Hännystely, häntyryys, perässälaahustaminen vai hvostismi?: Leninin uudelleensuomennoksia vertailemassa

Abstract

Vladimir Lenin is one of the most important figures in Rus-sian history. He was a prolific author, and publishing his numerous works and translating them into other languages was an important part of the so-called Lenin cult. Lenin’s works were translated into 125 languages, many of them multiple times. In this paper, lexis of 17 Finnish translations of four Lenin’s works is examined. The purpose of the re-search was to discover by means of corpus analysis what kind of changes occur in retranslations. A list of Lenin’s keywords was compiled using Sketch Engine Keywords utili-ty, and untypical (difficult for perception) words were cho-sen for further analysis. These words were divided into three groups: terms, realia, and archaisms. The use of un-typical words was traced in different translations. The re-sults indicate that while terms and realia do not usually change, archaisms are often replaced with modern equiva-lents. All in all, almost 50% of untypical words remain un-changed, suggesting that the purpose of untypical words is to codify Lenin’s heritage in another language.