Славянският Закон Градски в съвременен български превод: проблеми и подходи
The Slavonic Zakon Gradskiy in Modern Bulgarian Translation: Problems and Approaches

Summary/Abstract: The article discusses some philological challenges in the translation of the Procheiros nomos (872–879) into modern Bulgarian, its place and role in the topical research field of translating Byzantine and Slavonic medieval texts. The Byzantine legal code has never been entirely translated in Bulgaria for juridical or philological purposes. The research regarding its Slavonic reception could be conducted on the base of the earliest South Slavonic copy preserved in the 55th chapter of the Ilovitsa kormchaya from 1262. The observations presented are based on the personal analysis of the original text of the full Prochiron of 40 titles from the Ilovitsa copy. The article demonstrates the terminological richness of the source, not only as regards the predominant subjects of civil, family and criminal law but also some “hidden thematic fields”. It illustrates the principles of the translation by giving examples from two different groups: the first one exemplifies a hidden area and is represented by several regulations from the sea trade in the Procheiros nomos (title 17, 19) – hiring a ship to carry goods, responsibility of the captain, the pilot and the freighter; the second concerns the terminology of the Roman-Byzantine law and reveals how the Slavonic translators rendered the term ἐμφυτεύσις, being the object of the 15th title. Both are presented in Slavonic original and in Modern Bulgarian. The article considers translating as a part of the modern scholarly paradigm in the digital era, defending the necessity of making a translation with the purpose of revealing the Slavonic reception of the Byzantine legal code. It states that the translation will be satisfying since the text is put in a complex network of dependence on the Greek original, the Old Slavonic interpretation, the existing English translation by E. H. Freshfield from 1928, and other translated fragments in different languages. In addition encyclopedic and linguistic dictionaries of classical and modern languages are consulted. The main goal is to introduce this unique monument of Byzantine imperial jurisprudence to a large and interdisciplinary scholarly public for further analysis.

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