Dear All,
There is a very healthy critical approach to Salesian terminology out there in the Salesian world, and certainly within our EAO Region... I mean by people who have a vested interest in ensuring that we get things right, especially where the charism is at stake.
So this week I would like to share with you some ongoing debates happening in real time (well, one, the Best Practice, now goes back 4 years, but the issues are still real enough). And of course, if you have some questions or issues of your own, why not share them in this newsletter, since there are many competent translators among the recipients of this newsletter who can offer an opinion! Only just this week, as you know, we had to sort out the terminology for the document on the Province Mission Offices (and here may I make a request: if you have already translated, or intend to translate this document, could you please send it to me in your language so it can be added to SDL). And, by the way, in the email I sent you with that document, I mentioned that it “has a long history, beginning with Fr Basañes during his term of office as General Councillor for the Missions.” The General Councillor the Missions who preceded Fr Basañes has kindly pointed out that the history is rather longer, and goes back to a Seminar in Bonn held in 2012, entitled The Provincial Mission office at the service of the Salesian charism.
Okay, so here is a little discussion that has taken place these past few weeks between myself and Fr Michal Vojtas, who has just completed his term as Vice-Rector of the UPS and is also the one who is developing AI within the salesian.online website. The background to this is that I mentioned to him that to describe the UPS in English as ‘Salesian Pontifical University’ seems a bit triumphalistic on our part, and that it should be ‘Pontifical Salesian University’ instead: Over to Michal:
“...As far as the UPS terminology goes, there is also a debate about the Italian term – there is Università Pontificia Salesiana but the Gregorian is Pontificia Università Gregoriana. The explanation I heard is that our guys in the 70s, when UPS was founded, wanted to put an emphasis on the subject “Università” then the broad adjective “Pontificia” and the specific defining adjective “Salesiana”. If this might be the right interpretation, would that translate to Salesian Pontifical University?”
And my reply:
“A couple of comments about this UPS title.
1. I would need to say first of all that I am not competent to speak about how it should be phrased in Italian, since in grammatical terms it might be true to say that the positioning of the noun and its adjectives has a basis in Italian grammar that I am less familiar with... we know that adjectives quite regularly follow the noun but not always... povero uomo means something slightly different to uomo povero, and it is possible that the broadest adjective comes before the more specific one, ending up, in the case you speak about, as Università Pontificia Salesiana. Because Italian often regards last position in a sentence or phrase as the one that receives greater emphasis, this might be correct, and closest to what the native Italian speaker regards as the correct order.
What I am competent to say is that in English the rules are a little different (which I will explain in 3 below).
2. From another perspective, however, I would not accept the explanation given above by Salesians from the 70s. The UPS was initially the PAS ... Pontificio Ateneo Salesiano, and indeed it was an 'Ateneo' which THEN received pontifical status. So PAS was correct in my opinion and therefore perhaps once it became a 'university' it should have been PUS... they would have wanted to avoid that acronym at all costs, because it is not a nice word, certainly in English, but I'm sure it is also a medical term in Italian! So you can very well accept why it became UPS in Italian and I think the argument has little to do with adjective position as such and more to do with sound and semantics!
3. In English we have what is called the Royal Order of Adjectives which goes something like this:
Quantity Opinion Size Age Shape Colour Origin/Material Qualifier Noun Of course, most people do not learn this in school and would not know such a technical term as the Royal Order of Adjectives! But I am speaking as a linguist. Native speakers of English just ‘know’ intuitively, or more properly put, from experience of speaking and listening, what is the right and wrong order. But if we want to use the kind of argument you have mentioned (broad-specific), then we would argue as follows in English:
‘An old brick house’ NOT ‘a brick old house’. Age qualifiers come before the more specific origin/material qualifiers.
The more specific adjective (brick), therefore, has to appear closest to the noun it is describing.
So, apply that rule to our university, and the ‘Italian’ reasoning you gave means a different position in English for the adjective:
Pontifical Salesian University, because the most specific adjective (and also the place where the native speaker senses the greatest emphasis), is the adjective closest to the noun, in this case ‘Salesian’. It is also by origin a Salesian university, but it was given a particular ecclesial colour or flavour (in a metaphorical sense of course) which is ‘pontifical’, and which it shares with all the other pontifical institutes: so my reasoning follows the Royal Order of Adjectives! I think the other pontifical institutes in Rome have got it right, and I assume they have done so on the same basis (Pontifical Urban... Pontifical Gregorian.... Pontifical Lateran... etc.) and we have got it wrong! At least in English. I stand by my earlier proposal that it be Pontifical Salesian University in English, regardless of what is said in Italian. Leave the Italians to argue the case for their order of adjectives in this situation, but I recommend that it be on some recognised linguistic basis, rather than some other whim. Helpful? I hope so.”
You will be pleased to know that the response to this has been an acceptance of the argument above and a promise to try to see that it is implemented in practice in any English language reference to the title... though of course, we know that Rome was not built in a day!
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The Best Practice comes from a well-known senior Salesian in the EAO Region, Fr Fei (aka Fedrigotti). You will note that it is some 10 pages worth. Now, don't feel obliged to read all 10 pages, but do note that he raises important issues. This was written in 2020 and at the time the SED (Salesian Encyclopaedic Dictionary) included the glossary from the Youth Ministry Framework... which Fr Fei takes strong exception to when it comes to certain words like ‘settore’, ‘ambiente’... I subsequently removed that particular glossary, thus resolving that problem! And when a small group of Salesians from the English-speaking world met (online) to revise the English translation of the Constitutions and Regulations, we took Fr Fei's comments into account at various points, so hopefully the issues he raises there were resolved too (though I disagree with him regarding the use of educative-pastoral: see his comment in 2.3.1 of the attached document, but we can leave this one to another discussion).
I believe it is worth including his entire excursus here because it is an example of a ‘best practice’: if someone has some terminological issue they feel needs to be discussed and resolved, then they write to the appropriate person, offer a rational argument for a choice, and ask for some response! You can't get any better practice than that!
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The mentions of biblical translation in the past couple of newsletters have brought responses from several readers, which shows that this is definitely a topic of interest. Fr Gianni Caputa, from Bethlehem, has sent this link on updates from the École Biblique:
https://mailchi.mp/bibletraditions/bibleart-les-nouvelles-du-chantier?e=c34426d045
It is in French, but you can always find a way to translate it online if your French is not up to scratch???? And you will enjoy David's Dance, no doubt. A very good example of semiotic translation!
best_practice_24-Terminology.docx
