Culture language and foreign names adaptation during the pre-modern Romanian

Translation is an act of “negotiation” between two or more cultural systems and languages, being mediated by a translator and carrying both the traces of the mediator and those of the translation context. We aim at investigating the impact of culture languages on foreign names translation into Romanian at the end of the eighteenth century and the beginning of the next. We consider several types of situations. Sometimes, the culture language is also the expression of the reference universe of names, even if they occur in texts whose sources were written in other languages than the respective culture language; in this case, the language of the source text plays the role of an intermediary. In some other instances, the culture language plays the role of a model that determines the name form in the target language, without being directly involved in the act of translation. Translators from the pre-modern stage of Romanian have often substituted the forms from different vernacular languages such as German, French or Italian by a variant received under the influence of a specific culture language, i.e. Greek or Latin.


Preliminaries
Outlining the current practice of geographical names translation, Neumark (1988, p. 216) recommends checking them in the latest atlas. As for Romanian, the recommendation provided by doom 2 (p. LII-LIII) is to reproduce precisely their graphic form and phonetic pronunciation in their original languages. However, applying this norm usually causes misinterpretation at the level of recognition and pronunciation. The challenges are even more significant when we refer to the translation of names before the modern stage of a language. In this regard, the pre-modern Romanian characterizes by the lack of translation standards, to which is added the asymmetry of the linguistic systems (at graphic, phonetic, morphological and syntactic level) that come into contact. Along with the socio-cultural circumstances in the Romanian Principalities at the end of the eighteenth century, these determinants provided the translators with a significant number of translation possibilities. They used these various possibilities rather unsystematically, resulting in various denominations and forms of the same name, both from one translator to the other and within the same text.
Translation is an act of mediation between two or more languages, as well as between the two cultural systems, a process of mediation that the translator performs based on an act of interpretation (Venuti, 1995, p. 17: "Translation is a process by which the chain of signifiers that constitutes the source-language text is replaced by a chain of signifiers in the target language which the translator provides on the strength of an interpretation"). Therefore, the text bears the mark of the mediator. Whereas nowadays one can speak of the translator's invisibility, as the translated text seems to be more an original one rather than a translation (Venuti, 1995, p. 1-2), in the past, the translator's imprint over choosing a particular form or strategy in translation was more evident. Sandnes (2016, p. 541-550) claims that three factors determine the changes of names when two languages come into contact, therefore also in the process of translation: a) the socio-cultural characteristics, b) the languages that come into contact, c) the speakers (in the case of translations, the translatorsmediators). In other words, translations carry not only the imprint of the languages that come into contact but also that of the environment of the intermediation process (Zauberga, 2006, p. 150). As far as the languages that come into contact are concerned, the degree of linguistic prescriptivism of the target language and the ideological substratum underlying it have a significant role. For instance, speaking about the contemporary Lithuanian, Zauberga (2006, p. 144) describes it as being conservative and characterized by purism, whereas official linguistics is reluctant when it comes to linguistic change and any other influence, assuming that the languages with a higher number of speakers and greater prestige, such as English and Russian, endanger Lithuanian. This attitude determines choices in adopting name translation strategies, with a bias on transcription rather than on transfer. Another factor is the relations between these languages. The prestige of a language-and a culture-determines translation strategies which are closer to literalism, in the sense of a higher conformism at both the meaning and the writing level, resulting in the "foreignization" of the target text: "When a culture is accorded prestige, there tend to be many literalist translations from it" (Pym, 2006, p. 10). Applying this principle to names translation would imply that the prestige of a language at some point determines translation strategies that result in a strong mark of that language over the name form in the target language.

