In some places, it is worse than just poverty of translation: whole phrases are missed out. For example, the words "sanctum sacrificium, immaculatam hostiam" at the end of the the "Supra quae" are currently missing. Here are the texts for comparison:
Latin textThe new text of this prayer brings to mind another important point. Some people made fun of the text because you might think of "serene and kindly gays" (snigger snigger). Actually, I don't think it will occur to the average Catholic to think about homosexuals at this point - only those who are particularly preoccupied with the matter. A similar lame argument was made in the seventies against translating the "Beati qui ad cenam agni vocati sunt" as "Blessed are those who are called to the supper of the lamb." People would think of lamb suppers, you see, hahaha. The new ICEL has shown how it ought to have been translated if that was really the problem (it wasn't): "Blessed are those called to the banquet of the Lamb."
Supra quae propitio ac sereno vultu respicere digneris; et accepta habere, sicuti accepta habere dignatus es munera pueri tui justi Abel, et sacrificium patriarchae nostri Abrahae, et quod tibi obtulit summus sacerdos tuus Melchisedech, sanctum sacrificium, immaculatam hostiam.
Old ICEL
Look with favor on these offerings and accept them as once you accepted the gifts of your servant Abel, the sacrifice of Abraham, our father in faith, and the bread and wine offered by your priest Melchizedek.
New ICEL
Be pleased to look upon them, with a serene and kindly gaze, and to accept them as you were pleased to accept the gifts of your just servant Abel, the sacrifice of Abraham, our father in faith, and the offering of your high priest Melchizedek, a holy sacrifice, a spotless victim.
There is one example of poverty in the old ICEL which I have quoted before. I always found it a useful illustration when anyone tried to say that the translation wasn't really that bad. Here are the texts for comparison:
Latin textDoubtless there will be quibbles about some of the details. For example, I am not convinced that "Orate fratres ut meum ac vestrum sacrificium..." has to be translated "Pray, brothers and sisters, that the sacrifice which is mine and yours ..." rather than "Pray... that my sacrifice and yours..." Nevertheless it can be so translated without any question of inaccuracy or of theological fault. Fr McGuckian's excellent book "The Holy Sacrifice of the Mass" demonstrates that the question of exactly how the Mass is a sacrifice was controversial at the Council of Trent and has remained so ever since.
accipens et hunc praeclarum calicem in sanctas ac venerabiles manus suas
Old ICEL
he took the cup
New ICEL
he took this precious chalice into his holy and venerable hands,
18 comments:
Reading the new translation brought about ''goosepimples''.Maybe it was the ''Holy Spirit''?
Alleluia.
Some interesting points:
Kyrie eleison is encouraged and offical (I wonder how many people will mutter about latin creeping in. -a lot more than mutter about Greek creeping in I suspect!)
Through Christ Our Lord,Amen. appears in various places in the Roman Canon - but the brackets have gone, as have the brackets around the longer lists of saints.
The collective sin becomes the individual sins in the Agnus Dei (but then everyone said sins anyway as it rolled off the tongue more easily)
The infamous "All" is still there (I hope CTS don't rush to the printers too quickly this time now we know it will be "many" courtesy Card Arinze). - How come when it changed from "All Men" to the PC "All", the Church was able to cope with it being changed overnight but with "All" to "Many" we have to wait until the books are reprinted?
"Dew" has survived the wrath of trautman.
On a negative side am I the only one who thinks "And with thy spirit" rolls more easily off the tongue than "and with your spirit" which puts connotations of a person with a pet spirit perched on his shoulder like Bluebeards Parrot in my mind...
And in the offertory we still have "it will become ***for us*** the bread of life"
I would like to have seen for us go. It will become the bread of life full stop. Adding "for us" seems a bit cramnerian to me but to be fair I'm not sure what the original Latin says as there isn't an accurate translation in a pre '62 missal to compare this bit with :-)
One Question: Are the various collects secrets etc. also to be revised (which would have the unfortunate effect of making Fr Zs blog redundant unless the same person does it who translated Sacramentum Caritatus....)
Now, what we need is a few quotes from the psalms in vairous places (eg "I will go to the altar of od, The God who giveth joy to my youth) and the radical step of introducing an extra alternative offertory prayer (I think you can guess that I have one in mind) and we will nearly be there :-)
I thought that it had been decided that 'pro multis' was no longer to be translated 'for all'? Evidently not, although as you point out this is not necessarily the final text. I am not one of those for whom this is a shibboleth of sorts, perhaps I should add, but I am none the less disappointed.
Pardon my waste of your time; I finally got around to actually clicking through to V.A. and read Fr Finnegan's subsequent post.... Happy Easter!
Paul - this is not an official text and the CTS are not going to print from this.
The "it will become for us" is a translation of "ex quo nobis fiet". It can, of course be read in two ways: either "as far as we are concerned, it will become " which is theologically unsound, or "it will become for our benefit" which is fine. In this case, it is the Latin that is ambiguous - the English merely reproduces the ambiguity,
There is no ambiguity at all if the texts are understood in terms of Catholic teaching. So I would have preferred "for our benefit" which would have been a reasonable translation of the Latin.
