- The debate about the quality of the imminent new version of the liturgy in English has been waylaid by controversy about single words or phrases, such as 'consubstantial' and 'for many' and 'dewfall'. But the problem is more pervasive, affecting every part of the new texts. The tin ear of the translation team reflects a decline in linguistic culture in both church and society.
- In 1966 Irish people were given a beautiful literal translation of the Roman Canon. I am not sure how widely it was used. At that time the Irish were exceptionally attuned to good prose, as the staple of education in English was memorization, imitation, and emulation of classic passages in English prose (Addison, Lamb, de Quincey, Burke, Newman).
- The 2010 translators just do not have a clue about elegant sentence structure and musical rhythm — sentences should sing, should propel one forward, should have their depths and heights, their modulations linking one to the next, and what our translators have given us instead is take-it-or-leave-it clunky crudities, leaden, dispiriting, and dead.
- Or rather, the new translations are not English at all, and thus not deserving of criticism in terms of any pretense at being English. They are gobbledygook not composed by any human beings, but assembled by distracted bureaucrats following various prescriptions, inconsistently to boot.
- The operation is so weird that it might invite comparison with the composition of technical manuals, but cannot be considered a serious effort to produce a text bearing a relationship to the rhythms of human speech. And that such a text is designed precisely to be spoken, to be spoken in the name of a praying community, to be spoken to God! — is an irony that borders on the obscene and the blasphemous.
- Salus animarum suprema lex. The salvation of souls is the highest law (as canon law itself emphasizes). It will be our duty as bishops, priests, and laity not to use this dreck in our worship. What does not proceed from faith is sin. The conscious choice of mediocrity is sin.
One change in the liturgical translations that would really make my heart sing would be the restoration of 'thee' and 'thou'. I remember the first time I went to a TLM (High Mass in St. Audeon's in Dublin) they had those beautiful Una Voce missalettes in gorgeous Elizabethan English. I was enthralled by the beauty of the prose. In fact the translations in old hand missals are generally vastly superior to either the new or old ICEL.
I completely agree that the new translations are of poor literary merit. But I certainly don't accept that they're worse than the current translations. The 1966 Irish translation of the Roman Canon is much better than 1973 or 2010, although still vastly inferior to Dom Murray's 1956 translation: http://lxoa.files.wordpress.com/2011/01/canon.pdf
Perhaps we should just nick Coverdale. Modern man seems to be incapable of anything in the realm of beauty.
Posted by: shane | June 12, 2011 at 02:43 PM
Sorry, Dom Placid's version, at first glance, is hopeless -- all those "deigns". The 1966 version you sent was far better. The new translations were launched somewhere in Sydney today; all known responses from participants are negative, some violently so -- as expected. Interesting to see if any positive responses emerge.
For modern beauty, the French translations are quite good (a poet was involved, of course).
Posted by: Spirit of Vatican II | June 13, 2011 at 12:22 AM
Oh Fr O leary, you really need to move on. Its a done deal.
Posted by: Tiggy | June 17, 2011 at 04:06 AM
Shane,
How right thou art!
Posted by: Tiggy | June 17, 2011 at 04:10 AM
Tiggy, I doubt if Trinitarian heresy can be regarded as a "done deal" -- see the posting on that. Your failure to find any enthusiasm for the new translations on your recent trip to Ireland tells how far we are from "moving on" as you put it. I think people should refuse to budge, and that in effect they will -- but probably now in the time-honored way of passivity, apathy, and the continued quiet drifting of feet toward the exit. Sad, unutterably sad; the People of God deserved better.
Posted by: Spirit of Vatican II | June 17, 2011 at 03:41 PM
The people of God and God himself deserve better than the half baked English we have at the moment.ICEL was a Idisaster. I doubt as many people will walk as did when the 1970 s "Nu Church" stated evolving. Thankfully now halted i most places.
Posted by: Tiggy | June 17, 2011 at 09:39 PM
The Irish texts are being changed also, except this time they're being translated from the English rather than the Latin:
http://irishcatholics.proboards.com/index.cgi?action=display&board=catholics&thread=592&page=2#9277
Posted by: Beinidict Ó Niaidh
I think Father O'Leary, as much as I disagree with him, has a point. I got pretty afraid for the situation in the English Mass, when I saw this:
http://tuamarchdiocese.org/2011/05/irish-language-liturgy-committee-for-the-new-missal/
There is not one serious scholar of Modern Irish on this committee. There is only one member of this committee with extensive pastoral experience in the Gaeltacht areas - that is Bishop Brendan Kelly and he only represents one of the three major dialects of Irish. Bishop Boyce is a native Irish speaker from the Donegal Gaeltacht, but he has neither academic background nor working experience in the language. Archbishop Neary and Bishop Boyce have significant theological scholarship. This contrasts poorly to the committee who drafted the original Irish language Mass, who between them had significant background in Modern and Old Irish, Ancient Classics, Hebrew, Theology and other languages and who represented each of the seven main sub-dialects of Irish and indeed more (Rev Brendan Devlin, MA, DD, was a native speaker of Irish from the now almost dead Sperrin Mountain Gaeltacht in Co Tyrone).
BTW - the original Irish is much closer to the Latin proto-Mass than the English Mass is.
My point - if this is how the committee for the liturgy in Irish is constituted, how will it go with other languages.
Posted by: shane | June 17, 2011 at 11:32 PM