Roma locuta est continues the job of comparing current with forthcoming translation, this time for the Collect (don’t you love how the word has been rescued?) for the Fourth Sunday of Advent.
CURRENT: Lord,
fill our hearts with your love,
and as you revealed to us by an angel
the coming of your Son as man,
so lead us through his suffering and death
to the glory of his resurrection,
FORTHCOMING Pour forth, we beseech you, O Lord,
your grace into our hearts,
that we, to whom the Incarnation of Christ your Son
was made known by the message of an Angel,
may by his Passion and Cross
be brought to the glory of his Resurrection.
Who knew that the concluding prayer of Angelus was there? See how the new translation stitches our Catholic lives back together again?
For an ICEL collect (and I too am glad that word is being used again), this is actually fairly decent: it actually says something and roughly follows the collect form. However, the new translation is incomparably superior.
Often when I hear a current ICEL collect, I feel like I have no idea what was just said. These new ones are something that people can COMPREHEND!
The corrected translation is magnificent. The lameduck ICEL sounds like something you'd hear on Sesame Street (my apologies to the little children who probably would like the corrected translation)
Sam: the prayer most people say at the end of the Rosary is "O God, whose only-begotten Son by his life, death and resurrection has purchased for us the rewards of eternal salvation, grant, we beseech thee that, meditating upon these mysteries of the most holy Rosary of the Blessed Virgin Mary, we may both imitate what they contain and obtain what they promise …"
That was the collect for the feast in the pre-Vatican II missal. It's now been changed to the collect from the Angelus (now also on the Fourth Sunday of Advent).
One little slip on the peel, however. There's no "his" before resurrection in the Latin. HIS passion and cross bring us to a share in the glory of THE resurrection. Just another small point. The HIS is one of those 10,000 last minute changes. And at least they got most of it right, right? What's 10,000 changes amongst friends?
Anon (2) (NB. Anon always seems so impersonal … names are always nice, thought this is just my humble opinion)
Well, I see your point, and let me say that if I were approaching the Latin for the first time, I would translate it the way you did, using "the" instead of "his" to modify "resurrection." However, placing the "his" there is not completely out of the question. Often in Latin pronouns are not repeated, just like articles are not explicitly written. In the line prior, we do find the word euis, meaning "his." It is only found as a modifier of "passion" not of "cross", yet we would not translate this as "his passion and the cross." Now, of course, the English lines up nicely here, so we don't have to make a decision. We can simply drop "his" and "the" and translate it as "his passion and cross", though in dropping it, the implicit choice is for "his".
I agree that the word resurrection, being found in the next phrase, is harder to defend (in using "his"), but it is not out of the question. Nevertheless, I agree with you … if I were to approach the Latin with no prior knowledge of this prayer, I would opt for "the".
The point here, though, is one of popular piety. This prayer (which is the point of the post) is from the Angelus, and the popular English version of it has long since used "his" in front of "resurrection." I think the translators were trying to be faithful to this (though that is only a guess). There is at least one other place I can think of where the Latin was not adhered to strictly, presumedly out of respect for popular piety … that is in the Pater Noster. The first time the word "heaven" occurs in the Pater, the Latin is "in caelis", which is actually plural. This is in contrast to the second occurrence, "in caelo", which is singular. The literal translation of the Latin is "Our Father, who art in the heavens." However, the new translation didn't touch the English version of the Pater, and prudently so. This prayer is so imbedded in the consciousness of the faithful (used even apart from the Mass), that changes are probably not wise.
I can only imagine that a similar decision was made in the case of the Angelus prayer.
Jake: I'm not the one who translated the prayer with a "the" instead of "his" – check out most of the pre-Vatican II hand missals and manuals of prayer.
The point I was making, surely not lost on all those who (like me, by the way) have complained about the current translation is best expressed in a quip that made the blogosphere rounds since the multiple Missal leaks. Q Does the new translation follow the norms set down by Liturgiam authenticam and the Ratio translationis? A. Yes, except when it doesn't.
And speaking of "approaching Latin for the first time" (meow, Jake!), I'd love to see your analysis of the Collect for feast of Saint Benedict, in which a committee fairly awash in Benedictines somehow managed to butcher the quote from the Holy Rule which forms a major part of the Collect (when the Gray Book got it exactly right) and apparently confused "dilitato" with "dilecto", turning the latter into a gerund by the way (just so you know I'm not approaching this for the first time!), so that Benedict's lovely expression "run with an expanded heart" becomes "hasten with a loving heart" – oh yes, curramus (run) becomes "hasten" – in order to further lose any echo of the Holy Rule.
But hey, at least we have a new translation. And it's kinda close. Well, closer than the old one, so we should quit complaining, I guess.
