When not to normalize

If you're a translator, you've heard it a thousand times: idioms, proverbs, and sayings in the source language should be rendered into normal, equivalent in meaning, phrases in the target language. It's a particular instance of a larger rule:what's normal in the source should be normal in the target. This is a good rule, one that should be followed unless there's a compelling reason not to.

Here's an example of that.

In an article I used recently in class, the author (a blogger commenting on that Mult Lichnosti New Year's cartoon of Putin and Medvedev performing a song-and-dance in the traditional Russian chastushki (частушки) style) says:

Российские политики ведут себя на дипломатическом паркете как свиньи в фафоровых магазинах, а потом удивляются, почему к ним отношение как к диким гопникам. А я удивляюсь, почему удивляются: отношение-то впоне адекватное.

A fairly literal translation of that would read:

Russia's politicians behave themselves on the diplomatic parquet like pigs in china shops, and then wonder why people's attitude toward them is as if they were out-of-control hoodlums. And I wonder why they wonder: that attitude is completely appropriate.

Most of my students, by a large margin, translated that as "bulls in china shops" (or "in a china shop"). It's certainly tempting. But it's a temptation you should resist. Why?

The actual Russian counterpart to "bull in a china shop" is слон в посудной лавке (slon v posudnoj lavke) - an elephant in a china shop.This author deliberately distorted the saying to make the comparison more unflattering.

You should stick with "pigs" here (or maybe even "swine").

If it's normal in the source it should be normal in the target - and, conversely, if it's not normal in the source, it shouldn't be normal in the target, either.