Translations and Liturgical Tradition

Extract

The perennial question whether translation is, in fact, possible is rooted in ancient religious and psychological doubts on whether there ought to be any passage from one tongue to another. So far as speech is divine and numinous, so far as it encloses revelation, active transmission whether into the vulgate or across the barrier of languages is dubious or frankly evil .... [thus] the belief that three days of utter darkness fell on the world when the Law was translatd into Greek (George Steiner, After Babel).

Such reflections may have a place when it comes to the translation of liturgical documents. They may even be required reading before the awesome task be undertaken. It would be indeed unfortunate if the next English version of the Roman Sacramentary in English were to spark off power cuts all over the English-speaking world!

Perhaps we need not worry. Recent articles in New Blackfriars by Eamon Duffy and Bruce Harbert have shown that the revised translation of the Roman Missal, now in draft form, shows some interesting improvements on the 1973 version: greater fidelity to the cadence, the nuances and, above all, the meaning of the original; a distancing from the Pelagian optimism which characterised the earlier translations and a return to the true Roman liturgical style: simplicity encrusted in a majestic flow and rhythm. In this article I would like to draw attention to the challenge this sort of translation faces: that of being faithful to the liturgical tradition.

Many of the ‘ordinary-speech’ translations of liturgical texts in the last twenty-five years have been faulted for falling short of the living tradition of the liturgy, reflecting rather the prevailing idiom and ethos.