Denominational Translation of Patristic Texts into Romanian: Elements for. a Patristic Translation Theory. Octavian Gordon, Bucureşti, Romania

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1 Denominational Translation of Patristic Texts into Romanian. Elements for a Patristic Traductology, communication held in Oxford, XVIth International Conference on Patristic Studies, August 2013, to be published in Studia Patristica, Peeters Publishers. Denominational Translation of Patristic Texts into Romanian: Elements for a Patristic Translation Theory. Octavian Gordon, Bucureşti, Romania Abstract: A series of denominational differences is obvious in most of the Romanian translations of Greek or Latin patristic texts. Even if two or more translations of the same Greek / Latin word or phrase are philologically correct, it appears that a translation made by an Orthodox will employ certain language (most of them lexical) features, whereas a Catholic or a Protestant, when translating the same patristic text, will use a different terminology, or even topic and morphological features. This may be due to at least two different traditions in the Romanian literature, concerning the history of literary language, but sociological reasons are also to be taken into account. Nevertheless, it appears that elements of denominational hermeneutics could cause the differences of language. Hence, a different understanding of the patristic texts entails the denominational differences in translation, whether we refer to important theological (especially dogmatic and liturgical) terms or the nature of the patristic literature itself. 1. Observation.

2 A series of denominational marks can be found in different translations into Romanian of Greek or Latin patristic texts. One can distinguish at first glance an Orthodox translation from a non-orthodox translation of the same text, not on the basis of the contents, but on the basis of the language employed. Consequently, a common reader belonging to the Orthodox community could easily reject a recently translated text of a certain Father of the Church of the same Church he believes in / belongs to! if he comes to the opinion that the translation doesn t use the Orthodox language. Conversely, a patristic translation using the Orthodox terminology or style 1 can be easily recognized as such and, depending on the reader s faith or personal opinion about language, can be regarded as adequate or old-fashioned and inappropriate. Philologically speaking, even if two or more translations of the same Greek word or phrase are correct, it appears that a translation made by an Orthodox will employ certain language features, in most of the cases lexical features, whereas a Catholic or a Protestant, when translating the same patristic text, will use a different terminology, or even topic and morphological features. Nevertheless, this statement has to be understood and perhaps reformulated on the basis of the following reality: not always the denominational affiliation overlaps with the position of the official Church, so that one can talk rather about denominational milieus than about denominations as such. At the same time, personal beliefs don t often overlap with the general opinion of the denominational group to which the respective person belongs. Consequently, a translator from patristic literature may proclaim his affiliation to the Orthodoxy, for instance, but he may use in translations a language which is alien to the Orthodox spirit, perhaps a language he 1 By style, though improperly used from the linguistic point of view, I mean other language features but lexical ones, in order to simplify the discourse in the present demonstration.

3 thinks the official Church or even the Orthodox milieu should adopt. In this paper, I shall make minimum reference to this category, as it is not clear to what extent the proposed language in translation will be adopted or rejected by the ecclesial corpus. Consequently, I shall limit myself to taking into account the language traditionally considered to be denominational. As for the traditionally considered Orthodox terminology or style, there are many people who believe that defending the Orthodox language is a sign of backwardness and propose a kind of aggiornamento for the language used in the Orthodox Church or by the Orthodox milieus. Nevertheless, the Orthodox or other denominational language features I shall refer to are those features used by each denomination in the liturgical (and, partly, homiletical) discourse, which, in my opinion, is the core and defining language for every faith or religion and, therefore, relevant for any discussion regarding possible language denominational differences. Consequently, as a methodological approach, I shall consider characteristic for any denominational language features those features which are concordant with the liturgical discourse. In this respect, the differences of terminology and style between the two main denominations in Romania Orthodox and Roman Catholic become an obvious fact, which cannot be denied or overseen. They are not only differences between traditional / old-fashioned and modern, but differences denominationally assumed 2. Hence, the existence of more than one ecclesiastical jargon in Romanian language is a reality, and not a supposition. 2 This perspective comes up against most of the language analyses, which talk about religious, Christian or ecclesiastical language, making no difference between denominational characteristics. However, the language analysis of the religious field was a taboo-subject in the communist age and it is understood why the very recent undertakings in the field are rare, shy and equalizing. Nevertheless, the most comprehensive studies on religious

