@bronze

i haven't had the time to properly reread homestuck in russian, i've just been selectively going over some moments, so i can't say what my "favorite" instance of translated wordplay is, although the translation does try to keep in the puns. sometimes it resorts to just taking out the pun and explaining what the original was to help the conversation make sense (the future arachnid's grip joke sadly gets this treatment), but that's just an unfortunate necessity in some cases, especially since the translation started in 2011 and had to translate as the updates were coming out in later years - they had to adapt as they went! but what i do really like about the russian translation and that i think does somewhat elevates the text of the original homestuck is that russian has a very rich vocabulary of cursing. when it comes to swearing english pretty much has shit and fuck, while russian has an array of different swear words in different combinations, which really does enrich the characters' dialogue, especially karkat's, since his whole gimmick is going on rants filled with insults.

one instance of this does come to mind - and this is kind of an original pun! in karkat's first conversation (from his perspective) with john, one instance where he just says "fucking" in the orignal, in russian it is replaced with "РАТЬ ТВОЮ МАКОМ", which will take some time to explain: firstly, it's a pretty common phrase that literally means something like "fuck your mother", which is generally used as an exclamation as an expression of dismay or surprise (so very similar to "fucking" in general usage). it also is a reference to a pretty common way of "censoring" or adding humor to the phrase, by exchanging the first letters of the two words (so, it would be like saying "dod gammit" in english or something similar). but what makes it a pun is that the phrase doesn't actually include the words "fuck your mother", the literal translation is "your mother in lobster/cancer", which is a name of a sex position, hence the "fuck your mother" implicit meaning. and it's a pun, since, well, it's a reference to cancer, and karkat is the one saying it! i just think that this is an example of the translation doing something similar to the original homestuck, which is seeing opportunities for emergent wordplay around the characters and making them into jokes, meaning that while some puns are lost in the translation, there are also new, added puns. the translation isn't just literally translating the words from the original, but understanding the general philosophies behind the way homestuck writes these characters and adapting general manners of speech and writing into a different language.