Philippians, 3, 8 in Romanian language: a case of primacy of norm

Abstract

In the present paper, the study of the variants given by the translators of the bible text into the Romanian language during the old age and contemporary to the verse under Philippians, 3, 8, which contains in the Greek version a rare word in the Bible (σκῠ́βᾰλον), highlights the fact that the act of translation places the text on the path of a language, subjecting it to the state of the language at a given moment and to its evolution. At any moment, there is a formal adjustment, which follows what is considered to be correct or at least linguistically possible: first, it is that of the foreign text to the new language—Romanian; then, it is that of the Romanian text to the renewals of the Romanian language—adjustment that may ignore the original requirements, from a given moment in the history of producing and receiving that text in the Romanian language and culture; thus, the correctness of the text is controlled by the norm of the language and by the appearance of its semantic accuracy.In the last sequence of Phil, 3. 8, the history of rendering the element of comparison in the Romanian language constitutes a very good case of primacy of the norm of the language over the originary content (in relation to the direct source text)—recoverable, but exclusively by metalinguistic means.

Keywords

• historical semantics
• literary language
• philology
• translation