Liturgical Language: Concerns regarding the 2011 missal translation (original) (raw)
Related papers
The Fundamental Criterion of Liturgical Translation: Valde Utilis Apud Populum
Liturgiam Authenticam, the instruction on the use of vernacular languages in the publication of the books of the Roman liturgy, claims to be faithful to the intentions of the liturgical reform of Vatican II, especially to the intention of Sacrosanctum Concilium 36. From the time of the publication of Liturgiam Authenticam, the debates on the liturgical translation have become tangled in the argument of authority or procedural collaboration between Rome and the Bishops' Conference. The publication of the Apostolic Letter Magnum Principium in 2017 has solved this legal problem. This paper argues that the problem of implementing faithfully the intentions of the liturgical reform of the Vatican II regarding the use of vernacular in the liturgy cannot be simplified by implementing only the correct idea of collaboration between the authorities involved in the work of translation. Further, implementation of the correct understanding of the function of language in the work of liturgical translation is a serious challenge. For this reason, there are some important points to consider regarding Liturgiam Authenticam after the publication of Magnum Principium.
The theological controversies that arose within the Christian Church of Late Antiquity resulted in the convocation of several Ecumenical Councils, where bishops gathered from the whole Christian world to discuss matters of faith and Church politics. The Acts of these Councils include letters, documents relevant to the debates, and most interestingly the allegedly verbatim transcripts of the discussions held there. Bishops from both the Latin and Greek speaking world attended the Councils: the Western representatives normally spoke in Latin, the Eastern ones in Greek, with the mediation of interpreters. A crucial Council was held at Chalcedon in 451, where most participants spoke Greek and the Latin speakers were assisted by interpreters. The original proceedings of this assembly are lost, but we possess a later Greek version, where the Latin utterances have been suppressed, and a Latin version, which is a translation of the original Greek version and occasionally preserves original Latin utterances. Inasmuch as most of the Acts profess to be verbatim transcriptions of actual debates, this extremely long text represents the richest evidence for the spoken Greek and Latin of more or less educated men in antiquity, although the processes of editing and translation must have obscured to some extent the features of spoken language. My research question, in focusing on the Acts of the Council of Chalcedon, is manifold: first, I shall attempt to pinpoint traces of spoken Latin as they emerge from the few original Latin utterances preserved and the sometimes over-literal Greek translations and Latin re-translations; second, I shall investigate the very phenomena of translation and re-translation, comparing the Greek and the Latin version where both are available; related to this, I shall try to work out if and to what extent Greek and Latin bureaucratic prose have influenced each other in this text. The Acts of the Council of Chalcedon, just like those of the other Ecumenical Councils, have been so far ignored by linguists. A few remarks on the language and the translations are to be found in an article of the editor of the Acts, Eduard Schwartz (1933), and in the introduction to the recent English translation by Price and Gaddis (2005). In addressing issues of spoken language, I follow the syntax- and discourse-based approach to spontaneous spoken language of Miller and Weinert (1998). As for linguistic aspects of translation, I mainly rely on the contrastive linguistic and stylistic approach of Vinay and Darbelnet (1995). References: Miller, J. and Weinert, R. (1998), Spontaneous Spoken Language. Syntax and Discourse (Oxford). Price, R. and Gaddis, M. (2005), The Acts of the Council of Chalcedon (Liverpool). Schwartz, E. (1933), ‘Zweisprachigkeit in den Konzilsakten’, Philologus 88: 245-53. Vinay, J.-P. and Darbelnet, J. (1995), Comparative Stylistics of French and English: A Methodology for Translation, trans. by J.C. Sager and M.-J. Hamel (Amsterdam and Philadelphia).
