Reflections on the Status of Hungarian Loanwords in Old Romanian Translations

Abstract

Translation has always been important for religion as a way of preaching God's word. The first Romanian translations of religious texts, including the first (although incomplete) translation of the Bible, date from the sixteenth century. In this early period of Romanian writing, Romanian translators encountered several problems in conveying the meaning of these texts of a great complexity. Some of the difficulties were due to the source texts available in the epoch, others to the ideal of literal translation, to the principle of legitimacy or to the relatively poor development of Romanian language which limited the translators' options. The present study focuses on the causes and purposes for which lexical items of Hungarian origin interweave old Romanian translations. In this epoch, Hungarian influence was favoured by a complex of political, legal, administrative and socioculturel factors, sometimes even forced by these circumstances. On the one hand, given the premises of vivid contacts between Romanians and Hungarians in the regions where the old Romanian translations (or their originals) can be located, a number of Hungarian loanwords of folk origin penetrated these texts. On the other hand, when using Hungarian sources, translators have imported useful source language caiques and loanwords, which have enriched Romanian language.

Keywords

• folk
• elitist
• (hungarian) loanwords
• translation strategy