New Translations of Lectionary & Psalms
  • discenaj
    Posts: 16
    Internet has some postings about new English translations of Lectionary & Psalms for UK Roman Catholics --- any news of when we in the US may be switching to a new translation ? Thx
  • CantorCole
    Posts: 69
    The Abbey Psalms and Canticles are already published, but the newest revision of the New American Bible is still being worked on.
    Thanked by 1discenaj
  • Andrew_Malton
    Posts: 1,189
    ... NAB ... so much to revise ...
    Thanked by 4Liam tomjaw CharlesW discenaj
  • discenaj
    Posts: 16
    Thanks everyone --- Initial statements from USCCB forecast a new translation & edition of the Lectionary & Psalms "as early as 2025" --- in an email from them this week, it's now "several years away" ---
    Thanked by 1ServiamScores
  • ServiamScores
    Posts: 2,912
    “I’ll believe it when I see it.”
    Thanked by 2CharlesW mattebery
  • Dixit_Dominus_44
    Posts: 195
    Looks like 2029 (?) at the earliest:

    https://www.ccwatershed.org/2023/01/13/new-lectionary-for-the-usa-coming-in-2028/

    When I wrote to the secretariat of divine worship a few weeks ago, the answer provided was that they had not even started (!) work on the Old Testament.
    Thanked by 2ServiamScores lmassery
  • ServiamScores
    Posts: 2,912
    I don’t know why they even bothered to announce it so early, if it was in such a nascent stage of development. It’s one thing to say, “final revisions; will be in a year (or two)”. But to announce it like it’s happening very soon but still be a decade out? Caused all sorts of headaches and alarm for no good reason. Pity.
    Thanked by 3lmassery mattebery LauraKaz
  • bhcordovabhcordova
    Posts: 1,167
    I wrote the USCCB about the new version of the NAB and was told that they were waiting on approval for liturgical use. That would seem to indicate that the translation was finished.
  • Liam
    Posts: 5,116
    The lections in the lectionary are adapted from the NAB in a number of ways (for example: a pericope that takes as its starting verse "He said" in the NAB gets adapted as "Jesus said"), and that process is an additional one. It's not simply a matter of publishing a new edition of a bible and then having it approved for liturgical use.
  • Dixit_Dominus_44
    Posts: 195
    I don’t know why they even bothered to announce it so early, if it was in such a nascent stage of development.


    If this were the very first time anybody had ever done anything like this before, that would be one thing. But this dopiness has gone on for 70 years. The 3rd edition of the Roman Missal took eleven years to translate into English; and we look like a laughingstock because of it.
    Thanked by 1ServiamScores
  • CharlesW
    Posts: 11,985
    Incompetency R' Us
    Thanked by 1tomjaw
  • a_f_hawkins
    Posts: 3,478
    Well yes, but it took the CDWDS six years to discover most of the errors in the 2002 3rd edition of the Roman Missal and produce a corrected 2008 version of the Latin !
    “The Catholic Church is an institution I am bound to hold divine – but for unbelievers a proof of its divinity might be found in the fact that no merely human institution conducted with such knavish imbecility would have lasted a fortnight” Belloc
    Thanked by 3Paul F. Ford ServiamScores tomjaw
  • Liam
    Posts: 5,116
    We still don't have an English translation of the Roman Martyrology's 2004 Latin typical edition, which had been revised for the 2000 Jubilee....
    Thanked by 2ServiamScores tomjaw
  • Dixit_Dominus_44
    Posts: 195
    The lections in the lectionary are adapted from the NAB in a number of ways (for example: a pericope that takes as its starting verse "He said" in the NAB gets adapted as "Jesus said"), and that process is an additional one. It's not simply a matter of publishing a new edition of a bible and then having it approved for liturgical use.


    Are you suggesting they’ve already done their new translation and are simply adapting for the liturgy? Where can one buy this new book & what is it called?

  • smvanroodesmvanroode
    Posts: 1,000
    If this were the very first time anybody had ever done anything like this before, that would be one thing. But this dopiness has gone on for 70 years. The 3rd edition of the Roman Missal took eleven years to translate into English; and we look like a laughingstock because of it.