On the translatability of liturgical texts: A significal perspective
Semiotica, 2013
The contribution of the thinking of Welby to Greek intra-linguistic translation is the theoretical support of her thought for the translation of liturgical texts from Greek to Modern Greek. Intra-linguistic translations of liturgical texts will function as a positive factor for the missionary work of the Church inside Greece and the translations will help priests and chanters with their own linguistic and prosodic contribution during the liturgical acts, an issue that will affect, dialectically, the participant of the congregation during the reception of the performance of liturgical texts. In the quest for significance in the intralinguistic translation of liturgical texts, the identification of unity and distinction, unity and difference, convergences and divergences, common elements and specificity between Greek and Modern Greek, favors the clarification of concepts and terminology, and, more generally, the acquisition of liturgical linguistic and extra-linguistic competence. Furthermore, translating concepts and terminology from one historic area of the Greek language to another according to a significal perspective as is described in Petrilli (2007; cf. 1990, 2009), is a meta-disciplinary and trans-disciplinary linguistic act that allows different wording choices in Modern Greek liturgical texts and makes the subsystem of Greek liturgical language remain open and de-totalized, by enhancing the possibility of the participants in the Greek Liturgy to identify new links and connections in extra-linguistic reality of the performance of any ceremony and new correspondences, and therefore new results in the reception of the performance.
Blessings and Curses in the Bible, 2019
There are various reactions ensuing from the current version of the English Roman Missal as an officially approved rite for the Eucharistic celebration in the Roman Catholic Church. Some have consistently argued that the present version, rather than enriching the Catholic liturgical spirituality, has obscured the objective of the applauded Second Vatican Council liturgical reforms.' This is a matter of concern because of the uniqueness of the Mass in the life of the Church (LG 11). Consequently, any discussion linked with the Mass is a serious and delicate affair, never taken for granted. While the advocates for a return to the earlier version may have some points to drive home, this paper sees also some positive contributions of the new version of the Roman Missal.
In the Christian literature of the Latin West there was a distinct and widespread type of writing that interpreted the liturgy in its broadest sense (sometimes including the space where the liturgy was celebrated) using contemporary methods of scriptural exegesis. It fell from favor in the early modern period, but in recent decades there has been a small revival of interest among scholars in a variety of disciplines. This article aims to assist this new interest by defining the genre of "liturgical interpretation" more closely through attention to its origins, method, history, and theoretical underpinnings. Given the genre's important place in medieval and early modern culture, students of these periods should have an understanding of liturgical interpretation; but it is even possible that the genre's symbolic and flexible mode of thinking about public worship may be able to contribute to future liturgical theologies. 1
Dogmatic Equivalence: A Key to Liturgical Translation?
Ìноземна філологія, 2022
The article presents the fundamentals of liturgical translation in search for the core of this partial translation theory. Liturgical texts are known to combine three dimensions of religious discourse: semantics (especially dogmatic exegesis), poetics (the specifi c poetics of original Hebrew and Greek texts) and performability (covering particular features of aural perception). The history of investigating liturgical translation counts at least a century. Exactly 100 years ago, Ukrainian researcher Ivan Ohiyenko published a seminal paper whose issues and ideas were repeated and reverberated in most further studies which directly and specifi cally dealt with biblical phrasing cited in the Liturgy, doctrinal correctness and ideological infl uences, matters of interpretative and temporal retranslations, the problem of the correlation between the poetics of the original languages and that of the target language, relevant sound and music qualities of the text. Linguistic patterns and theological hermeneutics shape a special type of equivalence which is applicable to texts for liturgical use-dogmatic equivalence, which can be viewed from four perspectives: terminological essence; lexical or cultural ortheological interpretation; grammatical meaningfulness; phonetic means for theological interpretation and liturgical performability. It is a diffi cult task to keep a proper balance between the attitude of linguists (who concentrate on relations between a sacred text and a reading community) and that of theologians (who stress on the authoritative status of a sacred text although overlook cultural historicity).Thus, dogmatic equivalence is a structural phenomenon which can be divided into diff erent levels, components or dimensions. The interconnection of translation problems will have to deploy the approbated solutions from sci-tech, poetry and literary translation. The revoiltinary principle which is to be acknowledged properly is that even liturgical translation can benefi t from linguistic experimenting.
The Neo-Vulgate as Official Liturgical Translation (full text)
Liturgy and Scripture: Proceedings of the Ninth Fota International Liturgical Conference, 2016, 2017
EDITOR 0 SMENOS SMENOS PUBLICATIONS smenosbooks@yahoo.co.uk www.smenospublications.com an Irish imprint of A catalogue record for this title is available from the British Library.