BISHOP DOSOFTEI AS A TRANSLATOR AND EARLY ROMANIAN RELIGIOUS POETRY

Abstract

Histories of the Romanian language and literature have often neglected translations
favouring original texts, by considering the former to be mere imitations, or sources of
artificial, unnatural structures. As a matter of fact, the European cultural languages have
developed by imitating classical models, deliberately trying to reconstruct the Greek and
Latin semantics, syntax and rhetoric by relying upon the vernacular linguistic material.
Roughly speaking, the linguistic influences manifested in translation (lexical calques, the
structural one, in particular) actually stimulated language creativity by building up
derivation and compounding patterns.