# вытёсывать



## Interprete

Hello,

«Каждый из нас вытесывает камень, воздвигает колонну или вырезает кусочки витражного стекла, пытаясь воздвигнуть нечто куда более величественное, чем мы сами». 

I am guessing that вытёсывать is the imperfective form of вытесать, which comes from тесать meaning "to carve".
So I conclude that вытёсывать means "to carve out" with an imperfective nuance. Am I right?

I'm surprised to notice that this verb is nowhere to be found on Reverso Context nor in the English Wiktionary, as if it were a pretty uncommon word...

Thanks!


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## Awwal12

Interprete said:


> I'm surprised to notice that this verb is nowhere to be found on Reverso Context nor in the English Wiktionary, as if it were a pretty uncommon word...


While the model which utilizes "вы-" to form verbs with the meaning ~"to produce some object while removing the excessive material by..." isn't really productive, it's very widespread nonetheless (выта́чивать, выстру́гивать, выжига́ть, вытёсывать, выcве́рливать, выреза́ть etc.).
Вытёсывать что-л. = изготовлять тесанием какое-л. изделие; наносить какое-л. изображение на материал тесанием.
Теса́ть - обрабатывать рубящими ударами вдоль поверхности (обычно дерево или камень).
Cf. тесло́ - adze (a cutting instrument).


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## Vovan

Interprete said:


> I'm surprised to notice that this verb is nowhere to be found on Reverso Context nor in the English Wiktionary, as if it were a pretty uncommon word...


"(Вы)тесать", "вытес(ыв)ать" are all pretty uncommon words, mainly because they mean not just "to carve out" but - more precisely - "to hew out" (i.e. generally rougher work that is done with an axe, a hand plane, etc.).


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## Interprete

Thank you! This sentence I posted was supposed to be a Russian translation of: " _"Each of us is carving a stone, erecting a column, or cutting a piece of stained glass in the construction of something much bigger than ourselves."_ 

Now I wonder why the translator decided to use a word for "hew out" (I confess even in English I have no idea what it is, and how it is different from carving) instead of a simpler word?


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## Vronsky

Камни обтесывают, дерево вырезают - these are collocations, so maybe for this reason.


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## Vovan

Interprete said:


> ...something much bigger than ourselves.


...may be the clue.
"Резьба/вырезание" is finer work:








...while "вытёсывание" usually suggests rougher work and, often, bigger forms (compare it with a somewhat majestically sounding "erecting a column").


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## Okkervil




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## Boyar

Interprete said:


> Каждый из нас вытесывает камень,...


Beware of wrong collocations: the verb "_вытёсывать_" always has a shape as its direct object, not materials. You may go through examples in ruscorpora.ru for вытёсывать/вытесать to find this out. The fact that the English verb '_to carve_' collocates both with shapes and materials is a source of confusion among translators. 

If the verb "_вытёсывать_" is to be kept, some changes need to be done to the original Russian phrase:
_Каждый из нас *что-то* вытесывает *из* камня, ..._

If the verb "_обтёсывать_" is used (as proposed in #5), the resulting phrase will be closer to the English phrase you cited in #4:
_Каждый из нас обтесывает какой-то камень, ..._

I added "_какой-то"_ for the beauty of the phrase; and it perfectly matches the English '_a stone'._


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## Awwal12

Interprete said:


> Now I wonder why the translator decided to use a word for "hew out" (I confess even in English I have no idea what it is, and how it is different from carving) instead of a simpler word?


Frankly, I suppose a slight misinterpretation of the original sentence (it would be fine if it were "...is cutting a (large) stone out...", but I don't think it's what the original author really imagined when he wrote the text). "Покрывает камень резьбой" might fit it better (Russian needs to be more specific here than English, though, so it's difficult to find an universal counterpart to something as "carving a stone").
But Vronsky has some point, "тесать камень" is a widespread collocation which might have influenced the translation.


