Néologismes sémantiques, xénismes et adaptations dans le discours encyclopédique de la Bible Historiale

This article presents a problem of medieval French traductology applied to Bible translations from Latin to the vernacular. The French translator tries to avoid the loss of information due to the supposed weakness of vernacular idioms, and hits on the idea of proving his fidelity to the original sacred text. The comparison between Latin and vernacular shows (1) alteration of the original dictum close to semantic neology; (2) new senses of imported means from the classical languages; (3) rewriting of the original text revealing the gap existing between the horizon of expectations of the ancient text and its translation.