The rendering of the Greek substantivized infinitive in the Slavic translation of the Euchologion of the Great Church

The paper investigates ways of translating the Greek substantivized infinitive in the Slavic translation of the Euchologion of the Great Church. The exact time and place of the translation has not been established, but in a number of linguistic features the text under study is similar to the corrected recensions produced in the fourteenth century under the direction of patriarch Euthymius of Turnovo and metropolitan Cyprian. Analysis of the ways of rendering the Greek infinitive constructions in the text of Euchologion indicate that the basic principle of translation is loan translation. Deviations from this principle are attested only in rare instances. Basically, deviations occur in recurring fragments of text, and are probably caused by the influence of the earlier tradition. Comparison of the data of the Euchologion and the Chudov New Testament indicates a tendency to eliminate variation and to fix certain models for the expression of certain grammatical meanings. The use of several calque constructions places the text of the Euchologion of the Great Church among a variety of corrected recensions of the fourteenth century: Athonian, Bulgarian and Russian. The greatest similarity of linguistic means used in the translation is observed in the language of the Euchologion of the Great Church and in the Mount-Ath os translations of The Ladder of Divine Ascent and of the Corpus Areopagiticum.