Vovan said:


> "Резьба/вырезание" is finer work


It uses different instruments and techniques, to begin with.


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## Vovan

Actually, "вытачивать/вытесывать камень/дерево" are in active use:
_Что экономнее - свалить пару деревьев и за одно лето срубить дом, или несколько лет вытесывать камень и класть толстые стены? _​_Приходилось вытачивать дерево при помощи различных орудий. _​_Приходилось вытачивать камень и — кирпич за кирпичом — восстанавливать старинное великолепие. _​(Примеры из Интернета.)​"Тесать камень" is given as an example in  Малый академический словарь. "Вытесывать" should be understood as "тесать с особой тщательностью, интенсивностью" (see the 3rd meaning of "вы-" in Ozhegov's Dictionary).


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## Interprete

Thanks everyone for taking the time to find illustrative images and sentences, I really appreciate.
I'm still a bit confused by the (real or apparent) contradiction between Vovan (post 10) and Boyar (post 8).

This Russian sentence actually comes from a videogame, Civilizations. From my knowledge of how videogames are localized, you first have a translator who translates all the English script into Russian, then a voice actor reading out the Russian translation and pointing out any linguistic problem to the translator. So that would be two native speakers agreeing on a mistake, which I thought unlikely (although still possible of course), and this is why I'm using this material as a fun way to learn more vocab. But I don't want to memorize mistakes either...

Thanks for your help.


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## Boyar

Interprete said:


> ...contradiction between Vovan (post 10) and Boyar (post 8).


Could you specify the contradiction? This would help us to give you the answer.


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## Interprete

Boyar said:


> Could you specify the contradiction? This would help us to give you the answer.


Thanks. From your explanations, I understand that the direct object should be the end-result, not the material, and you offered  _Каждый из нас *что-то* вытесывает *из* камня, ._ as a more correct alternative.

Vovan however says that  вытесывать камень is in active us, but here the direct object is the material, not the end-result.

I don't know if I understood you both correctly or not.

Thanks.


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## Awwal12

Interprete said:


> Vovan however says that вытесывать камень is in active us, but here the direct object is the material, not the end-result.


To be frank, Vovan's examples sound pretty weird to me.


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## Okkervil

Awwal12 said:


> To be frank, Vovan's examples sound pretty weird to me.


 Всё правильно, это лишний раз говорит за то, что "вытёсывать камень" в данном конкретном случае вполне себе адекватный перевод.  Ведь предложенная английская фраза тоже не образец стиля и ясности мысли.


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## Vovan

> *carve*
> 1. to cut (a solid material) so as to form something:
> _to carve a piece of ebony_​2. to form from a solid material by cutting:
> _carved unusual statues out of wood and ivory_​WordReference Random House Learner's Dictionary of American English © 2020


In my opinion, the sentence in the OP employs the verb "to carve" in its first meaning (as given above), because: 1. "to carve a stone out of stone" doesn't make much sense, and 2. a third possible meaning (which Awwal has mentioned: _to carve a stone with one's signature, some figures, etc._) would normally presuppose an object (_carve with what?_) and, in any case, be out of place in the semantic row that follows.

The meaning of the phrase seems quite clear to me:
_Каждый человек создает нечто гораздо более крупное, чем он сам, - воздвигая ли какую-то колонну, вытесывая (теша ) какой-то камень-болванку или разрезая стекло для витража. _​Just as Okkervil, I find the translation given in #1 totally acceptable (and even good).


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## Vovan

Interprete said:


> Vovan however says that вытесывать камень is in active use, but here the direct object is the material, not the end-result.


