1.

Historical aspects of translation (national and international space)

The word "translation" into French for the first time was used in 1540 by Etienne
Dolet. He writes the first translation treaty in French language: "How to translate well from one
language to another" which sets out five fundamental rules: 1. The perfect preservation of the
meaning initiated by the author; 2. Perfect knowledge of two languages; 3. Translation not word-
of-mouth, but preservation of discursive intent; 4. Avoiding neologisms, getting closer to
common language; 5. Keep coherence and harmony of language.
Translation is an integral part of the intellectual life of any nation, based on the Greek-
Roman heritage and Christian culture. The first written sources of translation are the sacred texts.
The third millennium before Christ dates back to the earliest confession of the function of
interpretation, namely the inscriptions engraved on the tombs of Egypt. It can be assumed that
from this point on there are significant signs of crossing from one language to another, namely
from then on, specialized bilingual glossaries (found in the city of Elba, Syria) on stone plates,
which G.Mounin calls them prototypes of contemporary dictionaries.
In ancient Greece, the hegemonic character of Hellenic civilization, which largely
implies a contempt for foreign languages and traditions, also determines the notorious lack of
translations.
In contrast, in ancient Rome, translating as a phenomenon of enrichment of language
and culture, becomes a means of knowledge of literature for those who do not know the foreign
language.
The classic monumental translation document is the Bible, written in Hebrew, after
which it is translated into Greek and Latin. According to a myth, when Greece was a flourishing
state, 72 translators were imprisoned on the island of Pharos in Alexandria to translate the Bible
from Hebrew to Greek, and after three months the translators came out of their cells (where they
stood separately) and it was found that all of them translated the same, by miracle they all had
the same text.
Undoubtedly, the first translation of the Bible was in Greek, and in the 4th-5th
centuries it was translated into Latin.
The German Bible is translated by Luther in 1522, English by Tyndale in 1525, in
French by Olivetan in 1535.
 The first school of translators - the School of Tolede - founded by Raymond Tolede in
Spain in 1125-1151. This school forms translators in all classical and oriental European
languages. The work of Tolede's school led to the popularization of the activitie of translaiting.
Throughout the centuries, translation has been closely linked to the development of
culture, literature, as part of civilization development. The same is true for the development of
translation into Romanian space.
The first letter written in Romanian was a letter dated 1521. The same year is the official
mention of the first translations in Romanian made by the Sibiu Municipal Council. In the same
year, Wallachian prince Neagoe Basarab finished the moral synthesis ("Teaching to my son")
written in Slavic language.
Towards the end of the fifteenth century, Stephen the Great, having an Italian secretary
who maintained close ties with the more developed European economic countries (Poland, Italy),
ordered the writing of the chronicles, which led to the emergence of the first national literature.
These chronicles were written in Greek, Slavic and Latin.
This circulation of spiritual values of culture brings, on the one hand, the use of foreign
languages on a broader level, on the other hand, on the development and flourishing of
translations.
In the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, the Old and New Testament from the Bible
were translated into the common Romanian language, crystallized in a contemporary form, the
text being understood even after three centuries, and in 1688 the first full version of the Bible
translation by Serban Cantacuzino appears, the publication being supported by the polyglot
Nicolae Milescu and the Moldavian bishop Petru Movilă.
The translation as literary linguistic activity becomes the driving force of Dimitrie
Cantemir's work, a literary and political personality, which is the first Romanian translated into
foreign languages: "The History of the Growth and Fall of the Ottoman Empire", written in
Latin, appears in 1724 in London.
The translation of popular Romanian poems, collected by the great Romanian poet,
dramatist and prose writer Vasile Alecsandri appears in French language, in Paris, in 1852:
"Romanian Poems", "Doinas", "Moldovan Poems". An English translation by Granville Murra,
published in London under the title: The Doinas or the National Sonds and Legends of Romania,
will also be offered to these poems.
 Many Romanian culture people translate international works of great success into their
mother tongue. We can remember here: the great Romanian poet George Coşbuc who translates
Homer's Odyssey or Dante's Divine Comedy; The historian, writer, critic Nicolae Iorga,
renowned internationally for studies in bizantinology and modern history (Doctor Honoris causa
at several universities including Oxford), read in 11 languages, spoke 6, his 1250 books and
25,000 articles were translated in French, English, German, Italian; Lucian Blaga, another great
spirit of Romania, translated Goethe's Faust, and poems by Edgar Poe; Tudor Vianu translated
Shakespeare; Alexander Philipide translated Baudelaire; Tudor Arghezi, another great Romanian
poet, translated universals authors like: Moliere, La Fontaine, Crîlov.

