31 July 2009By Michele A. Berdy
Сопереживание: empathy
Мы сами создаем свои проблемы (We create our own problems). Ain’t that the truth. Americans produced the Three Stooges, Jerry Lewis and “Police Academy 1-49,” and then they wonder why half the world thinks they’re idiots. Russians keep repeating
мы другие, у нас свой особый пусть
(we’re different; we have a special path), and they are then offended when foreigners say, “Gee, Russians are different.”
But sometimes, armed with a bit of rusty Russian and a desire to define exactly how and why Russians are different, foreigners come up with totally incorrect and truly offensive theories. Take, for example, an opinion piece that came out in a U.S. newspaper not long ago. The commentator wrote, “Empathy — the centerpiece of Obama’s philosophy — does not have an exact Russian counterpart. … [It is not a concept] that can be elegantly rendered into Russian.”
Get the hook! Not only can it be rendered elegantly, conversationally and every which way, it is one of the key values of Russian culture.
First, we need to dig a bit into etymology. “Empathy” is not an old word in English. It was coined in 1903 from the ancient Greek (en — “in” and pathos — “feeling”) to translate the German term Einfuhlung. Russians came up with a calque of Einfuhlung without borrowing from the Greek. Their word is вчувствование: в (into, in, within) + чувство (feeling) + (в)ание (noun suffix). The term was used in German as a theory of esthetic apprecia
be used in Russian to describe interpersonal relations: entering into another person’s state of mind, emotion or experience.
In Russian, there is also эмпатия (empathy), which seems like quite an elegant word to me.
Besides эмпатия and вчувствование, there is another Russian word that means nearly the same thing:
сопереживание.
This comes from сопереживать¸ (literally, “to live through something with someone” — to enter into someone’s experience and share it.) We usually translate the noun as empathy and the verb as empathize:
Она сопереживает ему (She empathizes with him).
There are other Russian words beginning with the prefix со- (with) that express similar notions.
Сочувствие (literally, co-feeling) means sympathy — sharing someone’s feelings.
Сострадание (literally, co-suffering), means compassion — sharing someone’s suffering.
Соболезнование (literally, co-pain) means condolence, commiseration — sharing someone’s pain and sorrow.
Then there is the verb
проникаться, which means to vividly experience and deeply understand something, to be penetrated by an emotion or experience. In English, we usually express this as being imbued or filled with an emotion:
Ознакомившись с деятельностью отца,
они прониклись к нему глубоким уважением
(After learning about their father’s work, they were filled with profound respect for him).
All of the above come together in a Russian definition of
эмпатия: проникновение-вчувствование в переживания другого человека
(empathy: entering into and feeling the experiences and emotions of another person).
In conversational Russian, you can express this with:
поставить себя на место кого-либо and встать на место кого-либо
(to put oneself in someone else’s place). This is a good phrase to know when a spouse or co-worker is ignoring your needs.
Встань на мое место
(Put yourself in my place). You could also say:
Посмотри на ситуацию с моей точки зрения!
(Look at the situation from my point of view!) These are good ways of empathizing.
All of this just goes to show: A little learning is a dangerous thing.
Michele A. Berdy is a Moscow-based translator and interpreter.