There’re a lot of Greek words (and names) in Russian and many of them, despite being foreign, already sit quite naturally in the language. They arrived in Russian in two distinct waves: religious Byzantine and later scholarly European. The first one’s via Old Church Slavonic from the 10th century onwards after Christianity was adopted taking the language into the Byzantine orbit and giving us words like katorga (originally the galley, now means gulag), anekdot (a short funny story), planida (planet, now — predetermined fate), etc. First they were used by monks, scribes, liturgy, but slowly seeped out of a religious-cultural sphere of influence to the broader vernacular. The second one’s from the 19th century onwards when Russia turned westward and imported its medicine, philosophy, and science from France and Germany, dragging tons of their words, too, in addition to Greek and Latin. Interestingly, sometimes, when Western European languages got a Latin term, e.g. arboretum, Russian got a Greek one, e.g. dendrariy, for the same thing.
In TULUBAIKAPORIA, we took the liberty not to translate many Russian-Greek words and imported them straight into English, often morphing them morphologically so they fit well. In Episode 4, Khondria is the best example. The reader might’ve seen some already in the previous episodes, and surely will see more.
“Khondria” is an anglicisation of the Russian word “khandra” (хандра), a culturally specific word to describe melancholy or spleen. The translator decided to introduce it to English as well because of the unique connotation it carries, combining elements of ennui, world-weariness, physical sickness, and a specific form of existential gloom. Etymologically, “хандра” itself derives from Greek “hypochondria” (ὑποχόνδριος), creating a lovely linguistic circle as this anglicisation reconnects with its distant cousin in English. From “khondria” we can further create “to khonder” — experience and indulge in khondria at one’s own will.
— Autumn. Weak immunity. Muck and mire. Khondria… — Stop thy khonderinn then! Everyone’s now a hypochondriac! Get thyself pumpkin latte.
The same approach of direct coinage::anglicisation is done with many other non-Greek words throughout the book, such as words of many other origins drawn from the languages of hundreds of ethnicities living/having lived in Russia. In Episode 4 alone we have: drebbeden (дребедень, nonsense, trivialities, codswallop); shabootnous (шебутной, endearingly erratic, restlessly unpredictable, someone equally charming and exhausting); coffa (кофий / кохий, old-fashioned way of saying “coffee”). Those are just examples that stand out — any active, widely used, often colonial language is always a mix that’d make any language purist squirm. In Russian — which TULUBAIKAPORIA demonstrates — you can find thousands of words of Turkic origin (Tatar, Mongol, Polovtsian), Finno-Ugric (mostly northern), of course Greek, Old South Slavic (a lot of Bulgarian, btw, early literary/liturgical Russian was kinda Bulgarian until it started stealing from the next entries in this already too long array of languages), German, Dutch, French, Italian, Polish, English too, Farsi, Arabic, Yiddish and Hebrew, Caucasian, and much more. A western reader might not realise that when they think of “Russian” but what’s hidden behind that umbrella is total ethnic, cultural, and linguistic chaos, and some harmony, too, perhaps (one can only hope). In a sense, with a big dose of evidence and speculation, Russian itself (and “Russia” broadly) is a centuries-long un-translation project.
That said, the book’s title, TULUBAIKAPORIA, is created out of three languages. In it, there’s 1) Turkic roots (tolu — “full”, “filled”, “abundant”, “complete”, “plentiful”, and bay — “rich man”, “lord”, “master”, “wealthy one”, which is hugely productive in Turkic onomastics, e.g. the same root is behind bey (Ottoman title) and bai in Central Asian usage); 2) Russian suffix -ka, a feminine diminutive suffix that miniaturises, domesticates, colloquialises anything it touches (e.g. kniga, “book” -> knizhka, “lil’book”, or well, Vanya -> Van’ka -> Van-ech-ka); 3) Greek -poria, from ἀπορία — “without passage”, “no way through”, the state of being stuck, also a philosophical term for logical impasse.