"Working Memory" and Lexicographical Memory. French Orthodox Religious Discourse and the Role of Usage

The present study aims at approaching the way in which a translator's "working memory" (Kosma 2007) is grafted onto pre-existing specialized "library" competences, contributing to the enrichment of what we shall call lexicographical memory, in the process of creating a second revised and augmented edition of a Bilingual Dictionary of Orthodox Christian Terms, both Romanian-French and French-Romanian (Dumas, 2020) whose first edition was published ten years ago. This specific memory retrieves words from the common lexicon of the source (and target) language, transformed into specialized terms via their use in the discursive contexts of religious, Orthodox Christian, terms that we shall analyze in this article. Thanks to its permanent, formative evolution, in diachronic as well as in synchronic backgrounds, it activates, engenders, establishes and constructs the lexicographical memory we elaborate on in this research paper. At the same time, we shall define usage as a form of language memory being actualized at the level of discourse through the linguistic and terminological options of the authors and translators of spiritual, theological and liturgical texts pertaining to a religious Orthodox type of discourse, as we have named it elsewhere (Dumas, 2018).