Begads, it's modern-language Book of Common Prayer. Collect for the Annunciation. Here it is for further comparison:
WE beseech thee, O Lord, pour thy grace into our hearts; that, as we have known the incarnation of thy Son Jesus Christ by the message of an angel, so by his cross and passion we may be brought unto the glory of his resurrection; through the same Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.
Incidentally, this is the collect Anglicans use for the rosary.
Anon:
I sincerely apologize if I was misunderstood. Please, please allow me to clarify. (This is what I hate about electronic communication … things are so often miscommunicated … and I take full responsibility for my vagueness.) I did not at all intend that YOU were approaching the Latin without knowledge of Latin … not at all. When I wrote "If I were approaching the Latin for the first time," I simply meant, "If I were approaching the Latin without any knowledge of existing translations … if I were approaching it without knowing, 'Hey, this is the Angelus prayer!'." It was not meant in any way as a critique of you or any others who, I fully admit, have more knowledge of the Latin language than I do. In fact, the intent of this was to agree with your assertion that "the" is better. I beg your forgiveness if this was not adequately communicated.
Your point about pre-Vatican II hand missals is well taken. Do you have any idea when the popular recitation changed the "the" to a "his" and why this may have occurred?
Anon@2:44 – yes, it's the prayer at the Angelus – thanks for the correction.
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No problem, Jake. I care too much about this stuff, to tell you the truth, and, as everyone has made clear (on the websites and blogs that excelled in their criticism of the old ICEL), it's time to just "go along to get along."
Still, you know how when you open a new translation of the Bible (or, in the case of the Psalter, a part of the Bible), you instinctively go to your favorite passage – John 1 or Psalm 23(22) – to see what they've done with it? I did THAT with the Collect for Saint Benedict as soon as the 2008 leaked, and was delighted to find, "that we may prefer nothing to your love … and run with open hearts in the way of your commandments." OK, to be accurate, they should have kept the first petition as a dependent clause, "open" isn't exactly "dilatato," "hearts" should be singular. But so much of it was right!
Then I saw the revision and was astounded! What possible improvement was it to lose all those quotes from the Holy Rule? Even the phrase "in the way of your commandments" was gone. "Way of your COMMANDS"? "Mandatorum" is "of commandments" – you'd have found some form of "praecepta" for "commands" and that's not the Rule. I wondered: Cuthbert Johnson, OSB; Jeremy Driscoll, OSB … and other OSBs behind the scenes over there whom I'll not name … How did this happen?
But nobody in the pews will know, or perhaps care even if they did know. And, as I said, the once-vocal critics have decided just to go along and make do with what we've got. And I'll stop right here. It's just … after 40 years we came so close. And the culprit was not scholarship or fidelity to the Holy See, but politics and incomptence. And it makes me sad.
the " new " text is precisely the translation used in catholic schools in the '50 s . only the the "Thee ' is missing
Anon, the exact same could be said of the music in the new Missal. We waited so long and the results are disappointing by the standards of today. I could write 10,000 words on this topic: the tunes, the notation, the markings, and much more. At one level, I'm devastated. On the other hand, my sadness must be mitigated by the reality in parishes across the country. 90% of the music in parishes today is egregious and awful. If these Missal chants replace what is there, it will be the biggest step forward in my lifetime! This is something I've had to realize. You know my view here: we must suck it up and do constructive things going forward.
Jeffrey,
Will it be permitted at some point, do you think, for additions? Example, a Solemn Tone for the Preface Dialogue? I cannot understand why, continuing the present Sacramentary usage, we have only the old ferial formula for the Lift up your hearts? I am no Gregorian scholar, but the Episcopalians have adapted our Solemn Tone "Sursum corda" and to my non-scholarly ears it, and the peoples' response which mirrors it, sounds just fine. Am I wrong about that, or as a professional in these matters, do you concur? And is there any possibility of additions that you've heard? By the way, the Renaissance you speak of in the other thread seems to be blossoming already. Despite my disappointment in the manifold infelicities perpetrated by the textual revisions, it is a grace to have lived long enough to see the permanent retirement of the "Gloria of the Bells"!
As someone the better part of whose morning was spent trying to repair a beloved but badly degradé piece of clothing, may I compliment you on the beauty and aptness of this phrase:
"[T]he new translation stitches our Catholic lives back together again"?
I have had so many "a ha!" moments, over the past 20 years or so, finding what should never have been hidden, mending what should never have been rent, (or more often, enjoying the fruits of some other seamstress's labors…)
Thank you all for the work you do!
(Save the Liturgy, Save the World)
Nice to see "gratia" rendered as "grace", a word the 1973 translators studiously avoided.