The Great Translation Mess

A formative experience for me as a student was attending the Latin Novus Ordo Mass at the Oxford Oratory in the 1990s. I bought a little booklet with the Latin and English of the fixed prayers of the Mass on facing pages, and I noticed that the English was consistently and significantly shorter than the Latin. This seemed odd, as Latin is supposed to be a concise language. Looking more closely, even with my extremely poor Latin, I could see that the English wasn’t translating all the Latin words.

For instance, where the English said, “Lord I am not worthy to receive you, but only say the word and I shall be healed,” the Latin had an extra phrase, sub tectum meum, “under my roof,” that had simply been ignored.

Where the Latin says, Accipens et hunc praeclarum calicem in sanctas ac venerabiles manus suas, it was translated baldly, “He took the cup.”

This translation, dating back to 1973, was in 2011 replaced by another much closer to the Latin, giving us, in the second example, “Taking the precious chalice in his holy and venerable hands.”

An issue that has long interested me is the Church’s attitude to the Latin language. The official documents on the subject, however, no less than the liturgy, are bedeviled by translation issues.

One is simple non-availability. In 1962, Pope John XXIII demanded the retention and restoration of Latin in seminary education, in a major document, an apostolic constitution, Veterum Sapientia. In 1966, Pope Paul VI, in his Apostolic Letter Sacrificium Laudis, demanded that religious who sing the Liturgy of the Hours together do so in Latin. In 1989, the Congregation for Catholic Education, in an Instruction, Inspectis Dierum, demanded that seminarians have enough Latin to study the Church Fathers in the original. These documents are available on the Vatican website only in the original Latin, and in Spanish (for Veterum Sapientia) and Italian (for the other two). This hardly encourages the study of these documents, even if English translations do exist elsewhere.

Another is the issue of the “original version.” With the decline of Latin education, officials have increasingly composed documents in a vernacular language, to be translated into Latin later. Often this is an opportunity to tighten up the language, as happened famously with the Catechism of the Catholic Church, which has a more rigorous definition of lying in Latin than in the original French. The Latin is the official version, however, and other versions should conform to it.

Whereas the Latinists translating things into Latin do so with care and, perhaps, a high degree of oversight, those translating things out of Latin and into vernacular languages—certainly English—often seem to be very sloppy, and even motivated by their own theological concerns.

It is difficult not to see an ideological slant to a series of indefensible translations of documents relating to the 1962 Missal, for example. For one thing, it took many years for the Vatican website to do an official English translation of Pope Benedict XVI’s apostolic letter Summorum Pontificum, which appeared in the meantime only in Latin and Hungarian. When the English translation finally appeared, it suggested that priests could use the older missal only if they were “qualified,” although the Latin word at issue, idonei, means legally rather than intellectually able to do a job. In 2011, another document appeared, the instruction Universae Ecclesiae, to guide the implementation of Summorum Pontificum. The English failed to translate the Latin enixe, “strenuously,” when asking bishops to arrange for seminarians to be taught how to celebrate this missal, and the Latin word potissimum, “most especially,” when referring to seminaries as the appropriate location for this training (both in art. 21).

Universae Ecclesiae had another interesting feature: between the publication of the Latin text online and its appearance in the definitive Acta Apostolicae Sedis, a sentence disappeared from the end of art. 15. It didn’t have tremendous significance—“Pastoral logic comes into play for deciding on the number of faithful in this group, yet bearing in mind that the circumstances are to be considered impartially.” Disappearing is just a very odd thing for a sentence of an official legal document to do.

All this was excelled by the behavior surrounding the text of Pope Francis’s 2021 apostolic letter Traditionis Custodes. When first published, the document clearly stated that the Italian text was the “original” text. After some months, as canon lawyers picked over the wording, a Latin text appeared. One of the things the canonists had pointed out is that art. 4 told us that priests ordained after the document was promulgated needed permission to celebrate the 1962 missal, and “bishops shall consult [Italian: consulterà] the Apostolic See before granting this authorization.” This means that the final decision lies with the bishop.

The Latin version, however, tells us that a Sede Apostolica licentiam rogabit: the bishop must ask permission from the Apostolic See. The final decision lies with Rome. This is clearly a substantive change of meaning compared with the Italian. Oddly, though, the Italian and English versions on the website have not been changed: they still say “consult.”

Bear in mind that Traditionis Custodes came into force immediately and was having a pastoral impact before the Latin was published. Since the Latin is the official version, what came into force was a law whose text had not been settled. It was actually promulgated before it was definitively drafted—quite a feat.

The availability and accurate translation of official documents may seem an arcane issue, but we are all affected by changes to the liturgy. With the translation of the post-conciliar liturgy and the legal status of the pre-conciliar liturgy alike, these are matters that affect our most intimate spiritual communion with the Lord in our worship. Among the issues needing to be put right in the Church, the matter of translation to and from Latin is perhaps not the least.