By Korea-SC
Seoul, Korea, 24 September 2019 -- We are glad to share the good news about publication of the recent product of the EAO 2nd Translators Workshop in Myanmar. The 'Salesian Translators Handbook' was published by Don Bosco Media in Seoul, Korea (300 copies, 72 pages, format A5). The long-awaited publication is now being distributed among Salesian Translators and SC delegates in the EAO region and beyond. This is probably the first ever Salesian Handbook for translators in our history. And it reaches us in time for the UN's International Translation Day (30 September, Feast of St Jerome).
The contents are divided into 5 chapters:
- Introduction: The motivation, history and process leading to the Handbook workshops
- The Salesian Translator: profile, spirituality and necessary formation of translators
- Key translation processes: collaborative (teamwork) ministry, translation problems and solutions
- Post-translation processes: copy-editing, editorial work, levels of editorial approval, publications and preservation
Then follow four Appendices:
- Oral interpretation
- Multimedia translation (subtitles, dubbing)
- Translators Prayers (SDB, FMA, VDB, Salesian Cooperator and Lay mission partner)
- Glossary (specific terms used in the Handbook)
For all Salesian translators around the world, probably the most encouraging is the simple Foreword written by Fr Ángel Fernández Artime, Rector Major:
'Five years ago, when a group of translators from the Salesian Congregation’s East Asia-Oceania Region met at K’Long in Vietnam, I recall telling them how happy I was about initiatives like these, and that they are the fruit of a profound and rich vision.
Those Salesian men and women planted a seed. Or perhaps, because so other men and women have dedicated their lives to translation of our Salesian teaching and documentation since the beginning of our Congregation, I should say that they gave the already existing seed an important boost of slow-release fertiliser that has now produced a remarkable fruit, this first edition of a Salesian Translators Handbook!
I also said, five years ago, that I would like to help Provincials to appreciate, value and strengthen this delicate and sometimes difficult ministry by encouraging the formation of young confreres in the translation field, making strides in the direction of interculturalism in formation. But of course, it is one thing to encourage this laudable approach and quite another to describe the practical ways that this might be taken up and put into practice.
So, you can imagine how happy I am that a subsequent meeting of East Asia-Oceania translators from the Salesian Family, meeting at Anisakan in Myanmar this time, saw fit to take up the ‘vision’ and translate it (yes, literally!) into a tool that will help our Provinces and their leaders, not only in the EAO Region but in the other six SDB regions too, as a reference point. Of particular note is the brief section on the spirituality and formation of the Salesian translator. We can have all the tools, all the techniques available to us, but they need to be informed by the same principles that have made Don Bosco’s charism a gift of the Spirit for the Church and for society worldwide. This Handbook can be a real instrument of formation, and I thank the authors for the lengthy process, involving much consultation, that has led to its production.
Translation is important, as it has been for the Church over two millennia, and for our Congregation in just a century and a half. It is important for society as a whole, especially in a globalised world such as ours: the United Nations, since 2017, has adopted the Feast of St Jerome, Patron Saint of translators, as ‘International Translators Day’. It is encouraging to see that it has been deemed so important by our Salesian translators that they have felt the need to spell out their ministry through this Handbook in an effort to encourage others to take up the task.
I commend this Handbook not only to translators in the Salesian Congregation, whoever and wherever they may be, but to our Salesian Family in general, its leaders and its members.'
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