I note that the English translation of the "Note from the Soviet Foreign Ministry to the American Embassy, Enclosing a Draft for a German Peace Treaty, 10 March 1952" proposes that the question of a peace treaty be discussed with Germany "with a view to preparing in the nearest future an agreed draft peace treaty".
Russians always say " in the nearest future", which no native English speaker would say — in any case, I do not say that and no other fellow countryman whom I know does: a native speaker of English would more likely say :"in the very near future".
Russian speakers of English know, of course, the English grammatical "rules" for making the comparative and superlative of adjectives, namely from "near", we get "nearer" and "the nearest", but that rule does not apply to time, when one says "in future", "in the near future" and "in the very near future". Russians, however, do say в ближайшее время, which literally translates from Russian into English as "in the nearest future", but that never sounds right to me.
Best New Year wishes from the Black Heart of Mordor, which is still beating strongly, despite the warmongering wiles of the hegemon and its lickspittles.
Part two:
What I am saying is that "in the nearest future" is not an English idiom, though it is perfectly understandable to English speakers. It is an expression that Russians use when translating в ближайшее время.
Those Russian adjectival endings -айший or -ейший can cause translation problems. I am thinking in particular of the erroneous or perhaps wilful mistranslation into English of what Putin allegedly said in April 2005, namely the repeated ad nauseam in the West statement that Putin had said that the end of the USSR was “the greatest geopolitical catastrophe of the 20th century”.
In Putin’s mistranslated speech, he used the the -ейший superlative of крупный to describe “catastrophe in the 20th century”, and in English, what he said was that the end of the SU was “a major catastrophe of the 20th century” [official Kremlin translation]: he did not say it was “the greatest catastrophe” of that century — Western mistranslation or outright lie.
The superlative adjectival endings -айший / -ейший (the different spellings are because of orthographical rules) is a superlative formed from a limited range of adjectives, mainly with monosyllabic roots, and is used to express a characteristic to the largest degree, an extreme manifestation of the quality denoted by the adjective.
The most common way of forming a superlative is to use самый before the normative of an adjective, adjectival endings agreeing, of course, with the case, number and gender of the noun that the adjective describes. Hence one can say крупнейший, but also say самый крупный. Both are superlatives.
So with крупный (big/major) one has: более крупный (bigger/ more major), самый крупный (the biggest/ the most major) and крупнейший (the biggest/ the major) as well.
These are important points that many native English speakers miss. English has a very large number of adjectives, many of which are interchangeable. This makes English a richly descriptive language., but depending on the words used, can make it imprecise or subject to interpretation. The Russians however, are extremely precise in their wording, including their translations into English. This must always be borne in mind when reading these documents.
Comment from a reader:
I note that the English translation of the "Note from the Soviet Foreign Ministry to the American Embassy, Enclosing a Draft for a German Peace Treaty, 10 March 1952" proposes that the question of a peace treaty be discussed with Germany "with a view to preparing in the nearest future an agreed draft peace treaty".
Russians always say " in the nearest future", which no native English speaker would say — in any case, I do not say that and no other fellow countryman whom I know does: a native speaker of English would more likely say :"in the very near future".
Russian speakers of English know, of course, the English grammatical "rules" for making the comparative and superlative of adjectives, namely from "near", we get "nearer" and "the nearest", but that rule does not apply to time, when one says "in future", "in the near future" and "in the very near future". Russians, however, do say в ближайшее время, which literally translates from Russian into English as "in the nearest future", but that never sounds right to me.
Best New Year wishes from the Black Heart of Mordor, which is still beating strongly, despite the warmongering wiles of the hegemon and its lickspittles.
Part two:
What I am saying is that "in the nearest future" is not an English idiom, though it is perfectly understandable to English speakers. It is an expression that Russians use when translating в ближайшее время.
Those Russian adjectival endings -айший or -ейший can cause translation problems. I am thinking in particular of the erroneous or perhaps wilful mistranslation into English of what Putin allegedly said in April 2005, namely the repeated ad nauseam in the West statement that Putin had said that the end of the USSR was “the greatest geopolitical catastrophe of the 20th century”.
In Putin’s mistranslated speech, he used the the -ейший superlative of крупный to describe “catastrophe in the 20th century”, and in English, what he said was that the end of the SU was “a major catastrophe of the 20th century” [official Kremlin translation]: he did not say it was “the greatest catastrophe” of that century — Western mistranslation or outright lie.
The superlative adjectival endings -айший / -ейший (the different spellings are because of orthographical rules) is a superlative formed from a limited range of adjectives, mainly with monosyllabic roots, and is used to express a characteristic to the largest degree, an extreme manifestation of the quality denoted by the adjective.
The most common way of forming a superlative is to use самый before the normative of an adjective, adjectival endings agreeing, of course, with the case, number and gender of the noun that the adjective describes. Hence one can say крупнейший, but also say самый крупный. Both are superlatives.
So with крупный (big/major) one has: более крупный (bigger/ more major), самый крупный (the biggest/ the most major) and крупнейший (the biggest/ the major) as well.
For more on this, see:
https://patrickarmstrong.ca/2021/12/24/the-misquotation/
Patrick Armstrong, 24 December 2021.
My Comment:
These are important points that many native English speakers miss. English has a very large number of adjectives, many of which are interchangeable. This makes English a richly descriptive language., but depending on the words used, can make it imprecise or subject to interpretation. The Russians however, are extremely precise in their wording, including their translations into English. This must always be borne in mind when reading these documents.