# mass appeal



## Anglo-Greek

How do you say "mass appeal" in Russian? The context is "These genres have no mass appeal."

My attempts to express this would be either:
"У этих жанров нет привлекательности массам."
"Эти жанры не привлекают массам."

But I don't know whether those are things that a native Russian-speaker would actually say. I suspect that there is a standard set phrase in Russian to match the English "mass appeal", and it's this that I'm really after!

Thanks

Anglo-Greek


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## learnerr

What genres, why they don't, why it is important that they don't? To show you the problem, one possible translation is "не обещают больших кассовых сборов".
Neither of these two is what anyone could say. Moreover, the second is grammatically wrong, the verb "привлекать" cannot meaningfully take the dative case.


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## Anglo-Greek

Thanks for your response. To give a bit more context: I'm talking about genres of music and film that cannot properly be classified as either "массовая культура" or "высокая культура". In this particular sentence I'm highlighting the fact that such genres cannot be considered "массовая культура" due to their lack of mass appeal (which, consequently, means that big corporations would only have limited interest in them). "не обещают больших кассовых сборов" is along the right lines but to me it looks like it is one stage too far, if you see what I mean: I don't want to say that they won't have financial success, rather that major record labels and film studios wouldn't bother trying to market them in the first place. Hope this helps.


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## Maroseika

I'd say: Это не массовые жанры.


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## learnerr

Thank you for your detailed explanation. The first I can think of is "эти жанры малоинтересны широким массам", but the word "массы" has negative connotations, so it is probably better to avoid it... "Эти жанры не пользуются высокой/широкой популярностью" or "этим жанрам не хватает популярности [for you need to explain what]" is the way to go, I think.

P.S: cross-posted with Maroseika. I like this suggestion, but isn't this the point that Anglo-Greek wants to prove by making more detailed statements? Well, let's leave it to him.


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## willem81

A possible option to express that idea is: не рассчитано на массового слушателя (читателя, зрителя).

Example: Данный жанр не для массового слушателя / не рассчитан на массового слушателя.


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## Maroseika

learnerr said:


> I like this suggestion, but isn't this the point that Anglo-Greek wants to prove by making more detailed statements?



Массовый (не массовый) жанр seems to me the term widely used and exactly in the sense Anglo-Greek meant (if only I got his question right).


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## learnerr

Maroseika said:


> Массовый (не массовый) жанр seems to me the term widely used and exactly in the sense Anglo-Greek meant (if only I got his question right).


Well, exactly, but he needs to _prove_ that some genres are not  "массовые жанры" (or, in other words, that they are not part of "массовая  культура") by stating that they don't have large audience. Let's say,  hard rock: unlike "высокая культура" and like "массовая культура", it  does not have the goal of searching for truth or beauty in truth, but  unlike "массовая культура" and like "высокая культура", it is not widely  popular (недостаточно популярен, чтобы привлекать внимание больших  корпораций), so it does not have some characteristics that are typical  for "массовая культура" ("soap music", "soap operas", etc), like having a  real lot of money rotate around the industry.





willem81 said:


> Example: Данный жанр не для массового слушателя / не рассчитан на массового слушателя.


I think this example carries the wrong connotation that _this genre_ is part of "высокая культура", and that the point of the statement is to characterise the genre as such, but not, say, describe the sociological situation around it. This is not what is said literally, but this is the connotation.


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## willem81

learnerr said:


> I think this example carries the wrong connotation that _this genre_ is part of "высокая культура", and that the point of the statement is to characterise the genre as such, but not, say, describe the sociological situation around it. This is not what is said literally, but this is the connotation.



Не предназначен для/не рассчитан на массового слушателя may indeed be too formal here. I think a synonymous word to 'mass appeal' would be the half-slangy word ширпотреб.

Эти жанры - не ширпотреб.


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## igusarov

Anglo-Greek said:


> To give a bit more context: I'm talking about genres of music and film that cannot properly be classified as either "массовая культура" or "высокая культура". In this particular sentence I'm highlighting the fact that such genres cannot be considered "массовая культура" due to their lack of mass appeal (which, consequently, means that big corporations would only have limited interest in them).


"Эти жанры не обладают *привлекательностью для слушателя* (слушателей/зрителя/зрителей)".

The problem with your question is that you're asking for a noun phrase. If you asked for the equivalent of "These genres do not appeal to the masses", then you'd have far more good verbs to choose from...


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## learnerr

willem81 said:


> Эти жанры - не ширпотреб.


Well, it has the same problem with the connotation, I think.


igusarov said:


> The problem with your question is that you're asking for a noun phrase. If you asked for the equivalent of "These genres do not appeal to the masses", then you'd have far more good verbs to choose from...


Why is it a problem? When translating, noun phrases change for verbs and back so often that probably only statisticians count for these changes. After all, verbs and nouns don't have much difference in meaning.


