THE "NEW" ROMAN MISSAL
Starting this Sunday (which is also the First Sunday of Advent, the beginning of the new calendar year of the Church) 27 November 2011, Catholics in the United States will begin using the long-awaited English translation of the Roman Missal. The rest of the Catholics in the different parts of the globe will follow suit by Advent next year 2012.
The changes to be implemented include new responses by the people in about a dozen sections of the Mass, although changes in the words used by the celebrant are much more extensive. At several points during the Mass, for example, when the celebrant says, "The Lord be with you," the people will respond, in a more faithful translation of the original Latin, "And with your spirit."
Sister Janet Baxendale, a Sister of Charity of New York who teaches liturgy at St. Joseph Seminary in Dunwoodie, N.Y., and its Institute of Religious Studies, is a consultant to the bishops' Committee on Divine Worship. She said the new translation has been needed for a long time.
When the Second Vatican Council endorsed a new missal and permitted Catholics around the world to begin celebrating Mass in their local languages, the translation work that followed "was at its best a rush job," she said. The Vatican's translation principles at the time also favored "a looser construction, with the thought that in this way it could be adapted to various people more readily," she added.
"As time went on, it became evident that ... in many instances, the richness and power of the Latin text didn't really come through," Sister Janet said. "This was true of all the translations, not just the English." The new translation offers "more poetic texts, more beautiful texts," she said.
Father Hilgartner said Pope Benedict XVI has placed his own personal stamp on the liturgical changes by adding two new options for the dismissal prayer at the end of Mass, emphasizing the "connection between the Mass and living the Christian life." In place of the current "The Mass is ended, go in peace," celebrants will be able to choose from four options, including the pope's suggestions -- "Go and announce the Gospel of the Lord" and "Go in peace, glorifying the Lord by your life."
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Heres my personal take on it. First, I think its worth mentioning that we are not strictly going "back to the original literal translations and traditions"; we are simply dealing with a translation of a newer Latin version of the liturgical texts. Some latin translators claim that this “new” mass translation is closer to the latin original which Roman Catholics have used for more than 1,500 years prior to its translation using each country’s vernacular after vatican II. If that’s the case, then the “new”roman missal which Catholics will start using in the US this Sunday is actually “old” or "older" than the english mass translation which english speaking countries have been using since the mass was first translated to english in the 1960s. Technically, the “new” roman missal is not a "literal" translation but one that more closely approximates the wording and sentence structure of the Latin, in comparison of course with the one we have become so accustomed with.
We all know that any translation is not really perfect and cannot be too exact for it has to deal with the questions of authenticity and clarity. Take for example the beautiful filipino word “gigil.” How do you translate “gigil” in english? See what I mean? A strict literal translation of "dominus vobiscum" and "et cum spiritu tuo" would be "the Lord you with" and "and with spirit your"; neither phrase makes sense in English because our sentence structure is different. The struggle in translation is to find wording that not only provides clarity and captures the concepts in the original text but also inspire authentic understanding to users of the second language. If a translation fails to do this, it is a poor translation, whether it is of Homer's Illiad, Dante's Divine Comedy or of the Roman Llturgy.
Many language and bible scholars believe the english roman missal we have been using for three decades now have weeknesses and problems in translation as per reference to the original latin. So to “fix” it, a “new” roman missal translation was made. From what I read, the missal transalation, announced by Pope John Paul II in 2000 and first published in Latin in 2002, has undergone a lengthy and rigorous translation process through the International Commission on English in the Liturgy, followed by sometimes heated discussions over particular wording at the United States Catholic Conference of Bishops’ general assemblies during much of the past decade. :))
On a final note, methinks it's not a question of "obedience" for Catholics to want a translation that speaks clearly in their language and that inspires them to worship. Another tradition we have is that all the baptized are members of Christ's body, sharing in the mission of the Church, and all have not only a right but a responsibility to exercise our offices of priest, prophet and king. Perhaps those who are calling for a better translation are simply exercising their prophetic role as they are called to do.
For further clarifications, you may want to read:
http://revisedromanmissal.org/
http://allsoulschurchssf.org/content/new-mass-translation.