Dostoevsky: Demons discussion

In the aftermath of the duel, Nikolai informs Kirillov (P&V) - "I spit on your merit, I'm not seeking that from anyone!". Garnett translation: "Hang your merit. I don't seek anyone's approbation." The Russian word Заслуги ("zaslugi") translated as "merit" indicates a sense of "achievement" - it's used for various medals of honor such as the "Cross of Merit", or in modern times with reference to video game "badges".

The P&V translation is more accurate in translating the pronoun as "that" rather than inserting the extraneous "approbation". The Russian/Cyrillic "ее" (meaning "her" or "its") may appear nearly identical to the English "ee" - however the first form uses the Unicode character "Cyrillic small letter ie", not the Latin "e", so it requires copy-and-paste (or a Russian input method) to look it up.

Incidentally, it appears the final letter should actually be transcribed with a diaeresis as её - with the diaeresis generally omitted except for dictionaries, children's books, and cases where it's necessary for disambiguation. (I hope any Russian speakers will correct me here).

Magarshack’s translation is: “To hell with your merit. I’m not looking for anyone’s approval.”