Notarial Formulations from Latin to Romance in the 13th Century: On the Role of Translation in the Historical Phrase

Abstract

This paper analyzes the legal formulae in the language of two extensive medieval notarial documents. The first text, dating from 1210, was written in Latin, while the other, from 1253, is a translation of the earlier document in the Romance language of the time, following the command of Alfonso X to “translate into Romance... letters written in Latin... so that all women and men may understand them”. This allows for a direct comparison of the legal expressions in the two documents and thus for a study that sheds light on the origins of a considerable number of legal constructions and their transfer from Latin to Romance. While situated within the framework of Philology, the analysis also takes into account the contributions of other, more recent, approaches to the study of phraseology, such as that of Construction Grammar, also allowing for an appraisal of the capacity and technique displayed by the scribes of that period to manage two different registers, notarial Latin and Romance, throughout the process of translation.