La Septante en tant que lieu de contact linguistique : quelques réflexions concernant la production et l’interprétation de traductions anciennes

Abstract

According to recent research in translation studies and contact linguistics, written translation constitutes a form of language contact analogous to spoken bilingualism. In a multilingual society, both situations often draw on the same types of constraints and cognitive processes. Consequently, translations such as those found in the Septuagint represent a site of language contact in which the influence of one language on another can rarely be avoided. Contact linguistics can therefore shed light on certain aspects of the debate concerning the influence of Hebrew on the Greek of the Septuagint. To this end, this study examines: 1) the types of linguistic influence typically found in bilingual productions and their parallels in the Septuagint; 2) the consequences of this influence on questions of linguistic register and literary genre; and, 3) the interpretation of linguistic innovations produced under the influence of the source language. In this context, questions arise as to how these linguistic innovations would have been understood, and by whom, as well as the problem of translating the Greek text into modern languages: should these expressions be rendered according to the conventional meaning of each of their Greek components, or according to the (new?) meaning they may acquire in context? That some ancient authors document such interpretive challenges in their reading of the Septuagint—challenges that are sometimes mitigated when these readers are proficient in a Semitic language—suggests that bilingualism is not only a factor in the production of these texts, but also in their interpretation.