From the draft

What's with the "people of good will"? The Latin is "hominibus," which is the plural dative of the generic word for "human being." The English word is "men." Angels are persons; the Trinity has three persons. Only human beings can be men.

Well, regardless... this is going to make sure countless mass settings need to be rewritten, new hymnals purchased, etc.

Eric,

Don't you just love inclusive language? In waging their war against the English language, the proponents of Inclusive Language only succeed in creating more stilted translations.

I'm going to suggest to my pastor that, until some musical settings come out with the proper translations, we use the Latin!! BWAHAHAHA! Sigh, one can always hope.

But Mr. Johnson, "people" is not the plural form of "person". Neither angels nor the Trinity are people; only human beings.

R., "people" is often used as a plural of "person." Not always, but enough so the meaning is unclear. See the second definition here:

http://m-w.com/cgi-bin/dictionary?book=Dictionary&va=people

Also, it's not appropriate to use "people" in the first sense ("human beings making up a group or assembly or linked by a common interest"). The words refer to all individual human beings of good will. If they meant "an identifiable group of human beings," the Latin word would be populus.

The words the second chapter of Luke, where the angels are announcing the Good News, and
they are not addressing a "people" (such as the Jews) but to all men of good will throughout the world. This is the annunciation of the New Covenant, open to any man, regardless of birth.

Let me praise the translation, though: I think it's a lot closer to the original Latin, and overall it is a vast improvement. I love the restoration of the first person singular to the Credo. (Ironic that it's called the "Credo" and yet Catholics have said "We believe" for the last four decades.)

+J.M.J+

"God of mighty hosts"???

Is that a proper translation of Dominus Deus Sabaoth?

Some of the "inclusive" language is also questionable, but overall this new translation is about 98% better than what we have now!

As for rewriting Mass settings and getting new hymnals, that's not necessarily a bad thing. We'll get rid of some tired old music settings in the process.

In Jesu et Maria,

+J.M.J+

Ah, I see, they split it up:

"Holy, Holy, Holy Lord,
God of mighty hosts"

Still not a perfect rendering of the original, but more accurate than "God of power and might". Overall, I'm pleased, FWIW :-)

In Jesu et Maria,

+J.M.J+

I just saw something on pg 14 of that draft that made my day!

A portion of Eucharistic Prayer I currently goes like this:

"We offer them for your holy catholic Church,
watch over it, Lord, and guide it;
grant it peace and unity throughout the world."

Here is the new proposed translation:

"which we offer you in the first place
for your holy catholic Church:
be pleased to grant her peace,
to guard, unite and govern her
throughout the whole world,"

I don't know, maybe I'm the only one who gets excited over this, but I'm so glad to see the Church referred to in feminine terms, rather than as an "it"! This has long been a sticking point for me.

In Jesu et Maria,

In the Hebrew (this comes up in the Reform Liturgy in the song "S'U Sh'arim"), it's "Adonai tz'vaoth" and they translate it "Lord of Hosts."

Yes, I'll have to rewrite all my Mass settings before they can be used again. But it will be so worth it!

And what's more, in my old Douay Bible, it says (Is. 6:3b):

"Holy, holy, holy, the Lord God of hosts, all the earth is full of his glory."

Not a complete sentence, and it also isn't the same as the liturgical translations. It must be one of those things we're not meant to understand in detail.

In Latin it is good style to omit unnecessary verbs like "is" when they can be understood from context (e.g. "Ave Maria gratia plena Dominus tecum" instead of "Dominus tecum est"). The Douai-Rheims Bible seems to have been intended to be as literal a translation of the Vulgate as the English language would allow. Someone can check me on this, but it looks to me like the D-R translators tried to use cognates whenever possible and kept the same phrasing whenever it does not distort the meaning.

Rosemarie,

That made my day as well. So much so that I have to repeat it:
"which we offer you in the first place
for your holy catholic Church:
be pleased to grant her peace,
to guard, unite and govern her
throughout the whole world,"

Is it too early to start the Te Deum?

That's how we say it at mass in the Anglican tradition.

In Old English, "man" was a more generic term, the equivalent of "homo", with "guma" and "wifman" being the equivalents of "vir" and "femina". But "guma" dropped out (except in "groom" as used at weddings), and "man" took over that slot. Its primary sense is no longer the same as "homo".

Soooooooo, although "men of goodwill" would be understandable to many, I think "people of goodwill" does have a certain clarity that "men of goodwill" lacks. It's certainly better than "humans of goodwill". (Which would also make life hard on any aliens we happen to run across, eh?)

And yes, "people" can be a plural as well as a singular collective noun. "Deer" does it all the time.

Look, I'm as het up about nitpickiness as anyone on Earth. If it says "vir", I'm all for writing "men". But English is a living language and it does change. "People" is a good translation of "hominibus", and it flows off the tongue as "humans", "human beings", and "persons" do not.

