Dear all,
This week a collection of odds and ends, little bits of information that have come my way over the past week and that you may be able to make good use of.
- You are certainly aware that 2025 will be the Church's Jubilee Year, but may not be aware that Pope Francis has asked that 2024 be a year of prayer in preparation for this. He has written a foreword to a series of booklets being published by LEV (Libreria Editrice Vaticana, the Vatican Publishing House). There are 8 booklets by universally well-known authors. You can read about these here. I am sorry that I cannot give you the translation of all of these booklets, but it would not be breaking copyright to give you a 'sample', which includes the Foreword, and it will demonstrate the value of these items. Please see the attached 'Sample.docx'. Apparently the Indian Episcopal Conference is doing the English translations, so keep an eye out for these excellent booklets. If there are other possibilities, I will let you know.
- If you are a regular reader of Cagliero11, you will also know that each month for the past two years they have made a BoscoFood sheet available... a page in English and Italian presenting a recipe from one of the 139 or so countries where Salesians can be found. They have already published 115 or these and 24 remain. I am attaching an example from our Region (Fiji). The Missions Sector is now intending to compile all of these into a colourful Salesian 'cookbook'. I am in contact with those in the Sector who are working on this, assisting them here and there with aspects of the proposed book. I have put the suggestion to them that since we already have a translators network in this region, it may be possible to send each translator the 'sheet' referring to their country/ies just to check a few little details, not so much the recipes but especially the Info boxes with details about Salesian presences, religious affiliations in the country etc. Would you be prepared to do that? If they agree to this proposal I will let you know about it with more information. There is plenty of time - it is intended to be published for the 150th anniversary of the first missionary expedition in 2025.
- Canada: The Canadian Episcopal Conference has just produced a pastoral letter on social media. It is not directly related to translation of course, but this pastoral letter is excellent. It is attached to this email.
- India: A certain Indian confrere and writer, Fr Mathai Kottarathil (IND) has written a series of booklets on a wide range of spiritual topics. I have read several of them and they are quite readable. They have been published by two different Salesian publishing enterprises in India, one in Dimapur and the other in Kochi. Three in particular might be of interest to us: Blessed Carlo Acutis, Lay Holiness in the Salesian Family, The Holy Eucharist. We have these texts but of course they are under copyright from Don Bosco Publications Dimapur. We are seeing if there would be a possibility of allowing them to be translated (or published) in the EAO Region. More on that if it eventuates. But even if not, they will be cheaply available, and you might also be interested in looking at the Dimapur website as a good example of a Salesian publisher we do not often hear much about. I am attaching the first five pages of his book on Carlo Acutis so you can get an idea of how it has been written and published.
- Finally! From time to time as a translator, you need to be able to source important Church documents, especially the Code of Canon Law and the Catholic Catechism. There is an 'archives' section on the Vatican website that not many are aware of, and it contains these two documents in a variety of languages. For example, the CCC-Compendium is available in Bahasa Indonesia. And Chinese will also be found there. Here are the two links: Catechism of the Catholic Church - https://www.vatican.va/archive/ccc/index_it.htm Code of Canon Law - https://www.vatican.va/archive/cdc/index_it.htm
Hope some or all of the above can be helpful, take them all as good examples of best practice!
