traduttore is Italian for “translator”.
traditore is Italian for “traitor”.
It’s a great expression. It sums up so much so concisely and unforgettably. It calls attention to the tremendous challenges of effectively and correctly translating from one language to another.
Within the same language, it’s possible to mistake one word for a similar other (that’s the play on words in the title above).
Every language has words or phrases without an exact one-word-to-one-word equivalent to another. (That’s most of what we mean by “idioms” — and if you mistranslate idioms are you an “idiot”?)
There also can be a translation problem within the same language, since — like all things — languages change, develop, and evolve with the passage of time.
I have a vague childhood memory of a meaningless lyric, “Flat Foot Floozie (with a Floy Floy)”. Now I know it was the title of a 1938 song. “Floozie” was slang then for a sexually promiscuous woman, and “floy floy”, for a venereal disease.
Sometimes you may have had difficulties understanding Shakespeare — he used a lot of contemporary slang, too!
From the ridiculous to the sublime, how about understanding and translating the Bible and other documents of the Church?
Most of the Jewish scriptures (“Old Testament”) were written in Hebrew, but some parts were in Greek.
The Christian scriptures (“New Testament”), as we have them, are in Greek, although many biblical scholars hold that some may have been translated from an Aramaic original.
The early Church spoke, wrote, and prayed in Greek, the common spoken language of the Greek and eastern Roman empires.
Latin, the common language of the Romans, began to be used instead of Greek for church liturgy, law, and official communications from the fifth century.
From ecclesiastical history, we know that many of the early divisions of the one Church were rooted in ethnic, cultural, and, especially, linguistic misunderstandings.
Translating key theological expressions from the Greek into the Latin was challenging and sometimes inadequate. Thanks be to God, in the ecumenical climate of the latter 20th century, most of these linguistic misunderstandings, inadequate translations, and theological controversies have been resolved.
The Church of Rome took over 400 years to switch finally from Greek to the Latin vernacular language.
It took it over 1,500 years to switch entirely from Latin to the various spoken vernacular languages of the modern world.
“Traduttore, traditore” — translation is always challenging. For example:
– Regarding translating the Bible into English, some still favor familiar Elizabethan English usages (e.g., the King James Bible), even if dated, over contemporary English.
– Regarding translating the Mass into English, some favor fidelity to Latin style and structure (i.e. our current text), even if less intelligible to the majority of present-day speakers of English.
The proud construction of that tower, later known as Babel, was really seriously punished by God: “Come, let us go down and there confuse their language, so that no one will understand the speech of another.” (Ge 11:7).
13 September 2020