Translation from Moldovan (Romanian)

ALBA Translation Agency does translation from Moldovan (Romanian) into Russian and from Russian into Romanian (Moldovan) of texts of a wide thematic scope. After Moldavia had declared its independence from the USSR, the demand for translations from Moldovan (Romanian) rose sharply. The most popular is translation from Moldovan of private papers with notarisation , including translation from Moldovan of a birth/marriage/certificate, certificate of good conduct, departure sheet, military record book, extract from a civil status certificate and translation of a Moldovan passport. Translation from Russian into Moldovan, as well as Moldovan interpreting, are less popular, but we are also ready to render you this service.

In fact, Moldovan and Romanian are one and the same language. The existence of the different names of this language, Moldovan and Romanian, can be explained rather by political than by linguistic factors. The Moldavan dialect is used to refer to the north-eastern variety of spoken Romanian spread within the territory of the former Principality of Moldavia (now split into the territory of Moldova and a part of the territory of Romania). The Moldovan variety is considered one of the five varieties of spoken Romanian, all five being written identically. Thus, there is no particular linguistic break at the Prut River, the border between Romania and Moldova, which is only a political frontier.

Romanian is now spoken by 24–28 million people, which mainly live in Romania and Moldova. Romanian is also an official language of the Autonomous Province of Vojvodina and one of the official languages of the European Union. Romanian is studied as a foreign language in countries where there are Romanian-speaking communities (Serbia, Bulgaria, Ukraine and Hungary). Since 1992, the Romanian Cultural Institute (http://www.icr.ro/) has organised summer camps for children to study Romanian. Altogether, there are Romanian language study centres in 38 countries of the world (including Germany, France, Italy and Holland).

Moldovan (Romanian) is based on the Latin alphabet. Before 1989, the two variants of the Cyrillic script had also been used: from 1940 to 1980, the Moldovan Cyrillic alphabet had been used, and before 1857, Romanian Cyrillic alphabet had been used. Now the Cyrillic script is used only in the Transdniestrian Republic.

History of Moldovan (Romanian)

The history of Romanian began with the conquest of the territory of modern Romania by Romans in 106. Since the new territory was rich in mineral resources (in particular, in silver and gold), it was quite thickly populated by the Romans, who brought Vulgar Latin there. Latin became a language of power and trade for a long time and the base for Proto-Romanian. In the 3rd century AD, under the pressure of the local people of Dacia and Gothic tribes, Romans went away from the territory of modern Romania and Moldova. Dacia was the first province left by Romans in AD 271. Whether the inhabitants of Romania and Moldova are descendants of Romans or of the tribes which have conquered them is still a debatable point.

Because of the geographical isolation, Romanian was the first of the Romance languages to start developing independently from Latin. Until the middle of the 18th century, it had almost not been influenced by other Romance languages. Most Romanian dialects were standardized into Proto-Romanian in 7–10th centuries, when the territory of Romania was under the rule of the Byzantine Empire. Beginning from the 10th century, Romanian (Moldovan) started being influenced by Slavic languages and, to some extent, of Greek, and later of Turkish and Hungarian.

After Bessarabia’s accession to Russia in 1812, Moldovan was recognised as the official language of the Bessarabian Province, where it was used along with Russian. Russian gradually spread more and more in the territory of Moldavia. In 1829, Russia abolished the autonomous status of Bessarabia and together with it the obligatory use of Moldovan in official speeches. Since that moment, all the regulations were published only in Russian and a seven-year transitional period was introduced, during which the regulations in Romanian continued in full force and effect. From 1871 to 1905, Russian was the only official language of that territory and language and cultural controversies ensued from that. In 1905–1906, the Bessarabian Zemstvos (district councils) asked several times to allow them to teach in their native language. At the same time, the first magazines and newspapers in Romanian appeared. In 1913, the Synod permitted the churches in Bessarabia to use Romanian in their liturgies.

Interesting facts about Moldovan (Romanian)

• According to the Constitution of Moldova, the official language of Moldova is Moldovan, and in its Declaration of Independence, it is Romanian. The 1989 Law “On languages’ functioning in the territory of Moldavian SSR” mentions “the Moldovan-Romanian language identity”. After the political wrangling over the name of the language, that issue became topical again, and in 2000, a group of Romanian linguists declared the use of the name “Moldavan” non-scientific. The attempt of the President of Moldova Mircea Snegur to introduce the official name “Romanian” was rejected by the Parliament of Moldova as a manifestation of “Romanian expansionism”. In 1476, a Polish chronicler wrote that the Moldavs and the Vlachs (inhabitants of the historic region in the south of Romania) spoke one and the same language.
• Romanian (Moldovan) resembles Latin more than many other Romance languages. Romanian has remained five cases (out of the seven Latin ones), the neuter gender and a morphology of formation of tenses which resembles the Latin one.
• In 2003, the Moldavan-Romanian Dictionary was published, which had been made by Vasile Stati, a former deputy. The Dictionary contained 19,000 words and 340 pages, and was published in an edition of 5,000 copies.
• According to the 2004 Population Census, 16.5 % of the population of Moldova (558,508 people) said their native language was Romanian, and 60 % that it was Moldavan.