Dear all,
By now we have arrived, more or less, at a weekly rhythm of an email exchange on matters 'translational'! And thank you for the many responses to this initiative.
A COUPLE OF NEWS ITEMS FIRST
1. Attached is a 'best practice' contribution from Cambodia (thanks to Albeiro). He deals with the question of translating 'Western' languages into Asian (or Aboriginal in the case of Australia and the Torres Strait) languages, especially when it comes to many of the terms we use in our Christian and Catholic context...Father, Brother, Sister, Heaven, God.... especially when the predominant non-Christian religious culture (e.g. Buddhism) already has well-established words for some of these. Well worth reading! Does someone else have a best practice they can share?
2. Remember us mentioning, some weeks ago, the English translation of the life of CDB member and Servant of God Nino Baglieri? Well, that book has now been printed in Kenya and will be distributed at the Salesian Family meeting coming up in Rwanda.
Just as an interesting sideline to do with Rwanda of interest to people like translators who follow languages closely: although more than 99% of Rwandans speak Kinyarwanda – a Bantu language and the country’s mother-tongue – Rwanda has three other official languages: French, English and Swahili. But in reality, they end up speaking "Kinyafranglaise"! However, be assured, that the translation of Nino Baglieri's life is in English????
According to a very well-known recipient of this email exchange who is also the superior of AFM (!), he will get us some copies for EAO. Maybe the Philippines is the best distribution point, since the CDB have members there or maybe just write to him if you want a copy.
3. Fr Alphonse Owoudou has completed his first letter on translation in view of GC29 and has forwarded it to Regional Councillors, so expect to receive it through Fr Joseph Phuoc in the near future. He has this email list in hand, so you should receive your own copy. You will note that there is 'movement at the station' (a quote from an Australian poem on rounding up wild horses!), or put another way, an interest at the level of the General Council to both recognise and facilitate the work of translation in the Congregation.
ACRONYM, INITIALISM, ABBREVIATION
But I wanted to raise the question, this week, of what could be called Salesian 'alphabet soup': in other words, the regular use of acronyms, initialisms and abbreviations. One translator from the region asked this week, after reading something from the Missions Sector: what do RCMA and PDMA mean? Good question. Do you know?
Is there any difference between an acronym, an initialism and an abbreviation (and by the way, we usually group them all under the one simple term 'Abbreviations', just as the Italians also often call them just 'Sigla')? There is a technical difference between each of these:
An ACRONYM is made up of the first letters of the words in the phrase, but pronounced as a word: We Salesians say ANS rather than pronouncing A-N-S separately. So it is an acronym (but note an interesting feature of this mentioned below).
An INITIALISM is similar to an acronym (made up of the first letters of the words in a phrase) but not pronounced as a word. Since we mentioned RCMA and PDMA above, these are initialisms: Regional Coordinator of/for Missionary Animation; Provincial Delegate for Missionary Animation. If we take the more general set of 'abbreviations' (the general term) relating to the United Nations, then according to this distinction UN is an initialism, but UNWRA or UNICEF are acronyms, since they are usually pronounced as a word. However, most people don't bother with this technical distinction and just call them acronyms.
An ABBREVIATION is technically a case where a portion of the word has been removed, so Fr (or Fr.) instead of 'Father' is an abbreviation. But as indicated above, we tend to allow the term 'abbreviation' to cover all of the above, since it gets too complicated to make these distinctions every time.
SALESIAN 'ABBREVIATIONS'
To be honest, the list is almost endless! We could start with the 90 or more abbreviations for each circumscription. Obviously we know all the ones in our region (THA, PGS etc. etc.), but please note that only provinces, vice-provinces and special circumscriptions have one. Delegations do not have one. And what about regions? We are really the only region in the Congregation that uses an abbreviation (EAO) regularly. Occasionally one might find AS for Asia South, but it is rare and not official. And none of the other regions actually use an abbreviation.
