EMOTIONAL EXPRESSIONS IN SOFRONIY VRACHANSKI’S STYLE IN THE TRANSLATION OF “SYSTEM AND MUHAMMADAN RELIGION“

The paper will investigate the style of the Bulgarian bishop Sofroniy Vrachanski (1739-1813) who translated from Russian to Bulgarian a religious treatise on the Muslim religion, called “The Book called System or Structure of Muhammadan Religion”. It originally belonged to Dimitrie Cantemir, a Moldavian prince and an advisor of the Russian king Peter the Great. Upon the tsar’s request he published the work in 1722 and later, in 1805 it was translated into Bulgarian by Sofroniy Vrachanski as “System and Muhammadan Religion”. This Bulgarian translation exhibits certain features of Sofroniy Vrachanski’s style. These include his usage of a “simple and short Bulgarian language” that is close to the comprehension of his potential readers. There are also certain emotional expressions in accordance with the general polemic stance of the whole translation. This study explores the nature of these emotional expressions in regard to anger. It applies some classical definitions of this primary emotion and regards its appearance in the text as part of Sofroniy Vrachanski’s original contributions in the adaptation of the work. The study investigates also some lexical and pragmatic aspects of expressive speech acts that evoke anger. Moreover, it employs the concept of the emotives as speech acts which have the discursive effect as stimuli for provoking anger.