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Translating into an endangered language: filling in lexical gaps as Language Making

  • Päivi Kuusi EMAIL logo , Helka Riionheimo und Leena Kolehmainen
Veröffentlicht/Copyright: 11. März 2022
International Journal of the Sociology of Language
Aus der Zeitschrift International Journal of the Sociology of Language Band 2022 Heft 274

Abstract

In this article, we analyse translation in the context of revitalisation from the point of view of Language Making. Both translation and revitalisation are based on the idea of languages as distinct entities, and together they are doubly inclined to draw clear-cut borders between languages. The data come from a series of translation courses targeted at speakers and learners of Karelian, a critically endangered Finnic language spoken in Finland and Russia. By analysing the reflective assignments of the translation course participants and focusing on how they report on encountering and overcoming lexical gaps, we examine a very concrete case of Language Making: the creation of new lexical items for Karelian for the purposes of a translation task. Since coining neologisms in our data is mostly based on borrowing or calquing, the data illustrate how the participants perceive language boundaries and the connections between Karelian and other languages. Contrary to what the intersection between translation and revitalisation suggests, a rather flexible view on linguistic borders is displayed. Participants fill in lexical gaps by drawing on all linguistic resources available to them: mainly Finnish and Russian, but also “international” resources and occasionally other languages or other Karelian dialects. To a lesser extent, the data also display the participants’ competing and conflicting ideologies of what is Karelian, what belongs to it and on which or whose model to base the neologisms.

Keywords: endangered language; Karelian; Language Making; lexical gap; neologism; revitalisation; translation; translator training
Corresponding author: Päivi Kuusi, University of Helsinki, Helsinki, Finland, E-mail:

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Received: 2021-01-18
Accepted: 2021-10-26
Published Online: 2022-03-11
Published in Print: 2022-03-28

© 2022 Walter de Gruyter GmbH, Berlin/Boston

Artikel in diesem Heft

  1. Frontmatter
  2. What is “Language Making”?
  3. Scholars and their metaphors: on Language Making in linguistics
  4. Language Making of Creoles in multilingual postcolonial societies
  5. New speakers and Language Making: conscious creation of a colloquial Basque register in the city of Bilbao
  6. Teachers as foreign Language Makers: on standard language ideology, authenticity and language expertise
  7. Translating into an endangered language: filling in lexical gaps as Language Making
  8. Varia
  9. Koreans in Paraguay: language, identity and (re)migration
https://doi.org/10.1515/ijsl-2021-0019
Schlagwörter für diesen Artikel
endangered language; Karelian; Language Making; lexical gap; neologism; revitalisation; translation; translator training

Artikel in diesem Heft

  1. Frontmatter
  2. What is “Language Making”?
  3. Scholars and their metaphors: on Language Making in linguistics
  4. Language Making of Creoles in multilingual postcolonial societies
  5. New speakers and Language Making: conscious creation of a colloquial Basque register in the city of Bilbao
  6. Teachers as foreign Language Makers: on standard language ideology, authenticity and language expertise
  7. Translating into an endangered language: filling in lexical gaps as Language Making
  8. Varia
  9. Koreans in Paraguay: language, identity and (re)migration
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