4 Generally speaking, the Roman Catholic or Greek Catholic terminology in Romanian can be easily recognized by its neologistic Latinity ( conciliu, penitenţă, misterii, oficiu ), whereas the Orthodox terminology is characterized by Slavic or Byzantine Greek elements ( sinod, pocăinţă, taine, slujbă ). Sometimes, the Catholic terminology prefers neo-latin terms instead of inherited Latin synonyms: e.g. celebra(re), adora(re), vigilii, instead of a sărbători (from the noun sărbătoare < lat. *seruatoria seruare) 3, închina(re) (< lat. inclinare), priveghe(a)re (< lat. peruigilare) 4. The most evident mark of the denominational differences in the Romanian ecclesiastical language is the use of different spelling and / or pronunciation of the name of Jesus Christ: Iisus Hristos (Orthodox, under the influence of Byzantine Greek, probably through Slavic intermediary) vs. Isus Cristos (Catholic) 5. Protestants do not seem to have their own jargon, but their language obviously tries to be modern, in the sense that it doesn t differ from the current standard Romanian language. In this vocabulary in Romanian are aware of the denominational differences. For example, Dana Luminiţa Teleoacă, in Terminologia religioasă creştină în limba română (Bucureşti, 2005), 9-10, specifies that in the centre of the analysis stays the Orthodox Christian terminology and only few considerations on Catholic religious terms are to be found in the last section of the book. 3 The Orthodox terminology prefers a prăznui, a synonym with Slavic origin. See D.L. Teleoacă, Terminologia (2005), See Alexandru Ciorănescu, Dicţionarul etimologic al limbii române (Bucureşti, 2001), sub vocibus. 5 Details on this denominational language difference can be found in Eugen Munteanu, Lexicologie biblică românească (Bucureşti, 2008), ch. 6: Inconsecvenţă ortografică cu motivaţie confesională: I(i)sus H(ch)ristos, , and in Dragoş Mîrşanu, A Historical Note on the Romanian Orthodox Spelling of the Name of Jesus: Iisus, not Isus, Biblicum Jassyense 1 (2010),

5 respect, one cannot talk about an ecclesiastic Protestant language, as in the case of the Orthodox or Catholic milieus 6. In the case of the religious terms, Protestants resort rather to neologistic vocabulary than to the traditional (Orthodox or Catholic) terminology. I won t overload this presentation with a huge amount of examples in Romanian in order to illustrate the denominational differences of language. Though, for documentary reasons, I will give few examples taken from two translations of the same book written by Pope Gregorius the Great: Vita Sancti Benedicti 7. Even if it is a historical rather than a theological text (as such), the denominational affiliation of the two translations can be immediately perceived, by the use of two series of synonyms: milostenie (p. 22) vs. caritate (p. 22), mănăstire (p. 24) vs. cenobiu (p. 25); dragoste (p. 24) vs. caritate 8 (p. 25); stareţ (p. 39) vs. abate (p. 48) etc. On the one hand, one can notice the Orthodox words (of Slavic origin), which are also terms of common use, as well, and, on the other, there are the Catholic terms, Latin neologisms, rarely used in standard Romanian A quo? 6 Few exceptions in the ecclesiastic related terminology: e.g. prezbiter, instead of preot ( priest ) < lat. prebiter (vulg. for presbyter). In Romanian, prezbiter is strictly related to the Protestant meaning(s) of the priesthood. 7 Sfântul Grigorie cel Mare, Viaţa Sfântului Benedict de Nursia (Sibiu, 1998), Romanian translation by an Orthodox priest (Constantin Necula), and Papa Grigore cel Mare, Viaţa sfântului Benedict şi regula benedictină (Iaşi, 2009), Romanian translation by a Benedictine group. 8 Caritas had at least two meanings in Latin Christian texts: love of God / humans and charity. 9 If used, they refer either to Roman Catholic realities, like cenobiu and abate, either to slightly different meanings, like caritate (in Romanian rather synonym of philanthropy ).

