East Meets English
The International Symposium on English Translations of Byzantine Liturgical Texts
by William J. Tighe
An ecumenical Catholic and Orthodox “symposium” was held at St. Basil’s College, Stamford, Connecticut from June 17 through 20, 1998. It was jointly sponsored by The Sheptytsky Institute of Eastern Christian Studies of the Faculty of Theology, St. Paul University, Ottawa, Canada, and St. Basil’s College, both institutions of the Ukrainian Catholic Church. It brought together a hundred participants, the majority of them Byzantine Catholics from the Melkite, Ruthenian, and Ukrainian Churches, in addition to Orthodox from the Antiochian Orthodox Church, the Greek Orthodox Archdiocese, the Orthodox Church in America and the Russian Orthodox Church Outside Russia.
The scope of the symposium extended from questions of theory to those of accuracy, style, singability, and even—at least as regards the issue of inclusive language (or “horizontally” inclusive language, as the phrase ran)—ideology. It also included surveys of the English translations in use in the three major Eastern Catholic and Eastern Orthodox Churches in North America. This was the first conference on the theme, and the organizers expressed the intention of repeating it annually.
Shibboleths & Inclusive Language
The keynote address by the Reverend Professor Robert Taft, S.J., of the Pontifical Oriental Institute in Rome (himself an Eastern Catholic) dealt with translation problems with respect to liturgy, language, and ideology. He made known his dislike of “sacral,” “numinous,” or “archaic” liturgical English (as confusing obfuscation with mystery). He endorsed “horizontally” inclusive language, on the grounds that liturgical translations are for “people of today” and should be in an idiom and style most readily comprehensible to them.
He prescribed as axiomatic that the nature and style of liturgical translations should be determined by the nature of the recipient rather than the donor language, and that fidelity to the nature of the recipient language must take precedence over that to the donor. Whatever criticisms might be levied against the current International Commission on English in the Liturgy (ICEL) translation of the Latin Catholic liturgy into English, the members of the translation team had clearly set forth the principles on which they were to operate before embarking on their task—a thing unheard of among translators of Byzantine liturgical texts into English. He observed also that the very flexibility of the English language itself encouraged clumsy vocabulary and syntactical usage among people lacking a wide experience of reading and writing it.
As a problem of ideology he cited making shibboleths of mistranslations by reading into them matters of deep significance. Examples included “writing ikons” (instead of painting them), translating chram as “temple” rather than “church,” translating Theotokos as “Birthgiver” (an otherwise nonexistent English word; does one say “Good morning, Birthgiver” to one’s mother?), or basing a whole theology on the misunderstanding of “Orthodoxy” as derivative of orthos and doxa (i.e., right worship) rather than, as in truth, of orthos and dokeo (i.e., right teaching). On the issue of gender-inclusive language, he ended with the statement that it is because it gives power to the disenfranchised that it is feared and resisted by the clergy. In the subsequent discussion Archimandrite Serge Keleher noted that what Fr. Taft described as axioms might more accurately be seen as postulates.
Although the issue of inclusive language was seldom explicitly raised in the subsequent course of the conference, there appeared to be a tacit consensus—at least among the experts—that its advocates had won the day. This was in notable contrast to the related issue of traditional versus contemporary English liturgical language, in which there was also a striking contrast between the Eastern Catholics (who have almost universally gone over to the contemporary) and the Orthodox (who are still debating the issue).
A presentation on Thursday morning by Archimandrite Ephrem Lash of St. Andrew’s Monastery, Manchester, England (Greek Orthodox), the chief translator of the 1995 Oxford University Press edition of the Liturgy of St. John Chrysostom (a rendition into elegant contemporary English), dealt in some detail with “Theological and Philological Accuracy.” Beginning with 1 Peter 2:2 and the phrase to logikon adolon gala and the problematic nature of such translations as “the pure spiritual milk” or “rational milk” or “verbal milk”—not to mention the King James Version’s “pure milk of the word” that he described as an obvious attempt to twist the phrase to support the Protestant doctrine of sola scriptura—he went on to demonstrate how often the translator must choose between renditions that are problematic in one way or another.
For three hours and a half, interrupted by brief breaks and periods of discussion, Archimandrite Ephrem held his audience’s interest and involvement, not least by means of his witty or pointed asides (such as when he declared that he was not really anti-Protestant, it was just that he could never forgive the Reformers for having replaced the Christian Bible [the Septuagint] with the Hebrew one).
William J. Tighe was Professor of History at Muhlenberg College in Allentown, Pennsylvania, until his retirement in 2024. He is a member of St. Josaphat Ukrainian Catholic Church in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania.He is a senior editor for Touchstone.
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