Преводът на Анастас Гранитски „За тръговско писмописание“ от 1858 г.: уводни бележки / Anastas Granitski’s Translation on Commercial Writing (1858): Introductory Notes

The paper deals with a part of Anastas Granitski’s 1858 translation of „Тръ¬говско рѫководство“ (A Trade Guide) by Konstantinos Melas, a work dedicated to commercial writing. A short excursion on the circumstances surrounding the translation of the educational encyclopedia is offered along with an overview of its contents. The part On Trade Letters, which according to Anastas Granitski is the “soul of trade”, is studied in detail. It describes eleven types of letters that were common and often used by merchants – therefore a reference to the instructions for compiling them in the manual was inevitable for the modern merchant from the second half of the 19th century. Moreover, since the Greek original was undoubtedly influenced by French models, the translation acted as a bridge between the most recent examples of business correspondence from the European Mediterranean and merchants from the Balkans. This predetermines the hypothesis that these letters could function as a norm in terms of spelling and language features, genre specifics and the means of administrative and legal expression, terminology and technical layout – a number of topics to be studied in future research. Keywords: Bulgarian National Revival; Anastas Granitski; translation; trade letters; business correspondence