6 The establishment has been done: there are language denominational differences in patristic translations. The question is when they appeared. I believe that the answer is to be found in the history of Bible translations into Romanian: Before the end of the 19 th century, it appears that there were no denominational differences in Romanian language. We can compare the liturgical language of the Orthodoxy neither with the Roman Catholic language, which was Latin at the time, nor with the Greek Catholic, as the Uniats, being by definition Catholic believers of Byzantine rite, used the same language as the Orthodox did. What we can do though is to compare the translations of the Bible in the first centuries of the Romanian literature. Comparing, for example, the first integral edition of the Bible into Romanian at the end of the 17 th century (1688), translated from Greek 10, and the Bible edited one century afterwards (1795) by Samuel Micu 11, a famous representative of the Greek Catholic milieu in Transylvania, one can observe no denominational difference. Moreover, the so-called Biblia Vulgata from Blaj ( ), which is the first translation of the Latin text Biblia, adecă Dumnezeiasca Scriptură ale cei vechi şi ale cei noao leage. Toate care s au tălmăcit dupre limba elinească spre înţeleagerea limbii rumâneşti, cu porunca preabunului creştin şi luminatului domn Ioan Şărban Cantacozino Basarabă Voievod şi cu îndemnarea dumnealui Constandin Brâncoveanul, marele logofăt, Bucureşti, 1688, reprinted in 1988, with the title Biblia, adecă Dumnezeiasca Scriptură a Vechiului şi Noului Testament. 11 Biblia, adecă Dumnezeiasca Scriptură a legii vechi şi a ceii noao, toate care s-au tălmăcit de pre limba elinească pre înţelesul limbii româneşti, acum întîiu s-au tipărit românìşte supt stăpînirea preaînălţatului împărat a Romanilor Francisc al doilea (...). Cu blagoslovenia mării sale prealuminatului şi preasfinţitului domnului domn Ioan Bob, vlădica Făgăraşului (...), Blaj, Biblia Vulgata, Blaj, , a manuscript version made by a group of Greek Catholic scholars, under the guidance of Bishop Petru Pavel Aaron, printed in Bucureşti, Although it is officially stated that this translation

7 into Romanian, edited for Catholic missionary reasons, employs the same Orthodox terminology and style. In fact, it was not only Orthodox, it was Romanian language. So, when did the split occur? The first translation of the Bible using a surprising terminology and style, different from the traditional one, was the translation of Heliade-Rădulescu, the first President of the Romanian Academy. This translation was published in Paris, in With a very modern and surprisingly latinizing discourse, this translation was not successful at all, after the impact of Andrei Şaguna s reaction to it 13. Shortly afterwards, the British Biblical Society published the so-called British Bibles, the main issue being the 1874 edition 14, much more accessible than Heliade s version to the contemporary reader. The British Bibles spread out in the Protestant and neo-protestant milieus at the end of 19 th and at the beginning of the 20 th centuries. Their language was much closer to the secular literature, influenced by the massive import of neo-latin elements (especially from French, Italian and Latin itself). It is self-understood why the Protestants preferred a secular language, rather than an ecclesiastical jargon. Later, the Roman Catholic and the Greek Catholic milieus adopted some of these neo-latin elements, but they kept also much from the traditional ecclesiastical jargon (which, before the end of 19 th century, was common to Orthodox and Catholic milieus). follows the Latin text of Vulgata, I found also fragments borrowed from the TM / LXX tradition, which cannot be found in Hieronymus Vulgata. 13 See Eugen Munteanu, Der Streit um das Recht zur Bibelübersetzung ins Rumänische. Metropolit Andrei Șaguna vs. Publizist Ion Heliade Rădulescu, Romanische Forschungen 120 (2008), See also Ovidiu Moceanu, Teologie şi filologie. Andrei Şaguna vs Ion Heliade Rădulescu, Piteşti, Sănta Scriptura a Vechiului şi a Noului Testamentŭ. Ediţiune nouă, reved, ută după tecsturile originale şi publicată de Societatea Biblică pentru Britania şi străinătate. Vechiulŭ Testamentŭ, Iaşii, 1874.