Besides, if you get all scandalized over stuff that is perfectly acceptable, you're never going to get anywhere. Go soak in some classical Latin poetry translations over at David Drake's page or something. I highly recommend the Metamorphoses. I only thought I'd read them in school...boy, do abridged translations leave out all the beauty of the originals or what?

http://www.david-drake.com/ovid.html

"May the Lord receive the sacrifice at your hands
for the praise and glory of his name,
for our good,
and for the good of all his holy Church."

Hopefully that "holy" makes the final cut.

Actually, if nits to pick are wanted, the thing people should be complaining about is the translation of "Ite, missa est." There's an egregious case of non-literal translation, if you like. Heck, it even misled English speakers into calling the whole schmole after the "dismissal".

And yet, somehow, nobody ever does moan and groan about it...funny, that. :)

Maureen, given your obvious attention to the subject, I would think you would shy away from meaningless statements like "English is a living language" (the unspoken corollary being "and so we can do whatever we want to it.")

You're obviously smart enough to know what we're objecting to when "people" is used when "men" would have been: that it's an ideological decision, not a grammatical or stylistic one. Yes, "Ite, missa est" means some thing like "Go you all, having been sent" but that's a little awkward. It's rendered differently because a literal translation would be less comprehensible. Substituting "people" is done solely to placate the inplacable (radical feminists and their sympathizers) and should be resisted because they're not going to stop with mere word substitutions.

+J.M.J+

Aristotle: I missed that one; thanks for pointing it out! I'm glad they restored the word "holy" in that prayer as well.

Maureen: You're right about "Ite, missa est". The truth is, the Mass is never "ended", not until the Second Coming, that is.

I'm still pleased overall, though. How about these:

Blessed are you, Lord, God of all creation,
for of your bounty we have received bread,
which we offer you,
fruit of the earth and work of human hands:
It will become for us the bread of life....

By the mystery of this water and wine,
may we be made partakers in His divinity
who deigned to share in our humanity....

Blessed are you, Lord, God of all creation,
for of your bounty we have received wine,
which we offer you,
fruit of the vine and work of human hands:
It will become our spiritual drink....

In Jesu et Maria,

Translation is an art, not a science; and it's important to say things in a way which people will understand. If this means avoiding something which people often misunderstand, then you avoid it. I think that in the beginning radical feminists willfully misunderstood the inclusive "men", but now a few generations have passed and meanings _have_ been shifted, in the popular mind.

I mean, imagine if they'd translated one of those prayers about being joyful or happy or something as being "gay"? (Isn't there some laetitia in there, IIRC...?) You could be as Latinately correct as you wanted, but you'd also bring the Mass to a sniggering stop.

So whatcha gonna do? Let kids think the big bad Church really is singing with the angels to only _males_ of goodwill, when they've only ever heard the Gloria that way in one Christmas Gospel reading and the Peanuts Christmas special their entire lives? Or say something that won't be misunderstood?

Which is not to say that private persons shouldn't or can't do anything to put one of the meanings of "men" _back_ into common parlance. But Mass prolly ain't the time and place to do it.

Maureen

Maureen,
What in the world has a larger audience, and larger ability to shape the English language, than the Catholic Mass? I mean, "mea culpa" isn't in the language because everybody likes Latin. Where better to fight this battle than here, where Truth is brought before the eyes of men?

This translation of the Creed seems to compare well to the original Greek:

http://www.saintnicholas.org/creed_english.htm

We still have the extra "God from God" before "light from light", but like the "filioque", this is our tradition.

I maintain that translations are of the utmost importance. If it weren't for the use of the word "procedit" in the Latin translation of the original Greek version of the Creed, the Greeks and Romans might not be arguing over the "filioque" today.

All in all I think a good job has been done.

Do not feed the troll.

Translation isn't an art, like particle physics? Boy, I learn new things all the time from these comment boxes!

Modernity wants to twist language for political purposes, and I think it's right to resist it. We're already rendered most pre-1900 English literature incomprehensible, because people don't bother to learn how to read long sentences and paragraphs, much less follow a thought for several pages.

I don't think it's such a big problem to explain to "the kids" proper, historical English. I would imagine it would go something like this, if it came up with my daughter:

Daughter: "Daddy, how come God doesn't want peace for girls and ladies?"

Me: "Sometimes 'men' can mean only men, but sometimes it means men and women. Don't worry -- God wants peace for women, too."

Daughter: "Oh, okay."

Thus far (although I haven't looked through all the texts thoroughly yet) I'm impressed! Not quite sure about "God of mighty hosts" (although I have seen some REALLY mighty hosts in some "modern" parishes!). I suppose they've done that so as not to render obselete the musical settings we already have (i.e. to have a trans with the same number of syllables as "God of power and might").