Dear All,
This week’s focus is an important one, and I am seeking your help; indeed, the Congregation is seeking your help. So please read the Best Practice (yes I know it is 12 pages or thereabouts, but it needs to be) and if you have something you feel you can comment on, then please do. It can only get better with your help. Since it focuses on the issue raised in what will be the RM GC29 Report (so obviously a Centre-focused perspective), maybe you can best comment on it from your perspective well away from the Centre as you either deal directly with translation or are in need of such from time to time.
This document will be in the hands of Fr Martoglio (who is aware that there is a need for solutions) and members of the General Council in time for their upcoming General Council ‘winter’ session, so here is your opportunity to contribute. A very generous reader of this newsletter has offered to adjust my Italian version of it to ensure it sounds ‘native’ (but only the English original is attached here).
I have shared it with various individuals around the world so far (including 'full-time' Salesian translators) and have received any number of helpful comments, ideas... so don't be shy, you too will have good ideas!
Here are a couple of the comments so far:
- “Could we 'format' it in the listening-interpreting-choosing (discernment way)? I will try to read and reflect in this way”. [And you will see that I have done precisely that]
- “I am aware that I do a lot of things, but I have sometimes wondered why my language skills have never been used. There was a stage when I was fluent in French, German, and Italian”. [Brave man! He just might get asked to put those language skills to use!]
- “Grazie a te di preoccuparti anche con gli altri traduttori... ” [Someone else who occasionally feels a bit under siege, no doubt]
- “I've carefully reviewed the entire document. It is a wonderful piece of work, and necessary. I hope that it will result in at least some practical steps on the part of our superiors.” [a Salesian working with one of the Sectors who is forever looking for good translators in various languages]
- “I think that we can build and, more important, share an official glossary with Salesian terms… so many times I have to correct (and so many times I saw mistakes in ANS, in sdb.org or even in official documents) some terms that are common in our language. Some examples: translation of “Province”, the fact that now we are Sectors and not Dicasteries/departments, some translated words that is better to use always the same to spread the consciousness, like “Volontariat” in French and not “bénévolat”… [an Italian layman who is fully engaged in translation work (into Italian). He has now received a copy of SED!]
best_practice_40-Translating_the_charism.docx
