An interesting question

[james_davis_nicoll]

Claire asked Ann Leckie:
Hello. I wondered if you were aware of the fact that in the french translation of Ancillary, Breq is male ?

Comments

[megazver.livejournal.com]

Jim Butcher's Russian translators have, for some reason, decided that the 'u' in his last name is supposed to be pronounced as 'ah'.

So Russian readers know him as Jim Buttchair.

[ritaxis.livejournal.com]

English short u is always rendered with A. This is because that's a good rendering of our short u sound.

[megazver.livejournal.com]

That's not how his name, or the word it's derived from, is pronounced, though.

[boxofdelights]

Well, the other possibility is Bootchair. Less silly-sounding to English speakers, but not closer in sound to his actual name.

[butsuri.livejournal.com]

On the contrary, [u] is much closer to [ʊ] than [a] is. [ʊ] is even an allophone of /u/ in Russian (if Wikipedia is to be believed, at any rate: I don't speak Russian).

[seth ellis (from livejournal.com)]

The only available options are бут, бот, бат—boot, bot, butt, sort of, but really the vowel sounds aren't quite the same. Buttchair is probably as close to a Russian pronunciation as Botcher, which I realize isn't an improvement on the funny-homonym front.

[eub.livejournal.com]

In my mind's ear, I'm pretty confident a speaker with a Russian accent, who hears the English word and repeats it, is accenting it towards бу. So I'd use that.

(boot, baut, bot, I'd approximate them.)