Abstract
Although the translation of foreign proper names into Romanian before its modern stage is insufficiently explored, it is known that the process is characterized (as the whole Romanian writing of the time) by the lack of generally valid norms. The process was influenced by various factors, including: the existence of different alphabets, orthographic and phonetic systems; the influence of the source-text vs. the existence of traditional pronunciation and writing patterns; the translation of a proper name from various languages (French, German, Italian, etc.); the diversity of proper names; the translator’s personality (linguistic knowledge, cultural formation). Starting from the translation strategies adopted by translators, our aim is to analyse the way in which the toponyms from three historical texts translated into Romanian from German in pre-modern stage (1780–1830) were adapted to the formal system of Romanian.
Highlights
Considered the “modern stage” in the history of literary Romanian (Gheție, 1982, p. 65; Munteanu &Țâra, 1983, p. 169, 176), referred to as the “pre-modern stage” (Piru, 1970, p. 5, referring back to the transition period from the old to the modern literature), the period between 1780–1830/40 represents the beginning of the modernization of Romanian through the translation of texts pertaining to various fields of the written culture and from various modern languages (French, German, Italian, Russian, etc.)
E) The existence of traditional pronunciation models. This limits the possibility of translator’s innovations. It is what Garde (1974, p. 4) notices when he speaks about the transcription of French proper names into contemporary Russian: there is a conflict between proper names lacking notoriety, unknown, which can be subjected to a transcription according to unitary principles, and the ones that are well-known, which already have a graphic and/or phonetic tradition in the target-language and must be kept
Each text has its own features, as follows: a) in Cam.rom., capital letters mark proper names, rarely other words (e.g., Căpetenia, Cam.rom., 8; Gheografia, 10; Observații, 13; Crocodilu, 47); b) in Mil.rom., the capitals consistently mark proper names, but they are more often used at the beginning of other types of words than in the other texts; c) in Rum.rom., proper names are written in capital letters; in addition to these, capital letters are used with certain common names that designate public functions or that are neologisms (e.g., Sisteme, Rum.rom., 11)
Summary
Considered the “modern stage” in the history of literary Romanian 5, referring back to the transition period from the old to the modern literature), the period between 1780–1830/40 represents the beginning of the modernization of Romanian through the translation of texts pertaining to various fields of the written culture (religion, philosophy, history, geograpgy, literature, etc.) and from various modern languages (French, German, Italian, Russian, etc.). The high number of Romanian translations dating back to the same period were insufficiently investigated from the point of view of translation strategies. Within this context, we aim to analyse the way in which proper names from several German texts were formally adapted (graphically, phonetically and morphologically) to Romanian. Ein angenehmes und nützliches Lesebuch für Kinder und junge Leute by Joachim Heinrich Campe; the work presents the discovery of America, told by a father to his
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