Juicy words (2nd part)

After writing about synonyms, I finally got down to the second part of the Juicy words, the sex dictionary. Today we will talk about the Dictionary of Sex launched by Slovenian National Television as part of the podcast The Evolution of Sexual Pleasure in cooperation with Croatian and Romanian colleagues. Ten videos were recorded, but then for some reason, they were abandoned. So we still have many words that need to be translated and, in some cases, explained.

The next one was dedicated to the word klitopismenost, which we adopted from Croatian, but originally comes from English. Cliteracy is a part of sexual literacy that refers to the female body and clitoris, its purpose, function, and anatomy. Cliteracy is coined from two words, clitoris and literacy, and the Slovenian and Croatian translations follow this example - in both languages, we use the same principle as the English language.

The third video is about online dating. A term that probably originated in the 1990s but whose meaning has drifted away from reality. When we talk about online dating, we refer to finding a partner online, someone to chat with, go to the movies, or go on a date with. Tinder, which the Dictionary of Sex takes as an example of online dating, is not a search for a partner for life but more of an occasional jump between the sheets.

A phrase that also appears in the dictionary is sex positivity, or a positive attitude towards sexuality and the body, respecting different sexualities. Sex positivity starts with consent and conversation, which ensures a satisfying sex life. The problem in our society is the lack of an open discussion about the positive effects of sex, and not only about the pitfalls and difficulties that sexual relations can bring. The latter is called sex negativity.

In addition to the above, Romanian, Croatian, and Slovenian colleagues have researched a few words more:

stealthing (a type of sexual violence where a partner removes a condom during or before sexual intercourse without the other's consent),
sexting (sending sexually explicit texts),
sexting (sending sexually explicit texts)
revenge porn (posting sexual images after a relationship ends),
kink (unusual sexual practices),
pick up artist (usually, a man who uses tricks to seduce a woman and get her consent for sex).

Although we have tried translating the words above, in practice, we are using English. Foreign words, i.e., words whose spelling is preserved in the foreign language, but we adapt their conjugation to Slovene, are doxing, stealthing, kink, and pick up artist. At the same time, seksting (from sexting) is a loanword, a word that we have entirely adapted to Slovene. Some of the terms listed above are translated into Slovenian descriptively: unauthorized disclosure of personal data, secret condom removal, and unusual sexual practices.

Kink originally means twisted or curved. Like a curve, unusual sexual practices move away from the sexual practices of the majority, hence the term kink. The same goes for stealthing, which originally means concealing, or hiding. In 2010, the slang word stealthing began to be used in a sexual context to hide the fact that one of the people involved has a sexually transmitted disease to infect a partner. Soon, stealthing was used to designate removing a condom without the partner's knowledge. The English word doxing is a neologism derived from the abbreviation of the word documents: docs. The term is relatively new in English, having been added to dictionaries only in 2014.

Pick-up artists (PUA), or masters of seduction in Slovenian, are the modern-day Don Juans, self-proclaimed dating coaches whose aim is to seduce a woman or man into bed. Pick-up artist groups have existed since the 1970s. However, the term has become better known in English thanks to Eric Weber's book How to pick up girls, Pick-Up Times magazine, and the autobiographical romantic comedy Pick-up Artist.

There remains another term, the most detested in society, which implies that the victim is being punished. This is revenge pornography. We do not know the origin of this phrase. Some etymologists suspect that it was coined by British tabloids at the beginning of this century, while others believe it was used as long as four decades ago. Revenge pornography is a form of sexual abuse in which your sexual photos are posted online by probably an ex-partner at the time.

The Dictionary of Sex has been discontinued after ten episodes, as has been said, but the words related to sex keep multiplying and multiplying. I will write more about some of the others and what a challenge they are for translators next time.

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