Political Correctness in Russia

Sat Dec 27 07:04:30 UTC 2008

Dear colleagues,
As I have been investigating the history of Christianity, I can report  
on English usage in theological and historical treatises (as opposed  
to popular, sociological, or legal usage).

Generally the term "cult" is avoided in this literature because it has  
negative connotations or because it refers to some specific external  
ritual disconnected from a currently recognized organized religion  
(e.g., "pillar cult").  "Sect," on the other hand, tends to be  
utilized in neutral fashion to characterize what will eventually  
become a respectable religion which (in historical retrospect) has  
broken off from another respectable religion.  So we find early  
Christianity treated in the following terms:

             The very earliest Christians were Jews.  Primitive  
Christianity has been variously referred to by historians as a  
“Jewish sect,” a “sect within Judaism,” a “Jewish-messianic  
sect,” a “Jewish revivalist movement,” and so on.[1]  So  
“Jewish,” indeed, were the early Christians, that Jeremy Cohen has  
seen fit to characterize the interpretative work of Jesus’ disciples  
as the “earliest Christological midrash.”[2]

[1]   Daniélou 1969, 275; Hengel 1981 (1980), 3: Crossan 1999, xxxiii;  
Vermes 2000, 141.

[2]   Cohen 2007, 23; cf. also Geza Vermes on the “early Christian  
pesher” (2000, 125).

Since Russian "sekta" has such negative connotations nowadays (see  
what Valery Belyanin says about the UNESCO rule), I imagine that the  
above passage would be very difficult to translate into (inoffensive)  
Russian.  Yet the English is completely inoffensive and neutral for  
both Christian and Jewish theologians and historians.

What if a sectarian group breaks off, establishes itself, but does not  
persist?  The Essenes, say, or the Cathars.  Again, theologians and  
historians writing in English would term these sectarian (or perhaps  
"heretical" or "schismatic") groups, not "cults."

And Jehovah's Witnesses?  This organization, although young by  
comparison to the mainline religions, is a legitimate and respectable  
religion in free countries.  Its members were systematically  
persecuted in Nazi Germany.  As for Russia...

With regards to the list -

Daniel Rancour-Laferriere

On Dec 23, 2008, at 6:15 PM, William Ryan wrote:

> This is a good example of where 'political correctness' is a matter  
> of local sensitivities and perspectives. I don't think there can be  
> a 'correct' translation, or at least not one which works for all  
> varieties of English. Words like sect and cult have a range of  
> meanings and can be problematical in the discussion of religion  
> since they tend to be used by the dominant religions, or in  
> countries where there is an established religion, to describe  
> pejoratively groups which have broken away from the parent body, or  
> have esoteric doctrines, or have been only recently invented. There  
> seems to be no consensus yet in the specialist literature on the  
> usage of such words in English, and its cognates in other European  
> languages - one man's 'New Age cult' or 'fundamentalist sect' is  
> another's 'vernacular religion' or 'alternative spirituality'. Many  
> new religious or magical movements try very hard to obtain  
> recognition as bona fide religions, not least because in some  
> countries this entitles them to tax breaks - some states of the USA  
> have been particularly generous in that respect and given tax  
> exemption to groups which have been banned elsewhere as pernicious.
>
> Totalitarian in English and totalitarnii in Russian normally have  
> only a political meaning (the 1984 edition of the 4-vol. Academy  
> dictionary gives it as a synonym of 'fascist'). The use of the word  
> in this way is not yet accepted in the Oxford English Dictionary but  
> has been used in recent years with respect to cults, as has the  
> expression 'destructive cults' - both, of course, imply a negative  
> attitude to the phenomenon.
>
> A discussion of these terms in Russian can be found at http://www.galactic.org.ua/SLOVARI/f-4.htm
>
> All this does not help you much, and I can only suggest cynically  
> that if the expression occurs in a document which you are  
> translating for a client, you should simply take into account his  
> religious or political convictions. What you do in a legal document  
> or a sociology of religion textbook is another matter, or perhaps  
> two different other matters, and I look forward to reading the  
> suggestions of others.
>
> Will Ryan
>
>
>
> Valery Belyanin wrote:
>> 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.
>>
>
>
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