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I don't know if it's the nature of capitalism in general, or American capitalism in particular, but card games, both honest and dishonest, are a great source of figurative expressions for dealings in business. Luckily for the card players and wheeler-dealers among us, Russian offers many of the same metaphors from the card table.
A good expression is kak karty lyagut, which can be translated as "however the chips fall" or, depending on your fortune up to that moment, "if my luck holds" or "if my luck changes." Sostoyitsya sdelka? Ne znayu -- kak karty lyagut. (Is the deal going to work out? I don't know -- depends on how the chips fall.) You can also speculate on what advantages your opponent might have at the negotiating table with the phrase kakiye karty u nego v rukakh: Ya ne uveren, chto my smozhem s nim dogovoritsya. My ne znayem, kakiye karty u nego na rukakh. (I don't know if we can make a deal with him. We don't know what cards he's holding.) Rasklad is the way the cards get distributed among the players, and can also mean the way things shake out. Pri khoroshem rasklade nasha pozitsiya budet ochen silnoi. (If things shape up in our favor, our position will be very strong.) To describe a piece of good fortune, or bad, you can say Ya vytyanula khoroshuyu kartu or Ya vytyanula ne tu kartu. You can translate this as "I was dealt a good hand," or "I was dealt a bad hand."
As all poker players and negotiators know, the trick of a good player is not letting others guess your hand. Po ego nepronitsayemomu litsu nevozmozhno bylo ponyat, o chyom on dumayet. (He had such a poker face, I had no idea what he was thinking.) Blef (a bluff) and blefovat (to bluff) are the same in Russian as in English: Da net! On etogo ne sdelayet! Eto blef! (On blefuyet!) (No way! He won't do it. He's just bluffing.) When you decide the guy doesn't have a royal flush in his hand, but only a pair of eights, you call his bluff -- vzyat ego na pont: On skazal, chto esli my ne dogovorimsya, on obratitsya v druguyu firmu. Ya reshil vzyat ego na pont. I slava Bogu, chto risknul. Okazalos, chto nikakoi drugoi firmy net. (He said that if we didn't cut a deal, he'd go to another company. I decided to call his bluff. Thank God I took the chance! It turned out that there wasn't any other company.)
Let's say you're not sure if he's bluffing because he's "keeping his cards close to his chest" (on ne khochet raskryvat svoyi karty). There's always that moment of truth when it's time to "lay your cards on the table" or "show your hand": pora otkryt/raskryt karty.
What you're hoping is that the other guy doesn't have the trump card -- kozyr. U nego kozyr na rukakh -- on uzhe podpisal dogovor s edinstvennym postavshchikom. (He had the trump card -- he'd already signed a contract with the only supplier.) When relating the sad story of the failed negotiations to your office buddies, you can say, for dramatic effect, Potom on vylozhil svoi glavny kozyr. (Then he pulled out the trump card.) Using the adjective from kozyr, kozyrnaya sdelka, can be translated as a "sweet deal." In slang kozyrny can mean "a winner," something "hot" or "snazzy": kozyrnoye plate -- that dress is a real winner.
You're also hoping the guy you're negotiating with is playing by the rules, but sometimes he isn't. On igral s kraplyonymi kartami (He was playing with marked cards.) In English, you can also say, "he's playing with a stacked deck," or even "he had a card up his sleeve." This kind of guy is a card shark in American slang, or kartochny shuler in Russian. With this kind of player, it's better to get out of the game as fast as you can; The deck is stacked against you (vsyo protiv tebya) .
Michele A. Berdy is a translator based in Moscow.
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