Traductology (the theory of translation)

Traductology is an intellectual, theoretical, practical and linguistic achievement. The

translation problem has not long been a systematic study. It is only from the 18th century that the
translation becomes an epistemological problem and is looking for an appropriate methodology
(Herder, Schleirmacher, Schlegel, Humbolt). In Antiquity, Rome inaugurated literary translation.
The Romans develop a lexicon for translation - "ververs, converters, transverters, imitations,
redesign, translation." Rome also has the first translator Livius Andronicus (284-205 BC), who
translated the Odyssey into 240.
The first attempt of a theoretical approach to the translation problem is the preface of a
translation by Demosthene, made by Ciceron, who opts for an oratorial, but not transductual
achievement. Hence the conflict between meaning and word, meaning and style, creativity and
fidelity. The first treaty about "translation" into French was released in 1540 by Etienne Dolet:
"How to translate well from one language to another".
The true theorization of translation activity can only be discussed after the Second
World War, when the process of valuing the linguistic heritage begins.
The undeniable fundamental work that underlies a true theorization is the "Theoretical
Problems of Translation" by George Mounin, which appeared in 1956. This work largely bears
the mark of the linguistic influence exerted by F. de Saussure's "General Linguistics Course".
In 1956 J.-P.Vinay and J.Darbelnet issue the classical work in this field "Comparative stylistics
of French and English"
Another translation theorist is Edmond Cary ("How to translate? "), But also J.Piaget,
M.Ballard, E.Nida, G.Teiner, R.Jakobson, K.Reiss, but also J.Piaget, M.Ballard, E.Nida,
G.Teiner, R.Jakobson, K.Reiss. The new generation of theorists of translation: J.R.Ladmiral,
M.Lederer, D.Seleskovitch, R. Bell, T.Cristea.
Speaking about the stages of establishing transductology as a science, we mention: 1.
Structuralist (word for word) 2. Pragmatic (phrase with phrase) 3. "Textlinguistic" (text level)
and "Scoposteoria" (the purpose of the text).
Starting with the 1950s, structuralism sees the translation as an exact correspondence of
the word from one language to another, and therefore it would constitute decomposition into
significant units for later transposition.
The evolution of linguistic theories and the failure of the limited structuralist approach
to dealing with translation problems, the research on speech acts, the need to "observe" the
situation in which the statement is made, highlight the pragmatic approach to the problem, which
will move to the search for "equivalences" to word in phrase, and she is placed in a
communicative situation. (Catford, Vinay, Darbelnet).
The next step in this context is the texlinguistik approach (H.Weinrich, Roland
Barthes), the basic unit of translation being the text. This new attempt opens the door to
creativity in translation.
"Texlinguistik" gives rise to the "skoposteoria", theorized by Katharina Reiss and Hans
Vermeer, which stipulates that the translator must take account of the skopos function of the text.
The translations that have the primary purpose of "skopos" seem to be quite dangerous.
When translations are objective and ethnocentrically directed, lacking any responsibility, when
there is no place for semantic equivalences, where there is a lack of cultural censorship, we can
not nor does it speak of the ethics of translation. It is not welcome to reach the goal by any
possible means in this case.
Snell-Hornby formulates a series of conclusions, such as:
Traductology is not an extension of another discipline (either applied linguistics or comparative
literature), it is placed between disciplines, languages and cultures, which represent the field of
traductology, as a separate science. 2. Traductology, unlike linguistics, prefers a "top-down"
approach, aware of the fact that the simple analysis of the component parts can not provide an
understanding of the whole.
 Translation is a term with a rather large semantic volume, within which we have 5
meanings: 1. Translating as a process, as an activity. 2. The translation as a final result as a
product. 3. Translation as a means of communication. 4. Translation as an interpretation. 5.
Translation as a transformation of a message, of the text.
Generally, we can treat translation as a particular case of linguistic convergence for
interlingual mediation, which allows the transmission of information between different language
locators.
A. By type of text: literary translation and specialized translation (terminological):
 Literary translation, or rather translation of works, is a term that belongs to Antoine
Berman, and refers to the translation of philosophical and literary works. The poetic
translation is of a maximum degree of difficulty.
 The specialized (terminological) translation aims at translating terminological texts from
different fields of human activity: legal, medical, economic, technical translation, etc.
 Translation of journalistic texts: which is a vast informative, referential system.
 The translation of advertising texts: as a "rational account of human irrationality", the
irrational being the paradoxical behavior of the consumer who spends much of the salary
to "be on the brink of fashion" to be part of an elite social group.
B. By type of message expression:
 written translation,
 oral translation (conference interpretation: consecutive and simultaneous)
C. According to the requirements of the donor of the work:
 translation of signaling (re-expression in the target language of landmarks of the text /
message in the source language, such as title, author, key notions, main idea, etc.);
 translatable translation (re-expression in the target language of the content of the text to
be translated, without taking into account the stylistic and well-drafted features of the
translated text.);
 absolute translation (re-expression in the target language of the content of the original
text, with mandatory compliance of all the parameters of a high-quality translation that
takes into account the semantic, grammatical, stylistic, spelling, etc.).
D. By quality:
 Revisionable translation (primary translation, containing imperfections, requiring
revision);
 Translation translation (translation completed, revised, qualitative, printed, ready to be
delivered to the donor of the work.).
E. By the degree of respect of the meaning of the original message:
 Literal translation (moto-mortem): The translator follows the form of the text in fear of
violating the original meaning;
 Free translation: The translator follows the meaning of the text, the content, being free in
choosing the forms of re-expression of the original text.
F. After the translation direction:
 Version: translation to mother tongue;
 Theme: translation to foreign language.
After R. Jakobson there are three types of translation:
1. Intrallingual translation, meaning interpreting the verbal signs of a language with other
signs in the same language. This type of translation is used to translate old texts, with
their particular peculiarities, with some archaisms out of use. Thanks to these
translations, generations today have access to the most important historical and cultural
values;
2. Interlingual translation, that is the translation itself, from one language to another.
3. Intersemiotic translation, meaning the interpretation of verbal signs with non-verbal
signs (signs of transport, deaf signs, etc.)