Peregrinis verbis utendo: Dificultăți în traducerea lui Suetonius
Peregrinis verbis utendo: Difficulties in translating Suetonius

Summary/Abstract: Language plays an essential role in Suetonius' De vita Caesarum, being an integral part of the characterization of the emperors and their era. This fact is extremely significant in the presentation of the personality, habit, and culture of the first emperor. Suetonius quotes numerous times, both in Divus Augustus and in the biographies of other emperors, such as Tiberius or Claudius, words said or written by him, preserving, and transmitting the Greek words used by Augustus. The Greek language has an important role throughout the story, appearing also in the authorial voice narrating various episodes related to Octavian Augustus. Difficulties arise, however, in conveying this extremely personal prose style of Suetonius, more precisely, in translating the bilingualism attested by the original text into another language. The paper’s purpose is, therefore, to examine how are translated into Romanian the passages concerning Augustus in which Greek words, phrases or verses appear embedded in the Latin text. Two Romanian translations are considered: one by David Popescu and C. V. Georoc (published in 1958, reprinted in 2005), the other by Gheorghe Ceaușescu (published in 1998, reprinted in 2000). The analysis reveals how these situations are resolved by the translators and how, in many passages, the wordplay between Latin and Greek disappears, the richness and the individuality of the original work being lost in translation. The paper also proposes some possible solutions that would allow the transfer of the instances of code-switching between Latin and Greek in the Romanian translation, thus preserving the spirit of the original text.

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