Proper names in marginal notes to a 17th century Romanian translation of the Old Testament (ms. no. 4389 B.A.R.)

Ana-Maria Gînsac,Mădălina Ungureanu

doi:10.17684/i10a145en

Abstract

Translating proper names in earlier Romanian versions of the Bible raised different challenges. Some of them were solved in the main text, some other in marginal notes. Such notes are to be found in the second complete translation of the Old Testament into Romanian, kept in the manuscript no. 4389 from the Romanian Academy Library and dated in the second half of the 17th century. The marginal notes from this old Romanian translation refer to the relation of the text with its Slavonic source, in terms of correcting the translation errors, with the secondary sources (in Latin, Romanian, and Greek), pointing to some denomination models different from the main source, and with the linguistic norm of the translated text, in terms of grammatical and lexical adaptations to the system and vocabulary of Romanian. This article explores the strategies related to the translation into Romanian of biblical names based on their treatment in the marginal notes of the mentioned text; it also aims at clarifying, as far as possible, the sources and how the translator relates to them.

Highlights

The first complete Romanian translations of the Old Testament and the first Romanian printed version of the Bible turn the 17th century into a favourable cultural period, both from the point of view of the book production, as the Romanian culture was connected to the European one, and from the point of view of the method used in translation, as the first Romanian translations of the Bible have several sources
The reviewer of Milescu’s translation, in the absence of its main source, uses a different Greek text; for parallel places from different parts of the biblical canon, he takes the marginal references from the Slavonic source
As a common practice in ms.4389, the names in the glosses are sometimes taken in the text without mentioning, in the margin, the form in the main source: cazîlbași for perși (Ier, 25, 24; Iez, 30, 5), jidovi and ovrei for iudei

Summary

Introduction

The first complete Romanian translations of the Old Testament and the first Romanian printed version of the Bible turn the 17th century into a favourable cultural period, both from the point of view of the book production, as the Romanian culture was connected to the European one, and from the point of view of the method used in translation, as the first Romanian translations of the Bible have several sources. The translator of the version within ms.4389 uses, in addition to the main source (ostr.), a Latin unidentified text and Milescu’s translation 15, 17) talks about the similarities between Palia de la Orăștie (po), 1582, and the later Romanian versions of the Bible: “Such formal similarities with Palia de la Orăștie prove—if evidence were still needed—that the Romanian translators of religious texts from the second half of the 17th century, just like their forefathers from the first half and the previous century, would base their translations on all existing texts”. The relationship between the first complete Romanian translations of the Old Testament is clear: Nicolae Milescu carried out from Greek the first translation, which was not preserved This translation was used by Daniil Panoneanul (if we are to accept the paternity suggested by Ursu, 2003) as a source for the version from ms.43894. The revised version of Milescu’s translation kept in ms. (Ursu, 2003, p. 441 argues that the reviewer was Dosoftei, the Metropolitan of Moldavia, hypothesis yet to be fully explored) was revised and printed in the first complete Bible in Romanian, printed in 1688 (see mld)

Marginal notes in the first Romanian translations of the Bible

Emendations to the text in relation to the linguistic norm

Explanation of the text through encyclopædic comments

Conclusions

Studies