US Olympic snowboarder Sage Kotsenburg took home the first gold medal of the Sochi Olympics when he won the men’s slopestyle event on Saturday. Since Kotsenburg is a boarder and a bro, one of the words he used frequently to describe his emotions after the win was “stoked.”
Translators who work at the Olympics have a difficult job as is. It is even more challenging when they have to translate what snowboarders say, which is basically its own dialect of American with words like stoked, sick, amped and gnarly. As it turns out, the word “stoked” translates to something entirely different in Russian.
Kotsenburg’s post-victory press conference was difficult for Russian translators Andrey Lesokhin and Oxana Yakimenko to follow. Al Jazeera America explained why:
In Russian, a ‘grab’ is a ‘grab,’ ‘cab’ is like ‘cab,’ and even though there’s a Russian word for ‘rail,’ we say, ‘rail.’ But ’jump’ is ‘tramplin,’ and a ‘spin’ is ‘vraschenije,’ and ‘flip’ is ‘salto.’”
What about “stoked”?
After a pause and some prodding, Yakimenko admitted, “We used the word for ‘under the influence of alcohol,’ which is kind of like ‘under the fly.’”
Lesokhin mostly noticed that Kotsenburg “said ‘sick’ a lot.”
The Russian word for sick, “bolnoy,” Yakimenko said, “is bad, like you have a disease or something.” But there are plenty of Russian words for “crazy,” so the duo substituted “bezumny,” “kruto” or “sumasshedshy.”
As Fourth Place Medal pointed out, the Russian interpretation of the word “stoked” would make quotes like this from Kotsenberg a bit troublesome.
“I heard it’s going to be crazy. I’m definitely stoked to be a part of it. Obviously I’m stoked to get gold and take whatever comes with it.”
Guy really needs to lay off the sauce. This is the Olympics, for God’s sake.
