Thread: Translation of непрививный

Спасибо большое! What about 'pristine' or 'indigenous'?
Which one of these two meanings (in its original state vs. in its original place) would you recommend?

Originally Posted by rmhelmers

Спасибо большое! What about 'pristine' or 'indigenous'?
Which one of these two meanings (in its original state vs. in its original place) would you recommend?

Personally, I might go with "pristinely indigenous", since the author is attributing both qualities to Russian music. Or, instead, I might say something like "grown from native rootstock", to better convey the "not grafted on" gardening metaphor of непрививный.

Thus, for "...чуете самобытное, русское, непрививное художество," you could translate it as

...you sense Russian art in all of its pristinely indigenous originality.

OR

...you sense a truly original Russian art sprouted from native roots.

(If you go with the second option, you can translate что-то родное as "something indigenous", to avoid repeating the word "native".)

Originally Posted by rmhelmers

Спасибо большое! What about 'pristine' or 'indigenous'?
Which one of these two meanings (in its original state vs. in its original place) would you recommend?

These are synonyms which also will do. The word непрививный is not a regular Russian word but its meaning can be understood from morphology and context, so it is up to you how to translate it. There is no regular translation.

If you want to reproduce adequately the style of the sentence, it should be expressive, poetic, a bit archaic and a little bit pompous.

In the nineteenth century Russian literary language was not so formalized as it is nowadays and even educated people often used self-made words in literary texts.