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Dear All,

Not too late to wish you all a happy and blessed Easter, as we are still within the Octave as I write.

No doubt you have read the article in AGC440, where Father Ivo Coelho, Councillor for Formation, wrote the following:

A revised and updated English translation of the 2015 Third Edition of the Constitutions and Regulations of the Society of St Francis de Sales is now available in PDF on the Congregation’s websites, <<sdb.org>> and <<sdl.sdb.org>>.
The text also contains the modifications introduced by GC28.
By decision of the Rector Major, who has encouraged and supported this revised translation from the outset, a new print edition will not be available until after GC29, given the possibility that this Chapter will introduce modifications to the existing Italian
editio typica.
The revised translation was carried out by a team of confreres with native understanding of English, long Salesian and administrative experience, and a good knowledge of Italian (including one native speaker of Italian with good knowledge of English)
.

He goes on to explain a little bit of why this effort was made, but I think it would be very helpful for translators in the EAO Region to gain an insight into what was modified and why. What brought this about? How was it achieved? What criteria were adopted? What is the future for this revised translation?

Perhaps the real starting point was several years ago when the RM asked for an English translation of something he was preparing which focused largely on C. 38 on the Preventive System in our mission. The translator who was working on this discovered that the precise issue the RM was focusing on was missing from the English text of the Constitutions and Regulations.  The Italian original text says (among other things): Associa in un'unica esperienza di vita educatori e giovani in un clima di famiglia, di fiducia e di dialogo. And if you check the English text in the printed Third Edition 2015, you find: It brings together educators and youngsters in a family experience of trust and dialogue. Do you see what has happened? The “unique experience of life” (which is what the RM was focusing on) has been omitted!

This realisation then led to a careful comparison of Italian/English throughout the text, and identified very many issues, some of mistranslation, some of addition and omission, plus a host of small, relatively minor surface-level issues: punctuation and the like.

So with the encouragement of the Councillor for Formation, who has also been leading work on a new draft of the Ratio (which often quotes the C&R, naturally), and with the encouragement of the Rector Major, a team was put together to see if these issues could be rectified, while being aware that GC29 will certainly introduce changes and that a new print edition will be required subsequent to that Chapter. In other words, much of the hard work has been done in preparation for any new print edition. A General Chapter is able to make changes to individual articles, but it does not have the time to correct any translation errors that may have crept in over time. All it will do is to establish an appropriate team to do this work. In other words, we are ahead of the game.

As translators in the Region you are now in a special position to see the work that was done. Not only am I attaching the completed revised edition (in an interactive PDF format) but also the 'annotated' file which includes comments on what changes were made and why (as indicated by colours and some annotations). Of course, there were many exchanges among team members arguing for one or other issue and how to deal with it, and these discussions are not included here. It would be too much. A book's worth! But there is enough here to show how we worked. This 'annotated' file is not generally available, but will be available to those who need to pick up the effort following GC29. By the way, while the pop-up notes in yellow in the annotated PDF all say 'Julian' as the author, that is only because I added the notes, but that does not mean I was necessarily responsible for the content in the notes! It was a team effort, after all!

Three things in particular motivated this effort: 

  1. The real situation that we had a less than perfect text in our hands 
  2. The realisation that post-GC29 would inevitably see a new printed edition, and 
  3. The changing demographics of the Congregation: by now, 50% or more of young Salesians use English in many apostolic, academic and even domestic circumstances, even if it is not their first language.  In other words, for half the Congregation, the only Constitutions and Regulations they know or can understand are in English! So we had better make sure there are no errors!

The criteria were simple enough:

  • Removal of words, phrases that were added to the Italian original in translation.
  • Addition of items omitted from the original.
  • Fixing typos and punctuation. 
  • Improving fluency of sentences where meaning could otherwise be ambiguous. 
  • The opportunity was also taken to update Scripture quotes since the original English used the Revised Standard Version, but that has meanwhile become the New Revised Standard Version Anglicised Catholic Edition. And since the English translation had used British English, the decision was made to remain with that.
  • Corrections were also to be made to inaccurate references.
  • Incorporation of GC28 changes which obviously came after the 2015 print edition. 
  • A few changes were also made in view of the greater gender sensitivity today than there was a few years ago (e.g. 'men' removed where the reference is not just to Salesians).

Where does it go from here? That will be up to GC29 and/or the post-Chapter team handling any C&R changes.

As a small digression, I have just looked at my own copy of the Rule I have from 1967 as a young Salesian heading out to Practical Training. On the inside cover is this message:

-----------------------

Translator's note: In the revision of the 1949 edition of the Constitutions and Regulations the text has been modified to bring it into line with the language of today. The definitive translation will wait until after the XX General Chapter and the expected changes in Canon law. N.B. There is one significant change. We have retained the Italian rendiconto instead of the English rendering manifestation which has the sense in Catholic circles of manifestation of conscience. As the Rule explains the word it is quite clear what Don Bosco wanted us to understand by rendiconto.

------------------------

Sense of deja vu anyone?

I would assume that you would have translations of the C&R in many of the languages in this EAO Region,and it could be a prompt to take a careful look at them to see if anything similar would be required. Am also attaching a Best Practice that could be helpful for this.

Also attached is a little 'jewel' that you can feel free to give your rector or provincial (or maybe you are one of those already!). It is by Fr Pascual Chávez, but has only been in Italian up till now so one of you sent it to me and asked if it could be put into good English. It is something the RM emeritus would address in a Goodnight to new provincials.

------------------

best_practice_9-juridical.docx

 


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