1. As I said, "тесать камень" ("a stone" is a material here) is mentioned in an _academic _dictionary of the Russian language.
2. As for "вытесывать" being _used instead_ of "тесать", its meaning may not be immediately clear even to a native speaker . In a way, it's like the English "ask away" without any context, or even worse. Verbs based on the model "выXXXвать" can mean much the same as "XXXть" with some extra shade of meaning added   (e.g.: effort to the action, diligence and meticulousness etc. as in "вытесывать" and in the examples below; for other meanings of "вы-" see the link in 10). A few such verbs:
_рисовать картину - вырисовывать картину_​_петь ноты - выпевать ноты_​​And a couple of new examples of "вытачивать/вытесывать камень", the sources indicated:
_Как древний народ вытачивал камень – неизвестно. _("Как жила Бурятия от палеолита до XIX века?", сайт бурятской телерадиокомпании)​_За каждый стол садилась определенная группа: кто лепил, кто рисовал, кто вытесывал камень. _("Школьная топография Курской области", сайт газеты "Первое сентября".)​


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## Boyar

Interprete said:


> Vovan however says that вытесывать камень is in active us, but here the direct object is the material, not the end-result.


I would rather lean to Vovan's earlier opinion (in #3), where he says that "(Вы)тесать", "вытес(ыв)ать" are all pretty uncommon words..." A word can be either "pretty uncommon", or "in active use", but not both at the same time.

All confusion with "вытёсывать" stems from the rarity of this word in modern spoken and written Russian. At a short notice, even native speakers of Russian can fail to find a correct way of using this word in a sentence. I gave a link to ruscorpora.ru in #8. Their examples have been collected from works by recognized Russian authors for the period spanning more than 200 years - and none of them used this verb with materials as its direct object. Moreover, if you follow the link to Ozhegov from Vovan's post in #10 and make a search for "вытесать", you will get the same results: only shapes, not materials are given as proper collocations for this verb. Here is what I found on that page:

Ozhegov :
● В. *доску*. (means _вытёсывать *доску*_ : a shape, not material)

Малый академический словарь русского языка :
● Вытесать *топорище*.
● Отрубил я им {топориком} конец у сушины, вытесал вроде *лопаты* и выкопал яму в мягкой земле. М. Пришвин, Анчар.
● {Карелин} высился за столом подобно грубой *статуе*, вытесанной степными кочевниками из серого крупнозернистого камня. Паустовский, Кара-Бугаз.

Efremova's Dictionary defines "вытёсывать" as "Изготовлять в процессе тесания" (also linked from the same search page).
I have no idea why Vovan did not do this kind of search before posting his findings from the Internet.

If we take the English phrase as the starting point, then Awwal's version, "Покрывает камень резьбой" (in #9), looks closer to the original than anybody else's. His version is in line with what English and French speakers wrote in the thread "Each of us is carving a stone" I started in FR/EN forum.


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## Vovan

Boyar said:


> Their examples have been collected from works by recognized Russian authors for the period spanning more than 200 years - and none of them used this verb with materials as its direct object.


Maybe they didn't, maybe they did - the corpus doesn't contain all of their works!
However, "Словарь  церковно-славянского и русского языка", which was published in 1847, _did _list the phrase:


(Словарь церковно-славянскаго и русскаго языка)​​The dictionary defines "вытёсывать" as "выравнивать, выглаживать тесанием", and gives two examples: "вытесывать доску" and "вытесывать камень".  

Anyway, thanks for starting another thread which shed some light upon what the sentence in #1 appears to allude to.


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## Interprete

Thanks everyone, and thank you Boyar for enquiring about this on the En/Fr forum. I didn't think of going through French to better understand the problem. I actually disagree with what's been said on the En/Fr forum, as "graver une pierre" definitely sounds like a calque from the English. Graver must be followed by what you are carving, then by a preposition + the material used (SUR une pierre, SUR un mur, DANS le marbre, etc. This is unlike tailler which can be directly followed with the material (tailler une pierre). The Académie Française dictionary confirms this. I'm not surprised that the Canadian version got it right because Canadian linguists tend to be much more wary of the danger of insidious calques.

At my current level of Russian I think I need not split hairs over such intricacies while I still can't follow a basic conversation, so I'll just leave this word aside for now. Thanks again for your patience!


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