Abstract
ABSTRACTDifferent languages have different colour palettes and different colour associations. Literary texts is an area, where colours play a special role. Preserving colour flavours of literary works in translation may therefore be difficult. In the first part of the article I examine the colour palettes of six Russian writers: Gogol′, Dostoevskij, Tolstoj, Čechov, Bulgakov and Pasternak. An analysis of the frequencies of colour terms shows that the writers have different attitudes to colours: to some of them colour is important (Bulgakov, Pasternak), while others pay less attention to it (Tolstoj, Dostoevskij); some authors do not have favourite colours (Gogol′, Čechov), others do have colour preferences (Bulgakov, Dostoevskij). In the second part of the paper, Finnish translations of the Russian works studied in the first part are examined with the same methods. The analysis reveals massive changes in the use of colour terms. Both colour repertoire and proportions of different colours change dramatically in the colour palettes of the translations. A case study of a parallel concordance for the word černyj ‘black’ in Bulgakov’s works shows that the main reason of the observed changes is the differences in the semantics of colour terms in Russian and Finnish.
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