(crosspost)

[pilfered_words]

Anyone know a less pretentious word for “memoir”? 

 

(Context: trying to translate the Russian word “воспоминания”, as in “воспоминания автора о своей жизни”.)

 

anonymous asked: Self-biography? Memories?

 

Ehhhhh… Self-biography and autobiography mean “the entire story of the author’s life,” usually. I need something more like “stories that happened to the author at some point.” 

 

Memoir is the closest, except that it’s mostly used to mean “Very Important things that happened to the author, who is a Very Important kind of person, and you need to know everything about them.” 

 

bewareofitalics replied to your post: Self-biography? Memories?
Autobiographical anecdotes?

 

That could work, though the sentence I’m trying to translate is already stupidly complicated, so I was hoping someone would suggest a single word that has the right nuance. But at this point, I’m pretty sure that word just doesn’t exist. 

 

I can also just… split the sentence in two. That’s a thing I am capable of doing.