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## Maroseika

learnerr said:


> Well, exactly, but he needs to _prove_ that some genres are not  "массовые жанры"



I'm afraid I don't understand what you mean by "to prove".
But if we need a noun for the measure of the mass appeal, we can say *массовость жанра.*


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## igusarov

learnerr said:


> Why is it a problem? When translating, noun phrases change for verbs and back so often that probably only statisticians count for these changes. After all, verbs and nouns don't have much difference in meaning.


Well, Anglo-Greek specifically asked for a standard set phrase to match the "mass appeal", not just some translation of the entire sentence. At least that's how I understood his original question.


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## learnerr

Maroseika said:


> I'm afraid I don't understand what you mean by "to prove".





Anglo-Greek said:


> I'm talking about genres of music and film that cannot properly be classified as either "массовая культура" or "высокая культура". In this particular sentence I'm highlighting the fact that such genres cannot be considered "массовая культура" *due to* their lack of mass appeal (which, consequently, means that big corporations would only have limited interest in them).


Every thing has a reason. The claim that something is not "массовый жанр" should not appear out of nowhere, but it needs be substantiated, proved, and the proof must be based on the lack of something in the genre that we know is obligatory for everything that is to be considered "массовый жанр". This something is, in this case, mass appeal, i.e. the property of music or movie to be valued or given attention to by the public. I think, "популярность" may be the word, even if it must be used with caution. Alternatively, "широкий интерес у публики": "такие жанры [(трудно называть массовыми/не следует относить к массовой культуре), потому что они] не вызывают широкого интереса у публики".


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## Anglo-Greek

Igusarov: I asked for a translation of the phrase "mass appeal" because I (apparently falsely) assumed there'd be an equivalent noun phrase in Russian, as the term mass appeal is a relatively recent coinage in English. However, if (as it appears) there is no such direct phrase in Russian, I would happily rephrase the whole sentence to use a verb.

I like the phrase "эти жанры малоинтересны" because this captures the *appeal* part of "mass appeal" better than some of the other suggestions. The focus of the term "mass appeal" isn't the size of the audience per se, rather the potential for a wide audience. That is to say, a completely unknown genre of music could be considered by industry experts to have huge mass appeal, which they could then exploit and thus gain said genre a large audience. That's the problem with translations like "Эти жанры не пользуются высокой/широкой популярностью" or "не рассчитано на массового слушателя/читателя/зрителя". 

Maroseika: the problem that I see with "массовые жанры", which I think is the same problem that Learnerr was trying to highlight, is that my sentence "These genres have no mass appeal" was intended as part of an explanation why said genres can't be considered part of "массовая культура", whereas the phrase "массовые жанры" appears to me (as a non-native speaker, so do feel free to correct me if I'm mistaken!) to more or less simply be stating that the genres aren't part of "массовая культура".


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## willem81

Anglo-Greek said:


> I like the phrase "эти жанры малоинтересны" because this captures the *appeal* part of "mass appeal" better than some of the other suggestions.



_эти жанры малоинтересны широким массам_ - if that's what you need, then I can imagine another statement of this idea, like for example:

Эти жанры не вызывают интереса у широкой аудитории 
or : Эти жанры не представляют интереса для широкой аудитории


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## Maroseika

Anglo-Greek said:


> Maroseika: the problem that I see with "массовые жанры", which I think is the same problem that Learnerr was trying to highlight, is that my sentence "These genres have no mass appeal" was intended as part of an explanation why said genres can't be considered part of "массовая культура", whereas the phrase "массовые жанры" appears to me (as a non-native speaker, so do feel free to correct me if I'm mistaken!) to more or less simply be stating that the genres aren't part of "массовая культура".



As far as I understand, "mass appeal" is used in the culture sphere figuratively, being the marketing term. In my dictionary it is translated as массовая притягательность (товара). So can you speak about *массовая притягательность жанра?*


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## learnerr

Anglo-Greek said:


> The focus of the term "mass appeal" isn't the size of the audience per se, rather the potential for a wide audience. That is to say, a completely unknown genre of music could be considered by industry experts to have huge mass appeal, which they could then exploit and thus gain said genre a large audience.


Then, I think, you could say "не привлекают публику" (quite the same as your second attempt, but without the almost physiological word "массы"), or even go straight and say "не обладают потенциалом для привлечения широкой публики". The problem with the first option is that it's not talking about any potential, so the potential part must be guessed, and the guess may be not easy. In some contexts, it might sound outright strange, a bit like someone is not pulling the people somewhere right now.


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## learnerr

Maroseika said:


> So can you speak about *массовая притягательность жанра?*


I think this translation has the same problem as "не привлекают людей". It leaves out the potentiality part.


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## Anglo-Greek

Thank you everyone for the help. I've decided to go for "не обладают потенциалом для привлечения широкой публики" because this is more explicit.


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