# Who am I kidding?



## Melikhovo

Hi All,

I'd like to know how to properly translate this short phrase into Russian. Here is my example context:

I thought I spoke good Russian but, *who am I kidding? *His is way better...
If I had to guess, I would translate it fairly literally for instance: *кого я обманываю/кого я пытаюсь обмануть?* 

Thanks in advance)


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## Rosett

"Кого я собрался (на)дурить|(о)дурачить?" is possible. With more context, you may get some better answers.


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## Q-cumber

Кого я дурачу?

In this particular context... hmmm ... Я думал, что хорошо владею русским языком, но зачем я обольщ*а*юсь / обманываюсь? Его русский гораздо лучше.
"Кого я обманываю" is also fine.


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## Vadim K

Both options sound OK to me.


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## Maroseika

Melikhovo said:


> If I had to guess, I would translate it fairly literally for instance: *кого я обманываю/кого я пытаюсь обмануть?*


Both are excellent and seem to me the most typical in Russian.


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## Rosett

Maroseika said:


> Both are excellent and seem to me the most typical in Russian.


"To kid" is not used in English the same way as we use "обманывать" in Russian.


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## Maroseika

Rosett said:


> "To kid" is not used in English the same way as we use "обманывать" in Russian.


We are discussing here translation of expression, not words. The English expression is used exactly like the Russian one, no matter what each word means. Supposedly, that's because the Russian expression is just a calque.


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## Rosett

Maroseika said:


> We are discussing here translation of expression, not words. The English expression is used exactly like the Russian one, no matter what each word means. Supposedly, that's because the Russian expression is just a calque.


The entire expression consists of a single word: kidding. "Kidding" assumes making fun out of deception, like in "дурачить".


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## Maroseika

Rosett said:


> The entire expression consists of a single word: kidding.


The entire expression we are discussing in this thread is: *Who am I kidding? *
I think *Кого я обманываю/пытаюсь обмануть?* is its perfect Russian counterpart.


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## Enquiring Mind

*kid*
5 [transitive]to let yourself believe something that is untrue or unlikely
* kid yourself (that)*






Don't kid yourself he'll ever change.





We thought we could change the world. Just who were we trying to kid? (source: LDOCE)

_kid yourself_
*to believe something that is not true, usually because you want it to be true: *
He says there's a good chance she'll come back to him but I think he's kidding himself. (source: Cambridge Dictionary)

*Who is somebody trying to kid?(informal)* 
used to show that people do not believe what someone says 
She says her father’s a millionaire, but who is she trying to kid? (source: Oxford Dictionary)

The speaker believed that he spoke good Russian, but realised that someone else spoke it much better, so he was letting himself believe something that he then found was untrue. That's how I understand the sense in the OP's context, and that sense is reflected in the OP's own translation. The OP surely knows what sense (s)he intends. There isn't a sense of "making a fool of", "hoaxing", "duping", "hoodwinking", "teasing","taking the mickey" or "pulling someone's leg" here.


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## Rosett

Enquiring Mind said:


> *kid*
> 5 [transitive]to let yourself believe something that is untrue or unlikely
> * kid yourself (that)*
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Don't kid yourself he'll ever change.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> We thought we could change the world. Just who were we trying to kid? (source: LDOCE)
> 
> _kid yourself_
> *to believe something that is not true, usually because you want it to be true: *
> He says there's a good chance she'll come back to him but I think he's kidding himself. (source: Cambridge Dictionary)
> 
> *Who is somebody trying to kid?(informal)*
> used to show that people do not believe what someone says
> She says her father’s a millionaire, but who is she trying to kid? (source: Oxford Dictionary)
> 
> The speaker believed that he spoke good Russian, but realised that someone else spoke it much better, so he was letting himself believe something that he then found was untrue. That's how I understand the sense in the OP's context, and that sense is reflected in the OP's own translation. The OP surely knows what sense (s)he intends. There isn't a sense of "making a fool of", "hoaxing", "duping", "hoodwinking", "teasing","taking the mickey" or "pulling someone's leg" here.


The context is self-deception.
"Self-deception" is a standard formal term, which can be translated properly as "самообман", also standard term in Russian.
However, "kidding yourself" is a fairly informal expression, and it is not correct to translate it with a standard term in Russian.


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## Sobakus

I'd go for *обманывать* when the agent and the patient is the same and *дурить/дурачить* when they aren't, so to express annoyance: _«Кого ты дурачишь? (Меня?)»_


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## Rosett

Sobakus said:


> I'd go for *обманывать* when the agent and the patient is the same and *дурить/дурачить* when they aren't, so to express annoyance: _«Кого ты дурачишь? (Меня?)»_


_«Кого ты дурачишь? Себя (или меня)?» _is also good, as well as: _«Кого я дурачу? Себя (или его?)» _from the OP

There is an equivalent to "kidding yourself": "fooling yourself," also informal.


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## Sobakus

Rosett said:


> _«Кого ты дурачишь? Себя (или меня)?» _is also good, as well as: _«Кого я дурачу? Себя (или его?)» _from the OP


But there's no «или его» in the OP – there's no interaction with "him" whatsoever, and as such *дурачить* doesn't quite fit.


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## Rosett

Sobakus said:


> But there's no «или его» in the OP – there's no interaction with "him" whatsoever, and as such *дурачить* doesn't quite fit.


I use the brackets for the optional "(или его)" for the purpose of clarity and in order to follow the given logic from the first example. The text in brackets is normally understood and goes without saying for that reason, and the integrity of the sentence must remain the same.


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## Q-cumber

Кого я обманываю/ дурачу? is a rhetorical question. It doesn't imply any answers.


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## Drink

Q-cumber said:


> Кого я обманываю/ дурачу? is a rhetorical question. It doesn't imply any answers.



Any rhetorical question can theoretically be answered. In fact usually the answer is obvious, which is why the question doesn't need to be explicitly answered. Still, when analyzing the grammar, a question is a question, rhetorical or not.


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