Translating the words of a saint into French: challenges and difficulties

The article analyses the challenges and difficulties involved in translating from Romanian into French the words of a twentieth-century Romanian monk recently canonised by the Romanian Orthodox Church, Father Saint Cleopas (Ilie) of the monastery of Sihăstria (located in the department of Neamț). These words appear in the book dedicated to him in Romanian by Father Ioanichie Balan, a monk from the same monastic community, who knew him during his lifetime. The book in question is Viața Părintelui Cleopa, translated into French as Le Père Cléopas by the hieromonk Marc Alric, now His Grace Marc Nemțeanul, vicar bishop of the Romanian Orthodox Metropolis of Western and Southern Europe. The challenges and difficulties of translation lie in the orality of Father Cleopas’s words, as well as in the idiomaticity of some of the expressions used, the best-known of which was his emotional blessing to pilgrims who came to him for spiritual advice: ‘mânca-v-ar raiul să vă mănânce’.