Dimensiuni ale limbajului n context carceral

The Irish curse refers to the erection problem that men usually have after a night of heavy drinking, as the
alcohol has the effect of harming sexual performance. Also, it is said that Irish men are not blessed with a
very large penis (http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=irish+curse). The Tootsie Roll is an
American cylindrical chocolate candy, about five centimeters long; this is another reference to the size of
Chuckie’s penis. As we can see from the translation above, in the case of the Irish curse no attempt of
explanation was done. The problem is that very few Romanians would know the meaning of “blestemul
irlandez.” On the other hand, the Tootsie Roll element was dealt with pretty good; on the Romanian market
there is no similar product, so the neutral sequence “chestia aia mică” seems to be a suitable choice. Besides
cultural references, this text contains a lot of slang expressions “hoochie-woochie”, “fuck you”, “spreading
my legs”, “tug”. Some of these have their literal meaning (“spreading my legs”, “tug”); “hoochie-woochie”
(“dansul din buric” is just another mistake; whoever saw this film knows that there is no belly dancing
involved) is an interjection, with a connotative meaning, representing a euphemism for “sexual intercourse” it
and “fuck you” is a swearing expression. The official translated version is not a very satisfactory one, because
it does not preserve any of the cultural aspects and the colloquial language used in the original version is
poorly rendered in Romanian.
As we can see, street language combines several categories in order to preserve its originality. All in
all, street language is a very creative linguistic phenomenon. It is always submitted to change, the expressions
acquire new meanings and senses, words disappear and appear under a new form or in new expressions. Street
language takes advantage of all language registers and uses all resources in order to grow richer every day.
The means of orally expressing one’s beliefs or feelings are extremely numerous and the resources that
the young ones use for creating their own language are so very diverse. One can feel a bit uncomfortable
when encountering a linguistic production containing words of this type. But for a good professional the
difficulty of translating such a text is nothing more but a challenge, and a challenge that is taken just because
of its unusual character.
Good translators know they should pay attention to all aspects concerning street culture, with a special
care for the linguistic devices. Their profession should make them aware of the fact that a slang expression
widely used in text from the eighties is very likely to have gained a whole new meaning nowadays. Going
back to our example with training police officers to infiltrate among drug dealers, we might say that
translators have to play detective when it comes to slang, as it will always surprise them with a new turn of
the phrase, with a new meaning.
Conclusions