Snowboarders Beware: "Stoked" Means "Drunk" In Russian

Sage Kotsenburg brought the United States its first gold medal by nailing a "back 16 Japan" during the men's slopestyle snowboarding event. Afterward, Kotsenburg spouted a fair amount of technical jargon mixed with standard chillbro slang during his press conference, which did not make life easy for his translators.

Al Jazeera's Aimee Berg brings us an behind-the-scenes look at the difficulties faced by translators who have to find Russian words for "stoked" and "sick" on the fly. She talked to the two translators who presided over Kotsenburg's press conference, who admitted that some things get lost in translation:

What about "stoked"?

After a pause and some prodding, Yakimenko admitted, "We used the word for 'under the influence of alcohol' which is kind of like, 'under the fly.'"

On the bright side, the Russians are probably way more impressed by Kotsenburg's run now.

[ Al Jazeera]