When are we going to be deemed adult enough to be allowed to revert to addressing God as "Thou"? The "simple faithfull" are more than happy with the Our Father and Hail Mary, and the favourite hymn in the English-speaking world must be "The Lord's my shepherd" - all full of Thees, Thous and Thines. They trip off the tongue so naturally, nobody in their right minds deems them archaic.
I have always found the "you" over familiar, rather like being called by one's first name by nurses or tele-salesmen. In this topsy turvy world where the government has designated a minister for "respect", we are supposed to feel comfortable about speaking to God without due reverence and awe. In these "democratic" times we appear to have deemed surplus to requirements the Seventh Gift of the Holy Ghost.
The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom. A good understanding to all that do it: his praise continueth for ever and ever.
In the midst of joy at so many good things, I confess to one or two twinges of regret where I felt that the old ICEL had a better ring to it. But it is a matter for delight and rejoicing that they've put the credo back into the Credo. And in the case of the eucharistic prayers, it's a transformation (I could make a theological joke here, but I won't)!
I note, too, with interest that there's one place where the old ICEL actually decorates the Latin, and that has been preserved:
Laus tibi, Christe!
I presume that this will not be published and in use by the 1st Sunday of Advent this year?.
fr paul harrison
This is wonderful. I have particularly noticed similar phraseology with the Anglican 2004 "Order for Holy Eucharist".
Altogether, I think the new translation is far more "English" than the old one. It's good stuff!
I especially like "begotten, not made, consubstantial with the Father"...
I agree with Londiniensis.
I hope the next ICEL document will return the thous.
I recently observed Arthur Roach celebrating Mass over Easter (one of the 'Big Cheeses' in this translation) and he disappears into his own World when celebrating Mass. He treats the current impoverished text as a meditation. It's quite a bizarre spectacle and curiously unedifying. It highlights the point of failure of the dialogue Mass per se in so much as it isn't a dialogue. It's simply the laity interrupting the celebrant every few minutes with responses that become tedious i.e. the laity (unlike the celebrant) do not have enough "dialogue" to make the experience remotely interesting. I say that the priest should face East (I don't want to look at a priest's face when I am interrupting him every few moments) and let him go into his own World if he desires. I suggest that laity get on with their own private devotions and on that point JPII's lumnious mysteries seem especially suited for the purpose.
By the way,can we stop calling the Canon of the Mass the "Eucharistic" prayer? Similarly, Holy Communion should be used instead of Eucharist.
I suspect that over time people will start to use thy by default and in much the same way that most people actually already say "sins of the world" in the Agnus Dei and this might lead to a subsequent minor revision to replace you with thy. (after all its already in the Lords Prayer)
However overall I suspect this translation would have got an impramatur from those of times past who gave impramaturs and nihil obstats to the pre 1962 missal translations.
One thing that IS undoubtably an improvement on any of the pre 1962 missals is that there is one single translation and it does not change from missal to missal. I suspect had we still got the tridentine mass as normative we would have had modern missals with all sorts of exotic translations.
Anon (commenting on Bishop Roche) - not sure you are being entirely fair here. The texts that are prayers addressed to God should indeed be said in a meditative way, it seems to me. The celebrant ought to make a difference between addressing the people and addressing God.
I entirely agree with you about facing Eastward, though.
As I posted on Valle Adurni (before he went on his much deserved hols):
It's a vast improvement and much better than we might have hoped for - let's hope it is given the recognitio.
Only two concerns: firstly, the omission of 'men' or 'mankind' in the phrase 'for us and for our salvation'. I realise this is a sop to the feminsit movement, but it seems to me that 'us' could be restrictively interpreted as the community present there and then, rather than the whole of mankind. A possibility might have been to use 'makind' parenthetically eg "for us, mankind, and for our salvation" - though this alters the grammar of the latin, it preserves the sense.
Secondly - the Agnus Dei. I had hoped the new version would restore the translation of the latin: "Lamb of God, who takes away...." rather than retain the interrogative, which puts the English into the vocative case and tells God what He already knows, rather than the nominative qualification of the latin.
But these are minor when compared with what we've got now.
I'm really struggling to understand how 'For us and for our salvation...' can be described as a faithful rendering of 'Propter nos homines et propter nostram salutem...'.
I thought Liturgicam Authenticam abolished 'inclusive' nonsense years ago.
Looking more closely, it's not clear to me how 'Praise to you, Lord Jesus Christ' can be a translation of 'Laus tibi, Christe' - 'Domine Iesu' does not seem to be in the latin.
Or is this, like the mis-translation of the Agnus Dei, a nod towards those who only wanted change where it was absolutely needed? Never mind what Liturgicam Authenicam asked for.
I'm with the others on propter nos homines. Very much so.
Oh well, perhaps we should be glad that there will always be an incentive to say Mass in Latin!
Fr Rosmini (a progressive in these matters if ever there was one) was against translations of the Mass because lanaguage was always evolving unlike Latin. In other words a dead language is ideal for worshipping God.
It's worth pointing out also that the Lord had no problem in worshipping in a foreign language and evinced no interest in translating Hebrew into Aramaic in his visits to the Temple. He had more important things to worry about.
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