Ah, here we go. Paragraph two of my translation. A graphic description of a Ukrainian child being raped by a Russian soldier.
The novel was written before February 24. The author is a middle-aged, very educated Russian woman. And what does she choose to do in her free time? Fantasize about Russian soldiers raping Ukrainian children, of course. What makes the story particularly cute is that the word “Ukrainian” is never mentioned. It’s obvious from geographic names where the action takes place but the existence of Ukrainians is too traumatic for the Russian writer to mention even in passing.
I started this translation ten minutes ago, and there’s already all this. Putin, schmutin. This woman doesn’t live in Putin’s Russia. She lives in Montreal. There’s something badly wrong with these people completely independent of Putin.
Clarissa's Blog 
Why had your father chosen to translate this book?
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He needed to make a living. When the war started, he wanted to quit but I stupidly talked him out of it. I had no idea how bad the book was. I talked him out because I thought it was something to distract him from watching war news updates 24/7.
When I say he needed to make a living, we would have gladly supported him. But he was proud and couldn’t imagine himself not working.
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“There’s something badly wrong with these people”
I won’t link to specific tweets, but Julia Davis’s twitter feed has all sorts of demented excerpts from Russian state TV (isn’t it all state TV now?)
It’s weird I had no idea how barking insane Russians are (collectively and apparently many of them individually) until recently…
Poland (and other CEE countries) are mostly kind of like western Europe with some weird features and an often peculiar slant on things (Ukraine seems similar maybe a bit weirder and a stronger slant).
Russia seems like screaming pit of pure insanity and…. evil… and the closer you look the worse it is…
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This is a middle-aged woman with a job and a family. Just like me. And I can’t begin to imagine a scenario under which I’d spend my free time on writing graphic descriptions of child rape. I’ll need to meditate for an hour just to get back to normal after translating this paragraph. What floats in this woman’s subconscious is downright abnormal.
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Also many readers might be interested in this channel
“Insights from Ukraine and Russia”
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCPzy5fPr7RDpw_vLSPMHMgQ
It’s basically a young Ukrainian guy who mostly translates intercepted calls of Russian soldiers
Interestingly the Russian army is breaking its own rules (big surprise, I know) and keeping contracted soldiers in the field after their contracts expire….
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My son took a few russian language courses at Dalhousie University- the profs were great(normal people, that’s why they’re here)- but what he got from it was that russia is nuts. Also the second generation russians in halifax were totally at 90 degrees wrt reality. Once the crowd he was hanging with was comfortable with him , they dropped the mask.
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