🚀 go-pugleaf

RS> One refers to a surveying procedure: nonius
 
Nonius - Vspomogatel'naja shkala, pri pomoshchi kotoroj otschityvajut doli delenij osnovnoj shkaly izmeritel'nogo pribora. (1)
In a word - vernier.
 
 
RS> One refers to a kind of perfume: santal ("The queen other was
RS> heavily scented with attar of roses and santal.")
 
I am 99.9% sure it means "santalol," which is a liquid obtained from sandlewood and used in perfumes.  Sandalovoe (var. Santalovoe) derevo mean sandlewood tree. (1)
 
 
RS> And for this one the dictionary entry is no help: sal'nik The
RS> Oxford Russian-English Dictionary renders this as "1. (anat.)
RS> epiploon, It appears to be some sort of growth attached to the
RS> stomach and the colon and hanging over the small intestine.
 
We can skip the secondary technical usage of the word since it does not seem to fit into context.  Thus, we will concentrate on the anatomical meaning of the word.
Sal'nik - Zhirovaja skladka v bryushine.(2)
or in better detail - Shirokaja i dlinaja skladka vnutrennostnogo listka bryushiny u mlekopitajushchix i cheloveka, chast' bryzheyki. Soedinitel'naja tkan' Sal'nik bogata krovenosnymi sosudami i zhirovoj tkan'ju. "Zashitnyj organ" brjushnoj polosti. (1)
In layman's terms, it is the protective layer of fat around the stomach.
 
 
RS> This word appears in two different contexts in the book I'm
RS> translating. First, it is the organ of an animal (probably a
RS> ram), which an Ethiopian witch doctor hangs around his neck as
RS> a charm. Second, it is an organ of a ram which can be used to
RS> make candles. ("Iz zhirnogo baran'yego kurdyuka my bytopili
RS> salo, iz sal'nika zhe ego sdelali svechi..."
 
I would translate this sentence thus, "We melted the fat off the ram's fleshy tail, and made candles from its stomach fat.
 
 
RS> poa, elevzin, kogo, kluni (plural), zhigo or dzhigo, Mesraim
 
I couldn't find any of those words in the reference materials I have at home.  You might try the 20+ volume set of the Soviet Academy of Sciences "Slovar' Sovremennogo Russkogo Jazyka."  It should be available in the nearest university library, although I doubt that some of those words are Russian.  I ran into a similar problem when I was translating some of Gumilev's works he wrote in Ethiopia. They contain a lot of local vocabulary.
 
Incidentally, It is my opinion that if you are going to be doing serious translating, you should stick with Russian-Russian dictionaries as the Russian-English dictionaries, though they are usefull guides, will often lead you into pitfalls, even such fine ones as Oxford, Muller, and Smirnitskij.
 


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