The Byzantine legal standard transposition strategies into the Romanian regulatory texts of the 17th century

Unlike the Canon law texts available in the Romanian principalities – Moldavia and Wallachia – falling under the Slavic influence, the first legal acts which are subscribed to the secular law and which appear in 1646 [“Carte Românească de Învățătură” (en. Romanian Book of Learning) or “Pravila lui Vasile Lupu” (en. Vasile Lupu’s Code of Laws)] and in 1652 [“Îndreptarea legii” (en. The Law’s Rectification) or Pravila lui Matei Basarab (en. Matei Basarab’s Code of Laws)] fall under the Greek-Byzantine influence. The present article aims to provide some information regarding the translation mechanisms applied by the Moldavian and Wallachian scholars of the 17th century who aimed at transposing the Byzantine Legal Standard to the everyday life of the two above mentioned Romanian principalities by means of fundamental procedures, such as “analysis (with the underlying meaning determination), transfer, restructuring, and testing” (Nida, 2004: 85) of the source message. The most precious information related to the translation process of those times is provided by the cases of untranslatability generated by the legal and terminological gap between the Receiver and the Transmitter. The identification and classification of these cases, but also the highlighting of the solutions the translator found to solve them, represent important steps in understanding the equivalenting process of two unequal legal systems that took place centuries ago in Eastern Europe, as illustrated by the case of the two Romanian principalities and the Greek-Byzantine one.