Factors influencing the foreign names adaptation into pre-modern Romanian
At the end of the eighteenth century and the beginning of the next, under the influence of the Western Enlightenment, an extensive process of secularization of the written culture and modernization of the language began in the Romanian Principalities, mainly through translations from various Western languages. This "transition" between old and modern literary Romanian (Gheție, 1982, p. 65) was called the "premodern era" (Piru, 1970, p. 5). This modernization was due to the multiculturalism within the Romanian Principalities at the time, a result of the contact with the neighbouring empires, the Habsburg Empire, the Russian Empire and especially the Ottoman Empire (Corbea-Hoișie & Dima, 2014, p. 8-11; see also Ursu & Ursu, 2004, p. 10-14). In this period, the multiculturalism impacts translation on several levels: a) the level of the translator's formation; b) the level of the languages coming into contact in translation and consequently the level of the linguistic and cultural systems between which meaning and form "are negotiated" (in the specific case of names); c) the level of the dominant influences in the translator's everyday life. Most translations produced at that time target original texts written in Western languages which were accessed through a third language, usually through Greek (see the typology proposed by Dima & Dima, 2016, p. 12-13). Therefore, while translation involves a negotiation between two cultures and their languages, things are far more complicated in the case of pre-modern Romanian translation, since they are often "second-hand translations", "translations of translations" (Aixela, 1996, p. 52). Hence, in the translations we are analysing, the equation does not involve only two languages-the language of the source text and that of the target text-it involves also the languages known, spoken by the translator or the culture languages used on his territory of origin. Faced with a graphic sequence that is new to him (especially since most names are also exonyms in their source language), the translator does not follow the orthographic conventions of the translated text language but relates them to a third language (cf. "assimilazione indiretta", Schweickard, 1992, p. 127). This third language is often the dominant culture language in the translator's region of origin.
In our understanding, the culture language is that language that carries cultural content, and not written language or literary language: "O chestiune ce trebuie avută în vedere atunci cînd ne ocupăm de modernizarea limbii române literare este aceea a înrîuririi exercitate în cursul timpului de unele limbi de cultură, dominante într-o epocă sau alta" [One of the issues that should be considered when speaking about the modernization of literary Romanian is the influence that certain culture languages, dominant at one point in history, had upon it] (ilrlev, p. 41); "alfabetul chirilic românesc este, cu foarte puține deosebiri, alfabetul limbii slavone care a funcționat ca limbă de cultură (a bisericii, a cancelariei domnești etc.) în arealul ortodox dominat de limbile slave sudice sau răsăritene, într-un mod perfect asemănător și simetric cu rolul jucat de limba latină și de alfabetul latin în țările catolice din apusul, centrul și nordul Europei" [The Romanian Cyrillic alphabet is, with very few exceptions, the alphabet of the Slavonic language that functioned as culture language (of the church and the princely chancery) in the Orthodox territory dominated by the Southern or Eastern Slavonic languages in the very same manner in which Latin and the Latin alphabet were dominant in the Catholic countries in the Western, Central and Northern parts of Europe] (Boerescu, 2014, p. 104).
During the transition between the old and modern Romanian, Greek functioned as the culture language in Moldavia and Wallachia. Gáldi (1939, p. 127-128) speaks about the Romanian-Greek (i.e. Neo-Greek) "bilingualism" that was specific to the cultivated people. Moreover, Arvinte (2006, p. 97) remarked that bilingualism was specific only to the dominant class "to which most of the scholars of the time also belonged", mostly since the Greeks "played a significant part in the religious and cultural life of the Romanian Principalities" (Arvinte, 2006, p. 102). Latin and German, which were languages of administration in the Habsburg Empire, coexisted in Transylvania, and the educated people spoke them. Nevertheless, Ivănescu (2000, p. 631) remarks that in the pre-modern period, up to 1830, literary Romanian was influenced more by Greek, Russian and German than by Latin and the Neo-Latin languages: "ea avea un caracter vădit oriental sau germano-oriental, și anume: grecesc, rusesc și turcesc în Principate, german și latino-maghiar peste munți" [it had an obvious Eastern or Eastern-Germanic character, namely: Greek, Russian and Turkish in the Principalities, German and Latin-Hungarian across the mountains]. Therefore, some neologisms of Romance origin mediated by these languages "au căpătat nu numai un aspect fonetic grec, rusesc sau germano-maghiar, dar și sufixe care nu se găseau în limba de origine și n-ar fi avut rost să apară în românește" [acquired not only a Greek, Russian or German-Hungarian phonetic shape, but also suffixes that missed in the source language and should not have appeared in Romanian] (Ivănescu, 2000, p. 638).
As far as the names from roname 1 are concerned, the culture languages (Latin, German, and especially Greek) acted as an intermediary between the source text language and Romanian, imposing pronunciations, providing solutions for the interpretation of some spellings or even forms that some names had at the time. The corpus contains texts 2 translated from Greek, German, French, Italian and Russian. In some instances, translators used intermediate translations. Cat.rom. is such a translation: originally written in Italian, the work-a synthesis of English and German authors through French versions (Camară, 2017, p. 28)-was initially translated into Greek, and from Greek into Romanian. Following the translation strategies described in Gînsac et al. (2017), we consider two types of situations: those in which Greek is also the language of the original translation, to trace its impact on names adaptation into Romanian, and those in which culture languages mediate the linguistic negotiation, without being involved as part (source language -target language) in translation. Some translators opt for transliteration as translation strategy, but this leads to forms that do not embody the pronunciation they have in the source language (3a); this practice is combined in some texts (3b) with the transcription of the Greek pronunciation (γγ -ng /ng/), resulting in hybrid forms (γγ -ngg /ngg/):  The trend was, therefore, excluding spirantization and following the Western Latin model. Exceptions refer mostly to the realities belonging to the Greek or Western cultures, respectively names that had entered the Romanian language earlier, through the Greek-Slavonic path. (6) show that translators usually adopt either the version already existing in Romanian or the one received through the Greek language (as shown by phonetic traits like av for au, h for ch, nd for nt, etc.) even when they meet names with well-known referents within the texts translated from Latin-scripted sources; foreign family names are usually adapted through either transliteration or the transcription of the pronunciation from the translated source:
As for the adaptation of place names, although the translators probably come across some of these forms for the first time, they choose to interpret them not according to the orthographic norms of its Frenchlanguage source, but according to a better-known language, either Latin or Greek; therefore, Pichincha 8 (Dor.fr. 279) is adapted as pixínxa (Dor.rom. II, 12 v ); Paucartambo 9 (Dor.fr. 320) becomes pa v karñámbΣ (Dor.rom. II, 43 r ); Salente (Flo.fr. II, 108, 114) is adapted as Salándïei (Flo.rom. II, 80), but Salánƒïå (II, 85); Quito 10 (Dor.fr. 280), as kfî' ñΣ (Dor.rom. II, 13 r ), etc. The confrontation between the source text model and another cultural-linguistic model is reflected within the same text. Only the influence of the translator's culture could explain the situation from Within translations with a German source, when transcribing names belonging to the ancient culture, translators reproduce the late Latin pronunciation, also adopted within the German schools. This practice was extended to the Western culture names, resembling the principle discussed in the case of the Greek influence. When coming across a new form, the Mil.rom. translator interprets it according to his linguistic knowledge (7a); some forms alternate with the local ones, as in the case of Țípria -Chíprul. Moreover, the translator, who knew both German and Latin, interferes in translation and explicitly notes that a particular name can have different pronunciations (7b):