We should mention the list of two- (deriving from Italian) and one-letter abbreviations (deriving from Latin) found in the 'Annuario' (Year Book): so, examples of the two-letter ones might be Co (Delegato Cooperatori), and Dt (Direttore). Examples of the one-letter ones might be D, Diaconus, E, Episcopus and n (notice the lower case!) Novitius!
But notice that different languages deal with these abbreviations differently. Italian prefers to capitalise only the first letter, and the rest are lower case, so 'Co', not 'CO' as we might be tempted to put it in English.
There is an interesting phenomenon in the Salesian-Italian use of some abbreviations... ANS used to come from Agenzia Notizie Salesiane. But more than a decade ago now, the underlying phrase was altered. It is now Agenzia iNfo Salesiana. Another case of this sort of thing is IUS, Istituzioni Universitarie Salesiane, but it now means Salesian Institutes of Higher Education (and yes, they represent it almost always in English, so the new underlying phrase has almost no real connection with the acronym). I am not sure if there is a technical term for an initialism or acronym whose letters no longer represent the underlying phrase. Let's just call it Salesian creativity!
How should we 'spell out' UPS in English? By remembering that it was a Salesian University that was then given Pontifical status, and that means that the term 'Salesian University' needs to appear without being interrupted by any other word, hence 'Pontifical Salesian University' is the correct order of words in English, not 'Salesian Pontifical University' as we see so often. Compare the titles of several other Pontifical Universities in Rome: we never see Gregorian Pontifical University, but Pontifical Gregorian University. The 'Urbaniana' is called the Pontifical Urban University, and not the Urban Pontifical University. So putting the word 'Salesian' first in our own case is merely an act of undesirable triumphalism IMHO.
We need to keep up with new abbreviations emerging all the time in Salesian language. Each Sector, Secretariat or other central Salesian body seems to have them.
Consider the Salesian Family to start with: 32 groups of the Salesian Family, some (but not all) of which have acronyms/initialisms which change per language, so FMA sometimes becomes HMA in Spanish-speaking countries (although officially FMA), but stays FMA in English, always. SS.CC (Salesian Cooperators) becomes ASC in English. Not sure about EXA-DB and EXA-FMA. I usually represent these in English as PP-DB (Past Pupils of Don Bosco) and PP-FMA for the Sisters. The Caritas Sisters of Jesus usually use CSG (from the Italian), but as they spread into English-speaking countries, there is a good argument for CSJ I think.
The Missions Sector has quite a number: we saw RCMA and PDMA above but what about DIAM? An initialism (pronounced) from Italian 'Delegato Ispettoriale di Animazione Missionaria'. We should probably always now use PDMA instead in an English-speaking context.
The Youth Ministry Sector (and many other documents) will refer to the EPC (Educative and Pastoral Community), the OPP (Overall Provincial Project, which is POI in Italian, the SEPP (Salesian Educative and Pastoral Plan which is PEPSI in Italian... without the Cola!)
Formation has its FSDB or Formation of the Salesians of Don Bosco, aka(!)* the Ratio, and when the new one is finally approved, possibly this year, certainly at GC29 (there's another one!) you will find, for example RFC (Regional Formation Commission) and a number of Formation documents will have been given acronyms like YSA (Young Salesians and Accompaniment), AnGC (Animating and Governing the Community: The ministry of the Salesian Rector).
The Social Communication Sector has various abbreviations as well, and with a new document replacing the former SSCS (Salesian Social Communication System, almost the only initialism that works in Italian, English, Spanish, French and Portuguese without the need to change the order of the letters), so no doubt there will be new abbreviations appearing in that.
And let's not forget Salesian history: ISS (Salesian Historical Institute) and ACSSA (Salesian History association... 'cultori' can only be translated in English with a long and roundabout statement like 'those who cultivate Salesian History', so let's just call it the Salesian History Association).
Are there any further ones that you have to deal with but are unsure of?
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* aka (also known as): is this an initialism? Well, yes, technically, thought some might think it belongs to SMS language! Yet in reality 'aka' long predates SMS and texting language. It has been used in legal documents since at least the 1930s.
best_practice_3-to-Asian-langauges.pdf