ON SOME VOCABULARY CHARACTERISTICS OF THE GOSPEL TRANSLATION BY K. POBEDONOSTSEV

Abstract

The article is devoted to a lexical analysis of the New Testament translation into Russian performed by an established statespersonKonstantin Pobedonostsev (1827 – 1907) at the beginning of the 20th century. The lexical particularities of it have been revealed by means of its lexical comparison with the Synodal translation and the Church-Slavonic liturgical version. According to academic interpretation of the data collected the author stated that Konstantin Pobedonostsev's translationpreservesmore resemblance to the Church-Slavonic liturgical version, as there are 183 wordsinhis work, which were not found in the Synodal translation, but were used in Church-Slavonic liturgical version. The major part of the words is registered in lexicographical sources and reflects language norms of Pobedonostsev's lifetime. However, the smaller part is registered in the Russian Language National Corpus as being presented in the texts of the 1820 – 1920 period. The vocabulary specificity of the translation version under study lies in vast references to the Church-Slavonic liturgical version word pool. This fact is explained by stylistic preferences of the Gospel translators as well as by the target addressee image (people who are well informed about the orthodox liturgical tradition). In conclusion the author states that in his translation Konstantin Pobedonostsev never took words from the Church-Slavonic texts without prolonged meditation, the replacement cases seem to be an intentional choice of the words that were frequently used in the speech of his epoch.

Keywords

• New Testament
• New Testament translation
• Konstantin Pobedonostsev
• vocabulary
• Church-Slavonic language
• the Synodal translation
• Slavonism