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Near the end of The Hunt for Red October, Jack Ryan...

...confronts the saboteur, a cook,...

...in the missile room. He says something in Russian, but there are no subtitles like earlier scenes.

What did he say?

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2 Answers 2

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Well, we know (and they did not subtitle it) because he immediately repeats it, in English (I got the order wrong, he says the English, then the Russian, thanks to TJL.

a goddamn cook!

Except that, no, we don't actually know that. I always assumed he was repeating/translating for the English-speaking movie audience. Here's what I found when trying to find citations/references to back up that mistaken assumption:

Looking at scripts - none of the original scripts have any reference to dialogue there. There are no words spoken. What is interesting in the scripts is that

the agent/cook is holding two wires, gleefully evil as he prepares to bring them together with, it is assumed, disastrous consequences.

IMSDb: Script for The Hunt For Red October

Others have asked this question. On a couple of different message board threads on the Straight Dope website, users have supplied this answer, which fits with description of the actions the original script:

Where's what Baldwin says, in Russian -

"Ostav' eto v pokoye!"

Literal translation is "Leave it in peace!" the closest English translation is "Leave it alone!"

The Straight Dope Message Boards: What did Alec Baldwin say in Russian?

Or, in this case, essentially, "Drop it!"

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Literal translations of Eastern Slavic are seldom correct because much of the conversation is implied by context. In this case Jack Ryan is saying to GRU Officer Loganov, ”Оставь это в покое!” (Ostav’ eto v pokoye) or “Put it down calmly!” The literal translation is actually “Leave it in peace!”

Similarly, when Dr Petrov says “Капитан в бою!” (Kapitan v boyu) the subtitle reads “The Captain is fighting the Americans!” but literally translates to “Captain in battle.”

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  • @Joachim There was no accepted answer at the time of this post. The older answer is roughly half irrelevant, so it never got the check..
    – T.J.L.
    Jul 4, 2022 at 17:36

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