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DOI: 10.15862/03FLSK226 (https://doi.org/10.15862/03FLSK226)

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Skurikhina O.V., Shishkina I.S. [Lexical variability of religious terminology: comparative study of translations based on the material of Old English, Modern English and Russian languages] World of Science. Series: Sociology, Philology, Cultural Studies, 2026, Vol. 17, No. 2. Available at: https://sfk-mn.ru/PDF/03FLSK226.pdf (in Russian). DOI: 10.15862/03FLSK226

Lexical variability of religious terminology: comparative study of translations based on the material of Old English, Modern English and Russian languages

Skurikhina Olga Vitalyevna
Vyatka State University, Kirov, Russia
E-mail: felicity@mail.ru
ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-4381-5846
RSCI: https://elibrary.ru/author_profile.asp?id=662450

Shishkina Irina Sergeevna
Vyatka State University, Kirov, Russia
E-mail: irishka_82.kirov@mail.ru
ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-5856-398X
RSCI: https://elibrary.ru/author_profile.asp?id=576187

Abstract. The article presents a comparative study of lexical variability in the translation of New Testament religious terminology into Old English, Modern English, and Russian. The relevance of this research is due to the growing interest within the framework of modern linguistics and translation studies in the objective, including quantitative, analysis of translation corpora. The research corpus includes the West Saxon Gospels, eleven English-language Bible translations, and five Russian-language versions. To quantitatively assess lexical diversity, Shannon’s and Simpson’s indices — metrics borrowed from information theory and ecology and adapted for corpus linguistics — are employed. The findings indicate that the degree of variability is primarily determined by the semantic nature of the source lexeme: verbs and abstract categories (e.g., «states, changes, and processes») exhibit the highest variability, whereas key theological terms (such as Λόγος, Σωτήρ, and Ἁμαρτία) demonstrate marked invariance due to their entrenchment in liturgical and doctrinal tradition. In this study, a moderate positive correlation is observed between variability levels in English and Russian translations, suggesting a commonality in fundamental translational challenges. Furthermore, formally equivalent translations display greater lexical affinity compared to dynamically equivalent ones, and the diversity of translational equivalents is shown to be inversely proportional to their overlap across versions. The study demonstrates that the translation of religious texts can be subjected to objective scientific analysis through quantitative methods, revealing systematic patterns shaped by semantic, theological, and strategic factors.

Keywords: religious lexis; lexical variability; translation of religious texts; Old English; English; Russian; translation strategies; quantitative analysis; translation corpus

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