The discursive role of adjectives in the translation of Metropolitan Anthony Bloom's religious texts

Book excerpt: The book examines the ways in which adjectives contribute to the realization of the various language functions in several of Metropolitan Anthony Bloom’s (1914–2003) spirituality works and transcribed talks, as well as in their Romanian translated versions. In particular, it aims at offering an application of the communication theory (cf. Jakobson 1960/1987, Kinneavy 1980) to Metropolitan Anthony’s contemporary religious discourse and an investigation of the underlying lexical-semantic and pragmatic relations carried out by the adjectival class in order for discourse aim to be achieved. It also seeks to reveal the role of adjectives in the process of translation from English into Romanian, more specifically in preserving the source text functions in the target language. To this end, the study engages in an analysis of the hierarchical communicative functions in the corpus, as well as of the role played by adjectives both in the realization and transfer of the respective language functions. The present book, which may be of equal interest to researchers in linguistics and to theologians, demonstrates not only the pivotal role of adjectives in fulfilling communicative purposes specific to religious communication, but also their cohesive discourse role in Metropolitan Anthony’s legacy. At the same time, it highlights the outstanding status of the adjectival class in establishing the functional-cognitive correspondence between the source text and the target text in translation.