DOI: 10.47743/jss-2025-71-4-4

Faculty of Law, "Alexandru Ioan Cuza" University of Iași.

Abstract: The paper emphasizes the challenges implied by the translation of literary texts that refer to legal matters. The field taken as reference is inheritance law. The author has selected a scene marked by bitter irony from the novel Eugénie Grandet by Honoré de Balzac. In this scene, Eugénie’s father, who is the symbol of greed, persuades his daughter to give up the inheritance she was entitled to after the death of her mother. The discrepancy between the two characters is shocking: on one hand, we discover an unscrupulous pater familias who pretends to have the best intentions; on the other hand, his naive daughter does not know the meaning of the legal matters referred to, does not ask for clarifications and deliberately gives up her part of the inheritance. The notary Cruchot is a mediator who tries unsuccessfully to explain to Eugénie the meaning of the legal concepts that were mentioned and to help her take informed decisions. Our analysis focuses on the way in which certain legal concepts related to inheritance law, explicitly or implicitly referred to in the source text, have been translated into English and Romanian. We take into consideration notions and phrases such as “régler une affaire”, “fortune indivise”, “usufruit”, “biens indivis”, “nue-propriété”, “se dépouiller”. Pecuniary matters are pervasive in the source text: for Grandet, life itself is, in fact, “business”. We notice that sometimes translators are hesitant: they do not know in depth the field of inheritance law or they do not want to shock the target audience by using precise and technical terminology and, therefore, they disguise the legal matters explicitly expressed in the source text, which changes the readers’ perception on the seriousness of the facts and on Grandet’s Machiavellian nature. Extratextual knowledge and constant research ensure faithful translation that preserves the meaning and the tone of the original text.

Keywords: Honoré de Balzac, Eugénie Grandet, inheritance law, legal terminology, literary translation.

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