[Re]domesticating the “History of Moldavia” by J.A. Gebhardi in the translation of Ioan Nemișescu. Translation practices at the beginning of the 19th century
[Re]domesticating the “History of Moldavia” by J.A. Gebhardi in the translation of Ioan Nemișescu. Translation practices at the beginning of the 19th century

Summary/Abstract: The theory and practice of translation in the time of the Romanian Enlightenment (1770–1830) represents a productive field of analysis for the way in which texts, ideas and terminology travel in the European space. Using the concepts developed by Lawrence Venuti of “domestication” and “foreignization” of texts through translation, the paper aims to present a case study that highlights the way in which the translator, as an apparently invisible actor, brings before his public a fluent and natural discourse, scattered with foreignizing elements that draw the attention to the translation status of the target text. A universal history written by a German author for a German readership (Geschichte der Moldau by L.A. Gebhardi in 1788), translated into Romanian by Ioan Nemișescu as a scientific text of national history (Istoria Moldovii, 1808) represents a revealing example for a translation practice anchored in the social-cultural and linguistic reality of the target culture. The translation analysis of both texts illustrates the way in which the Romanian translator makes, deliberately or not, a series of choices of transposing the German text and terminology, choices that help provide to the Romanian readership a fluent text, which blends familiar elements with a foreign scientific perspective and a modern historiographic discourse.

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