Hi Paul, I would define a "hack" as an ingenious solution. Applied to software, this is an "ingenious piece of code". This ingenious piece of code can be a nice /workaround/ to fix a problem, or just some interesting piece of code.
But in most cases, and especially in the free software communities, "to hack" has the broader meaning of "to code", with no implication of what the code looks like. Apparently, the russian translation "to saw" goes in the opposite direction in suggesting something /methodical/, which is clearly not what "a hack" (or a workaround) is. Hope this helps, -- Bastien
