Malpractice in translation

By Phil Lawler ( bio - articles - email ) | Sep 15, 2020

Did you hear the Stabat Mater today, as a sequence for the feast of Our Lady of Sorrows? The latest translation is a spectacular piece of butchery.

The rhyme scheme is simple and consistent, so that you can’t help but notice it:

• …keeping
• …weeping
• …last
• …sharing
• …bearing
• …passed
• …distressed
• …blessed
• …One
• …hangs
• …pangs
• …Son

And so on, until the old translation calls for the use of a word that the compleat contemporary liturgist cannot make himself use. So the result is:

Let me mingle tears with you,

Mourning him who mourned for me,

All the days that I may live.

And then later:

Virgin of all virgins blest!

Listen to my fond request!

Let me share your grief divine.

Let me to my latest breath,

In my body bear the death,

Of that dying Son of yours.

[Emphasis added in both cases, since the reader’s eye won’t necessarily see the loud “clunk” that the listener’s ear can’t miss.]

Here the compleat contemporary liturgist is faced with a choice: He can use the words “thee” and “thine,” or he can suck the beauty out of the poetry. It’s no contest. Beauty loses; ideology wins.