At Saint John’s University we require a foreign language of all our undergrads and of our masters students in liturgical studies. Many learn additional foreign languages in preparation for doctoral studies or for other reasons. Our students are not linguistic slackers.
But still. My grad students this term, in their assigned readings, have encountered, in otherwise fantastic sources, such as this: Baptism is to be in ‘ύδωρ ζων. Several documents “are classified with the vague Sammelbegriff ‘Gallican missals’.” The Bobbio Missal has a rite “ad christianum faciendum.” A canon from a council “…signifie donc que l’intervention personelle de l’évêque est limité…” These all are from recently published sources – more precisely, from a book and a liturgy journal of a certain liturgical publishing house at a certain Benedictine establishment in a certain Midwestern state. (Their practice is similar to everyone else on this point.) Just like that, with no English translation.
No problem, right? Just draw on your knowledge of Greek, German, Latin, and French, and you’re set. We all attended either a classical European gymnasium or a minor seminary before Vatican II, right? Not.
The time has long since come for publishers and editors to provide translations for all foreign terms in English theological writing. Such writing is meant not only for theo profs, but also for students at various points in their studies, clergy, pastoral ministers, and other interested folks. Some of them know some languages, but they don’t all know all the languages frequently quoted. Why make things less accessible? Why discourage or irritate people needlessly?
I hear the accusations already. I’m pandering and watering down. My proposal is horribly American. (Whaddaya call someone who knows three languages? Trilingual. Two languages? Bilingual. One language? American.) We should be encouraging everyone to aim higher, and so forth.
I think not. My students will testify (or complain) that I do everything I can to stress the importance of original languages. I write foreign things on the board all the time. I require grad students in their first semester to learn a whole list of Latin and Greek terms. In grad liturgy classes, though I translate as we walk through a preconciliar liturgical book, I give my students an untranslated handout just to make the point that they really should learn Latin. My pedagogical practice is intended both to emphasize the importance of source languages and to make the course content accessible to those who don’t know a given language.
Why, pray tell, couldn’t editors and publishers do the same? We don’t need everything translated so that the whole page is English. Terms like ex opere operato and Heilsgeschichte are fair game. Keep the original but give a translation, at least the first time around. It would easily be possible to distinguish the original author’s footnotes from those of the editor providing translations. Or foreign terms could be translated within the text in brackets, perhaps with the annotation “– Ed.” Either way, the reader would get the sense of the reading while being notified that there is another language worth learning. We’d all get along better.
Quid putas?
awr
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