Mediating culture through language. Contact-induced phenomena in the early translations of the Gospels

The paper aims to show how translation can transfer certain culture-specifi c
concepts into a different culture, possibly modifying it. It concentrates on the
translation of the Greek preposition ep í into Latin, Gothic and Old Church
Slavonic in Luke’s Gospel. We argue that, to various extents, translators incorporated
results of theological discussion into their language (obviously, this is most
clear for Latin, where constructions such as confi do in ‘trust in’ and fl eo super
‘cry over’ were created, that did not exist in Classical Latin and still survive in the
Romance languages). Through carefull analysis of the various translations found,
we show that even in Late Antiquity and Early Middle Ages cultural contact was a
privileged vehicle for linguistic contact.