Speakers
Description
As a culturally embedded linguistic category, colour varies across translations of the same source text. This paper examines how colour is encoded diachronically in biblical Hungarian and Georgian, addressing two questions: how colour terms are realised across parallel translations, and what cross-linguistic patterns of lexical and syntactic variation emerge. The analysis draws on a parallel corpus of Old and Modern Georgian and Hungarian Bible translations. Colour terms are defined as lexical units denoting chromatic properties, including both basic colour adjectives and material-based or metonymic expressions. The findings reveal a systematic divergence between the two cultural-linguistic traditions. Georgian shows a diachronic shift from materially grounded, periphrastic expressions towards more abstract and generalised colour terminology, often accompanied by increased morphological transparency. Hungarian, by contrast, demonstrates greater lexical continuity, with variation primarily realised through syntactic explicitation and the redistribution of semantic content. In both cultural-linguistic traditions, colour is encoded via material reference, emerging in descriptions of textiles and ritual objects. The findings demonstrate that colour encoding reflects broader processes of semantic restructuring. Hungarian serves as a comparative baseline, highlighting a trajectory in which syntactic rather than lexical change predominates.