8 3. Possible reasons of denominational differences. The other essential question is why there exist such denominational differences. Nowadays denominational differences can be understood through the lens of the history of Romanian language. As we have seen, with the modernization of the Romanian literary language, the Protestant and, afterwards, the Catholic milieus have chosen to be closer to the secular language, whereas the Orthodox kept their traditional way of expression, which is one step back (in time) in comparison with the modern Romanian language. The very fact of this choice might show a different understanding of the Christian spirituality, but this is another question to discuss some other time. The differences may also be explained in socio-linguistic terms: like the first Christian communities, nowadays Christian Churches try to find or to show their individuality through language, as well. In the case of Romanian Christian communities, at the dawn of the Romanian literature, the unique Church language was born together with the first Romanian writings: the first Romanian writings were Christian 15. But, with the very quick development of the modern Romanian language, the language of the Church remained one step behind and an ecclesiastical jargon was born. Afterwards, the Protestant communities, whose ecclesiology is fundamentally different from the Orthodox and Catholic ecclesiologies, detached themselves from the traditional ecclesiastical jargon, by adopting the current literary language of the time. Finally, the Catholic milieus felt the need of being different in language from the Orthodox community, by adopting a characteristic language, mainly based on neo-latin lexical innovations. This need 15 Precisely, Orthodox Christian.

9 didn t exist before, as socio-linguistics may show, because the Roman Catholic liturgical language was Latin before the second Vatican Council ( ). However, I wondered: 1) if the differences may be due to a different understanding of the biblical and hence patristic texts or thought; in other words, whether the philological correctness of a translation is organically linked to biblical and patristic hermeneutics; 2) whether and to what extent the major differences in patristic translations are relevant for the understanding of the text as a whole or, at least, in some details. A recent traductological dispute published in Studii Teologice 16 this is today the most important Romanian theological journal shows that the answer to the questions above is rather positive: yes, the denominational hermeneutical differences determine different language employments and, conversely, differences in language usually lead to different understanding of the translated text. 4. Conclusion. Now, one could wonder why it would not be possible to have a neutral, denominationally-blind translation, philologically correct and ad usum omnium. It is hard to say whether such 16 Sabin Preda, Mângâietorul şi după chipul două traduceri teologice, Studii Teologice 1(2008), The article is followed by two replies, showing opposite hermeneutical opinions: Dragoş Mîrşanu, Notă asupra traducerii patristice în cultura română de azi. Răspuns unei critici insuficient contextualizate, Studii Teologice 3 (2008), 223-9, and Adrian Muraru, Câteva consideraţii privitoare la traducerea textelor patristice în limba română răspuns domnului Sabin Preda, Studii Teologice 3 (2008), Briefly, the dispute goes around the interpretation and hence the translation of the Greek κατ εἰκώνα and Παράκλητος, in Epiphanius writing Ancoratus.

10 translations into Romanian would be possible or not, but one thing is certain: the translations that allege themselves to be denominationally-blind don t have a language of their own, neither do they employ the modern standard Romanian language as such. In their attempt to be modern and up-to-date, they perforce resort, however, to unavoidable elements of denominational language, either Orthodox or Catholic, in a loosely controlled assortment.