Search

The analysis of the linguistic phenomenon presented in the current paper, which can be found only sporadically in the translations of the Moldavian metropolitan Dosoftei, Novă adunare de osebite istorii..., and in Viaţa şi petreacerea svinţilor, where numerous placenames can be found, brings arguments that lead to the conclusion that the translation of Hronograf den începutul lumii has not been made by the metropolitan scholar, as it had been previously argued by N.A. Ursu. We have proved, as we have always done throughout the time, that the analyzed structure has been used, as a sort of habit, by one of the secular scholars, who was also a polyglot. In our opinion, the translator is Nicolae Milescu Spătarul. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper presents the types of proper names' adaptation in the Romanian biblical texts. The translation of onomastic terms has to render, on the one hand, the referential function of proper names and, on the other, the connotative meanings implied in the etymon of the name and relevant in some symbolic contexts of the sacred texts. Also, the new onomastic term has to accomodate with the Romanian grammatical system and to undergo a series of formal transformations. We can distinguish two main modalities of proper names' adaptation in the Romanian biblical texts: formal adaptation (grapho-phonetical and morphological) and semantic adaptation. The first type is represented in this article by the variety of forms of toponym Betleem, which has old occurrenses as Vitleem and Vifleim ressembling the Slavonic and Greek etymon. These old forms changed in the XIXth century in the same time with the whole process of modernization of the Romanian language, in general, and the biblical text, in particular. On the morphological level, the integration of the new name in the Romanian onomastic system concerns the replacement of the original morphological items with those of the target language. The initial occurrences of names are still preserving some Greek endings while the modern ones became perfectly fitted to our system. The second type of adaptation is represented by the translation of the toponym Betel (the house of God) related with the semantics and symbolism of the biblical text. In the evolution of the Romanian sacred text the grapho-phonetically adapted names are preferred in stead of those semantically adapted because of the necessity of maintaining the identity of the referent. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]