii, Pushkin, Nabokov).

http://www.lib.ru/
Gena, I am curious, how old are you?

[Mapraputa Is]

Originally posted by G Vanin:
. Though I am amused about your, with Thomas Paul, sending each other to amazon.com

Ah, but this is damn capitalism at work. Copyright, and all that, you know...

[Thomas Paul]

Originally posted by G Vanin:
Italian "piano" - means in Russian: deadly drunkard

These are rather interesting. "Piano", of course, comes from the Italian, "pianoforte" meaning soft-loud. I wonder how that got turned into a deadly drunkard!

[Jason Menard]

Originally posted by Thomas Paul:
These are rather interesting. "Piano", of course, comes from the Italian, "pianoforte" meaning soft-loud. I wonder how that got turned into a deadly drunkard!

Has anyone seen the recent movie "My Big Fat Greek Wedding"? There is a character in it who is constantly demonstrating how every word in some way originates from Greek. Kind of sounds like some of this conversation.

[Jim Yingst]

"Piano", of course, comes from the Italian, "pianoforte" meaning soft-loud.
Unless of course it comes more directly from the Italian "piano" which merely means soft (or softly). The latter is frequently encountered in written music - which was probably at least as common in Russia as a piano(forte).
Still no idea how that turned into a drunkard though.

[Mapraputa Is]

Originally posted by G Vanin:
For ex., from latin derivatives:
French "sortir" - means in Russian: shit hole
Italian "piano" - means in Russian: deadly drunkard
German "hier und da" - means in Russian (erunda): don't listen to it! It is nonsense
German "Herr" means "shit", worthless
Just read "War and Peace" and you should, I believe, find pages and pages in French.

Italian "piano" can mean "drunk" only because it happened to sound like Russian adjective "pyaniy"; not sure how to spell it, but it is derivative of the verb "drink", "pit'" in Russian.
German "hier und da" - means in Russian (erunda):
which means "nonsense"; again, only because it accidentally happened to sound like this. :roll:
German "Herr" means "shit", worthless
"shit"? Really? I thought it's "penis"? How did we arrive at "worthless" I am not quite sure, though
You know, when I was a first grade schooler, we also amused ourselves with foreign words that sound similar, and the less decent the word is the better; do you think linguists find the same kind of pleasure in incidental coincidences?
Just read "War and Peace" and you should, I believe, find pages and pages in French
and I wonder what this should prove. Besides the fact that the educated part of Russian society in early 1800s largely relied on French to communicate with their countrymen, and some of those Russians couldn't speak Russian at all, and there was no need to, because everybody could speak French. What is your point?
[ December 10, 2002: Message edited by: Mapraputa Is ]

[Thomas Paul]

Originally posted by Jim Yingst:
Unless of course it comes more directly from the Italian "piano" which merely means soft (or softly).

I was actually thinking of how the word "piano" became the name for the musical instrument. The pianoforte (the piano's actual name) gets its name from the fact that unlike the harpsichord, the piano can be played both hard and soft.
Gena seems to be confused by the idea that if a two words sound similar they must be related. He is, of course, quite mistaken.

[Jim Yingst]

I was actually thinking of how the word "piano" became the name for the musical instrument.
Right, I got that. I was suggesting that it was entirely possible that the Russian word came from the plain "soft" piano rather than the derived "painoforte" piano. Based on Map's post though it seems neither is the case.