    Don’t worry too much about looking like a laughingstock. In the Netherlands we’re still waiting for the new Missal translation. 22 years later, it’s still not ready...
    Thanked by 3a_f_hawkins tomjaw CharlesW
  • tomjaw
    Posts: 2,789
    Genesis 11, 1-9
    And the earth was of one tongue, and of the same speech. And when they removed from the east, they found a plain in the land of Sennaar, and dwelt in it. And each one said to his neighbour: Come, let us make brick, and bake them of stones, and slime instead of mortar. And they said: Come, let us make a city and a tower, the top whereof may reach to heaven: and let us make our name famous before we be scattered abroad into all lands. And the Lord came down to see the city and the tower, which the children of Adam were building. And he said: Behold, it is one people, and all have one tongue: and they have begun to do this, neither will they leave off from their designs, till they accomplish them in deed. Come ye, therefore, let us go down, and there may not understand one another's speech. And so the Lord scattered them from that place into all lands, and they ceased to build the city. And therefore the name thereof was called Babel, because there the language of the whole earth was confounded: and from thence the Lord scattered them abroad upon the face of all countries.
  • smt
    Posts: 65
    Don’t worry too much about looking like a laughingstock. In the Netherlands we’re still waiting for the new Missal translation. 22 years later, it’s still not ready...


    Same for Germany... so much for "Land der Dichter und Denker". But it's mostly politics, they don't want to translate "pro multis" accurately.
    Thanked by 1tomjaw
  • a_f_hawkins
    Posts: 3,478
    translate "pro multis" accurately
    Well it's not 'for all', that's theologically true, but not what was said..
    At the Last Supper Jesus presumably spoke in Aramaic, we have his words in Greek τὸ περὶ πολλῶν ἐκχυννόμενον, which uses 'polloi'. The current uses of 'polloi' are -
    Definition of hoi polloi
    as in public
    the body of the community as contrasted with the elite
    "I pay no attention to the opinions of the hoi polloi," the writer sniffed
    from https://www.merriam-webster.com/thesaurus/hoi polloi
    In the Mass we have the words translated into Latin
    In the course of a very long entry in Lewis&Short we find https://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text?doc=Perseus:text:1999.04.0059:entry=multus
    —multi , ōrum, m., the many, the common mass, the multitude: probis probatus potius, quam multis forem, Att. ap. Non. 519, 9: “video ego te, mulier, more multarum utier,” id. ib.—Esp.: unus e (or de) multis, one of the multitude, a man of no distinction: “tenuis L. Virginius unusque e multis,” Cic. Fin. 2, 20, 62: “unus de multis esse,” id. Off. 1, 30, 109: M. Calidius non fuit orator unus e multis; “potius inter multos prope singularis fuit,” id. Brut. 79, 274: “numerarer in multis,” among the herd of orators, id. ib. 97, 333: “e multis una sit tibi,” no better than others, Ov. R. Am. 682:

    I am happy to see that in the current Missal in French it uses "pour la multitude". I wish that we would do so in English instead of the ungrammatical "for many", or at least the we should use "for the many"
    Thanked by 3tomjaw Paul F. Ford Liam
  • GambaGamba
    Posts: 548
    What is a disappointment to me is that the English-speaking countries continue to reinvent the wheel. We all have one translation of the Missal to use, so I see no reason the UK, India, Canada, and the US could not also share one lectionary. In our field especially, it would be a tremendous blessing and save so much wasted labour – I in Canada would not need to compose, say, a psalm refrain, when I know someone in the UK has already written one more beautiful to the UK version of the same text.
  • Liam
    Posts: 5,116
    Gamba

    But then, non-Americans in the Anglosphere might be subjected to American tastes in religious music. (/s)

    The thing is, commercial publishers & bishops (at least American bishops) tend to be remorseless pragmatists (with a subset of of abstract idealists), such that I don't think the American Catholic church is capable of anything like the American Episcopal church did with the 1940 Hymnal (itself building upon the landmark 1906 English Hymnal) and 1982 Hymnal. At least Episcopalians studying the idea of a successor to the 1982 Hymnal have candidly admitted the cross-cutting shift of terrain in the last 40+ years (this is worth a read even for Catholics considering the notion of a national hymnal: https://prod.cpg.org/globalassets/documents/publications/report-hymnal-revision-feasibility-study.pdf)
    Thanked by 1Paul F. Ford
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