Tuesday 19 July 2011

On second thoughts...

On second thoughts, I should have obtained the official Latin text of the rubrics and compared them with the English.

But on third thoughts... I am actually just like everyone else, someone who turns up and gets given a book, mass card or whatever. Why should I not be able to trust them?

My real sympathy, of course, goes out to the expatriate Spaniards in this country, who, using the Libro de Oración Común will never understand (unless they read the English translation) that queueing is so revered in this country that it has become a sign of reverence...

The other thing that really needs to be said is that the new translation itself is a vast improvement on the poor mis-translation it replaces, in so many ways. I record my first experience of it here.

It delights me to see the back of the Acclamation 'Christ has died etc' which was a translation of precisely nothing in the Latin text, simply something inserted into the English (by the translators?). No problem with it as an acclamation, but not at that moment in the Mass.

Imagine the apostles in the Upper Room. Our Lord walks in to greet them, and on seeing Him, James turns to John and says: "Christ will come again." Doesn't quite work, does it.

My late mother, much more docile and obedient than me, could never bring herself to say it, but formulated her own version:

"Christ has died
Christ is risen
(sotto voce) Christ is truly present on the altar."

1 comment:

Ttony said...

"queueing is so revered in this country that it has become a sign of reverence..."

It's only when I read your words that it struck me with enormous force that in the last five or ten years the English have LOST their reverence for the queue, and queue reluctantly, if at all.