Talk:сталкер

RFC discussion: April 2014

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сталкер

• (resolved) The first definition is “stalker (traditional translation, although not very accurate in meaning and connotations)”. Why would we want to include a definition that is wrong by its own admission?
• The second definition (“any person, whose occupation or activity is dangerously similar to those of characters from "Roadside Picnic".”) doesn’t explain what it means. You have to be familiar with Roadside Picnic; but even then, Roadside Picnic has multiple types of characters, so you have to know what the term means to know what the term means. Not very useful.
• (resolved) The content of derived terms is “(Feminine gender) сталкерша”. Shouldn’t this be in the headword line?
• (resolved) The pronunciation has /n/ instead of /r/. Is that correct?

— Ungoliant ^(falai) 01:13, 29 April 2014 (UTC)

At the time of creation I didn't know what to do with it. Dictionaries are full of this translation, which is seldom used by native speakers and is only popularised by Andrey Starkovsky's movie, which I haven't seen :( but I think the meaning is not the same as the usual English "stalker". The feminine form is almost made up for completeness. (not all loanwords have feminine forms or they are considered too colloquial or pejorative).

Feminine from: That's now fixed by CodeCat. I've added a stress mark.

Pronunciation: fixed, it was Wanjuscha's typo.

The non-phonetic transliteration was more common in the USSR (knowledge of English was lower too). The more modern transliteration is сто́кер (stóker), this too is not very common. In fact, there is no direct equivalent of "stalker" in Russian. The term is usually described as упо́рный пресле́дователь (upórnyj preslédovatelʹ, “persistent follower”) or челове́к, кото́рый идёт по пята́м (čelovék, kotóryj idjót po pjatám, “person who comes on the heels”)

I will check the usage more thoroughly but is it better now? @Ungoliant MMDCCLXIV --Anatoli ^{(обсудить}/^вклад) 02:27, 29 April 2014 (UTC)

The explanation of how this term is translated was moved to a usage notes heading, where it belongs, but the problem remains: why keep a definition based on inaccurate translation? — Ungoliant ^(falai) 03:39, 29 April 2014 (UTC)

It's a rfv-sense business then, not rfc. I'm not quite keen to verify it but me or someone else will have to. It's a bit difficult because there are too many uses of irrelevant senses. I personally don't use this word but someone may and it's also included in dictionaries, actually more as a "game stalker", not "a person who secretly follows someone, sometimes with unlawful intentions" - fixing now. --Anatoli ^{(обсудить}/^вклад) 03:47, 29 April 2014 (UTC)

Nah, the gloss clarifies it well enough. I’ll mark that one as resolved. — Ungoliant ^(falai) 04:01, 29 April 2014 (UTC)

Thanks. It remains to be checked if the term is ever used in the sense "a person who secretly follows someone, sometimes with unlawful intentions", though, which I added a while ago to stalker#Translations. --Anatoli ^{(обсудить}/^вклад) 04:24, 29 April 2014 (UTC)