Jul 9, 2013 22:51
10 yrs ago
Russian term

ЦА ФСБ. Ф. 100. Оп. 11. Д. 7 Л. 231–234.

Russian to English Social Sciences History references to archives
I'm translating a document that quotes several archival documents. At the end of each passage, there is a reference similar to the one above. I've figured out what all the abbreviations mean, but I'm not sure what would be the best way to translate the references. I think writing out all the words in full, while it would convey the meaning, would be rather awkward. Other options could be to transliterate the Cyrillic abbreviations, or to translate the words for which the abbreviations stand and make abbreviations from them. Or I could just leave them in Cyrillic. The point of such references, of course, is to help the reader find the original documents if need be; what method of rendering would then be most appropriate? And does anyone know if there are analogous abbreviations in English, and if so, what they are?
Proposed translations (English)
5 +3 Central Archive; file; sheet

Discussion

Yelisey Moroz Jul 9, 2013:
Another option is to make a footnote with full description, like in any scientific paper.

Proposed translations

+3
40 mins
Selected

Central Archive; file; sheet

I deal with archival materials all the time and endorse Yelisey's idea of simply transliterating the above.

To answer your question, ЦА ФСБ = Central Archive, Federal Security Service; Д (дело)= file; Л (лист) = sheet (my customer prefers that translation to "page")

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Note added at 10 hrs (2013-07-10 09:27:24 GMT)
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Sorry, Deborah, that's how I interpreted Yelisey's comment because that's what's generally done when translating archival documents or citing them in a scholarly article.
Note from asker:
I'm a bit confused; Yelisey doesn't seem to mention anything about transliteration. So do you mean just transliterating the Russian letters, something like "TsA FSB F. 100 Op. 11 D. 7 L. 231-234"? As I mentioned, I had already figured out what the Cyrillic abbreviations stand for; I just wanted some opinions on the best way to render it so as to make it minimally confusing to English-speaking readers.
Peer comment(s):

agree Jack Doughty
4 hrs
neutral Alexander Grabowski : and what is Ф.?
8 hrs
Sorry, I missed that. Ф=фонд, [an individual] archive
agree alex suhoy
14 hrs
agree cyhul
2 days 10 hrs
Something went wrong...
3 KudoZ points awarded for this answer.
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