Edición y traducción del texto ḥassāní manuscrito de la primera constitución mauritana

Abstract

The purpose of this paper is to present and discuss the manuscript that contains the full text of Mauritania‟s first constitution translated from French to Ḥassāniyya in 1959. The manuscript is one of the first dialectal Ḥassāniyya texts to be preserved in wri- ting. As a legal text, the translation from French to Ḥassāniyya posed a considerable cha- llenge but was possible with the use of the traditional Ḥassāni lexicon. The editing of the manuscript text followed the usual methodology, taking into account that the text is dialec- tal and for this reason the restitution must follow the grammar rules of Ḥassāniyya. Given this circumstance, the editing process entailed transcribing the manuscript in its original dialectal version, which reflects the linguistic features of the Ḥassāniyya dialect. The text, in addition to the value of its legal content, constitutes one of the first texts written in this dialect and can be considered a successful attempt to strengthen a dialect writing system.