Better Off in Latin?

The most visible result of the Second Vatican Council so far has been the decision to translate the Roman Catholic Mass into vernacular languages. But now that scholars are engaged in translating the liturgical texts, the problems they face have led some to wonder whether it might not have been simpler to leave everything in Latin.

Even translating the Mass into a Latin-based language, such as French, can lead to difficulties. Recently, Philosopher Etienne Gilson publicly complained that in the version of the Nicene Creed used in France, Christ is spoken of as having the same "nature" as God the Father, rather than what the Latin says--of the same "substance." Gilson argues that the change of wording seriously distorts the doctrinal point made by the Creed. There are other complaints about the translation. Many conservative Frenchmen think it undignified to address God with the intimate tu rather than the more formal vous, and wonder why the translators couldn't find a better word for Christ's redemption than the commercial term rachat (rebuying).

Beggars & Bedpans. Other romance languages are no better off. In parts of eastern Italy, priests have had to keep the phrase "body of Christ" in Latin, because saying it in Italian is a common local curse. In Tuscany, clerics find it embarrassing to end the Mass with Andate in pace (Go in peace)--locally the most common way to shoo away a beggar. Trying to come up with a common Mass text for Brazil and Portugal, translators discovered that they could not use the most common Brazilian word for servant (servidor): in Portugal it means bedpan.

Such problems pale before those faced by priests struggling to find an acceptable translation of the Latin into African and Asian tongues. The Yoruba language of West Africa, for example, has no word for priest or church. "Our language is so poor in words," says Father J. S. Adeneye of Nigeria, "that I can hardly prepare my sermon." In Japan, translators face the problem of dealing with a language that rarely uses pronouns and has a surplus of honorifics. Instead of Dominus vobiscum (The Lord be with you), the priest now vaguely says to the congregation, "The Lord be together with everyone."

Stay There, Mary. Nowhere are there more problems for the translator than on the islands of the Pacific, whose people have hundreds of languages, ranging from Bugi, the tongue of Celebes, to Yapese, spoken on the tiny U.S. trusteeship island of Yap. Most of them require awkward circumlocutions to express Catholic dogma. In pidgin English for example, God is "Bigfellow master too much who bosses heaven and ground." Even more bothersome is the primitive Enga language of the New Guinea mountains. In trying to translate the "Hail Mary" prayer, explains one missionary, "we found that if a group of men wanted to greet a group of women working in the field, they wouldn't say 'Good morning' but 'We are going to Wabag and the women are in the field.' All greetings run like that--I am here and you are there." Solution: "Hail Mary" is "Mary, you stay right there."

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