Political Correctness in Russia

[John Dunn]

A quick look at our old friend Google suggests that the English phrase 'totalitarian (religious) sects' occurs mostly, if not exclusively, in sources relating to Russia or Ukraine.  This suggests to me that this term, like 'political technologist', has validity in English only as a means of rendering a Russian (or in this case, perhaps, a more generally East Slavonic) original.  If, therefore, the term is peculiar to a particular mode of discussing religious organisations which is restricted to the East Slavonic nations, there may simply be no alternative in English but to adopt a literal translation, albeit reversing the order of the adjectives.

John Dunn.



-----Original Message-----
From: Valery Belyanin <vbelyanin at GMAIL.COM>
To: SEELANGS at bama.ua.edu
Date: Tue, 23 Dec 2008 13:18:04 -0500
Subject: Re: [SEELANGS] Political Correctness in Russia

Trying to understand what to do with political correctness, I came across
the expressionрелигиозная тоталитарная секта =_religioznaja totalitarnaja
sekta_ which I was asked to translate into English.

I remember that the word _sekta_ was not recommended for usage by UNESCO (at
least I was told so this during the court session in 2001 in Moscow when I
made a psycholinguistic analysis of the texts of Jehova witnesses'
documents). I had to use Замкнутое религиозное объединение тоталитарного
типа =_zamknutoje religioznoe objedinenije totalitarnogo tipa_but that was
rather clumsy.

My question is:What is the politically correct translation of Russian
expression религиозная тоталитарная секта = _religioznaja totalitarnaja
sekta_

Thank you.

-- 
С наилучшими пожеланиями,
Валерий Белянин / Valeri Belianine / Valery Belyanin
Психолингвистический форум = http://mospsy.ru/phorum/list.php?f=2

John Dunn
Honorary Research Fellow, SMLC (Slavonic Studies)
University of Glasgow, Scotland

Address:
Via Carolina Coronedi Berti 6
40137 Bologna
Italy
Tel.: +39 051/1889 8661
e-mail: J.Dunn at slavonic.arts.gla.ac.uk
johnanthony.dunn at fastwebnet.it

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