Anyone frustrated about Medieval Latin mistranslation?

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I am sorry. I have been wading through a somewhat flawed translation of Aquinas’ Summa Contra Gentiles and have to ask. Is there anyone else out there who is frustrated with ecclesiastical or classical Latin scholars attempting to translate Medieval Latin philosophy? The vagueness of terms is making me want to bash my head up against something hard.

This is philosophy, people, not literature! Specificity of terms matter!
 
Sir I think you’ll be one of the few people on here who know Latin and therefore capable of being frustrated by translations. 🙂
 
Sorry about that. I was just hoping that there was someone else on here who could commiserate and prove to me that I wasn’t just being overly neurotic.
 
Haha no problem. Your post did make me smile. You might get lucky though… who knows. (btw how many types of Latin are there out there?)
 
Of the top of my head I can think of:
Classical Latin
Imperial Latin
Eastern Imperial Latin
Western Imperial Latin
Medieval Latin
Ecclesiastical Latin
Scientific Latin

The general vocabulary and grammar are the same, but the exact meaning of the words sometimes drift. For example, in Ecclesiastical Latin used today in the Church, terminus means end and finitum means boundary or limit whereas in Aquinas’ Medieval Latin the meanings are flipped. Finitum means end and terminus means boundary or limit.

That was the source of my frustration. The translator wrote that God’s knowledge had no limits, rather than saying that God’s knowledge was endless. In the first it seems that God simply may know anything, rather than already holding all knowledge in Himself. The second says that the knowledge which God already holds has no end.
 
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Aha that’s fair enough. In my language “a termina” means to finish and “a finaliza” means the same thing but if somebody says jokingly that something is “finitum” it means complete and “finit” simply means finite so I can totally see where you’re coming from. Sorry I think comparing languages can be interesting and I totally get why you were frustrated with that translation. I am frustrated with how the “Hail Mary” is translated in my language and also the Proclamation of Faith at Mass so yeah… I see part of the reason why it used to be Latin only
 
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I don’t know about frustrated exactly, but I do find myself trying to find as many instances of a word as I can in order to try to derive its meaning to the person who wrote it rather than to the person who ‘translated’ it. I think the last one was ‘representatio’, to find out if the original author was talking about a ‘first generation’ image of something, or a ‘copy’ of an image of something.
 
Another common translation error that I’ve seen with Aquinas is translating “probare” as “prove”. It means “test, or put to the trial”. The word for “prove” would be “demonstrare”.
 
Did you checked out the website regesta-imperii.de (or .com) …?
There are tons of edited medieval sources online for scientific research. Not always perfectly translated, but mostly well.
 
I do understand the frustrations,about various translations of Latin,but what is important to us is,accept it as given by God and to practice them and take the meaning what is closest,in God’s point of view,rather than dispute about words,lacking or additions.as said in 1 Thessalonians 2:13 We also constantly give thanks to God for this, that when you received the word of God that you heard from us, you accepted it not as a human word but as what it really is, God’s word, which is also at work in you believers.

2 Timothy 2:14 Remind them of this, and warn them before God that they are to avoid wrangling over words, which does no good but only ruins those who are listening. 15 Do your best to present yourself to God as one approved by him, a worker who has no need to be ashamed, rightly explaining the word of truth.

2 Timothy 3:16 All scripture is inspired by God and is useful for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness, 17 so that everyone who belongs to God may be proficient, equipped for every good work.

Matthew 11:25 At that time Jesus said, “I thank[a] you, Father, Lord of heaven and earth, because you have hidden these things from the wise and the intelligent and have revealed them to infants;
 
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I had a friend-of-a-friend who was translating some Renaissance fencing manuals. He was really puzzled, because there was a snippet that went, “Replace your foot”, but it didn’t say what to exchange it with. It took him a bit to realize that it meant “Put your foot back” (aka re-place) rather than “Put something else where your foot was” (aka replace).

So I can definitely understand that it would be a thousand times harder in philosophy, where the cues that “my first understanding just doesn’t make sense!” are far more subtle. 🙂
 
I understand about the transcendent nature of the scriptures. My frustration is not geared towards those. I am speaking about texts authored in the middle ages which are then translated by scholars who are familiar with a different form of Latin. Specifically in philosophy, exact wording is very important and the importance of preserving the original meaning of a phrase is paramount. Their unfamilitarity with the usage of the language within the context of that time period can cause great confusion when attempting to explain a philosophical point of view. Quite often it causes more problems than it solves.

What makes Medieval Latin so difficult is that it is in this time period that you begin to see words from other languages directly imported into the Latin and ‘Latinized’ to fit.
 
I don’t think it’s rare to be frustrated at some translations if you know it to be pretty bad.
 
I once read an eighteenth century French account of a running race between a student and a pomegranate tree.
On closer inspection, he turned out to be a Grenadier.
 
Which translation are you using?
Rickaby SJ is considered among the best - he also provides good commentary.

Have you studied Aristotle as well?

If not how do you expect to understand even well translated Latin. Many of the words are technical jargon anyways using philosophy coming from Greek texts.

It is a bit naiive to expect you will understand the whole system from the meaning of single words even by studying the most accurate of translations. You will also need a commentary at least.

But really, just do a Uni paper on Aquinas. Autodidacticism only takes an individual so far.
 
BlackFriar said:
But really, just do a Uni paper on Aquinas. Autodidacticism only takes an individual so far.
Click to expand...
Ironically, autodidacticism is what I am trying to remedy. I came across these issues because someone came to me with questions which arose during his own self studies of Aquinas and I am attempting to clarify points he raised with regards to Aquinas’ view vs. modern concepts.

When I was going through my philosophy studies a few years ago, my specialization was in Aquinas. I have studied the commentaries and Aristotle. My primary professor heavily used the Latin instead of translation because of disparity of terms from one translation to the next. I am currently in the Philippines and my religious house doesn’t have philosophy texts readily available so I am trying to cite my sources with anything I can get my hands on. I am using the online version of Rickaby, but in the chapter on infinity which I am attempting to explain, he sometimes attempts to bring the language of Aquinas into modern philosophical terms such as finitum as ‘limited’ instead of Aquinas’ original usage of the word as ‘ended’. This is causing some problems in the explanation because it is automatically bringing forth ideas on the part of the person who originally asked for my help on what ‘limited’ means drawn from later philosophers.
 
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Its a quagmire alright.
Really, unless you wish to become his medium term private tutor there is nothing you can do I suggest. He needs to bite the bullet and get a qualification himself rather than believe he can learn in a lonely “text proofing” fashion. That is what “schools” are for. No one person can learn it alone at this level!

I studied specialising in Aquinas at A Dominican House of studies for six years. While I am not a novice I am still a “student”.
 
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