Description
Lenin was not only a big political figure but also a passionate journalist and propagandist. He is probably the most translated political writer in the world (Index Translationum). In his works, Lenin passionately promotes his views and aggressively attacks his opponents. Non-standard, emotionally loaded language is a characteristic feature of Lenin's style. Strong language is a characteristic feature of Lenin’s style, and he often sounds arrogant and even impolite (see e.g. Âkubinskij 1924, Šklovskij 1924).Adjectives with the meaning ‘very bad’ can be found in abundance in any language, and the differences in their semantics are very subtle. Translating passages containing sharp criticism and debate with the aim at dynamic equivalence is always a creative task: the charge and pathos of the source text should be kept intact.
In our presentation we perform a corpus-based study of three negatively marked Russian adjectives typical in Lenin’s works that mean ‘very bad’: gnusnyj, merzkij, podlyj, as well as their derivatives. We analyse parallel concordances and collect translation equivalents used in English, Finnish, and Spanish translations. All three words have multiple equivalents in all three target languages. At the same time equivalents for different words often coincide, showing the closeness in semantics and its fuzziness. The revisions of translations of the same works often differ in the choice of equivalents for strong language. In our data, translators outperform bilingual dictionaries, and the taboo for using strong language in translations seems to be overridden for the genre of political debate.
| Period | 2 Oct 2025 |
|---|---|
| Event title | SKY Symposium 2025 |
| Event type | Conference |
| Location | Tampere, FinlandShow on map |
| Degree of Recognition | National |