3.4.
Throughout the pre-modern stage of Romanian, the stress pattern of foreign names tends to display variations from one text to the other or even within the same text. Considering the stressing of country names ending in -(i)ia, Arvinte (2008, p. 99-113) has shown that both the Latin and the Greek stressing 8 The name of a province in Ecuador. 9 Town in Peru. 10 Town in Ecuador. 11 On the adaptation of Greek-Latin names into Romanian, see Costa (1958) and Creția (1958). 12 Written in Latin alphabeth.
patterns applied to these names can be traced back to old Romanian and that using a particular pattern depended upon the cultural background of each author or translator. He also adds that in the pre-modern period, despite the strong influence of the Greek culture upon the Romanian Principalities, the Latin pattern prevailed. The grouping of pre-modern Romanian translations into two categories, according to the source language, showed that the Greek stress pattern does not necessarily prevail in the texts translated from Greek. In Dom.rom., the Latin pattern and the Greek pattern alternate, for instance: The Latin pattern of stressing is exclusive in Buf.rom., Cam.rom., Mil.rom. and Rum.rom., even Arvinte (2008, p. 110-119) regarding the prevalence of the Latin stress pattern within the pre-modern Romanian texts. However, we should point out that this fact should not necessarily be attributed to the influence of the Transylvanian School (Arvinte, 2008, p. 118), since the Latin pattern was also dominant in the texts translated in Moldavia.

Conclusions
In the pre-modern stage of Romanian, translators were influenced by the culture languages of their time. They did not reproduce by transcription the pronunciation of the names in translation but substituted them with a variant that they perceived as familiar. This version, as phonetics indicates, was received through either Greek or Latin. When transcribing "exotic" foreign names (i.e. remote from the European geographical space or probably not translated into Romanian before), which, given their novelty, did not have a Romanian equivalent, translators did not reproduce their pronunciation from the source language. Instead, they transcribed them according to the pronunciation that their graphic form would have had in another language, usually Greek. Given the lack of criteria, foreign names adapted following the source text and those imposed by the prestige of the culture languages often alternated.