Catholic Music: It’s Time to Stop Making Stuff Up

[DaveBj]

I know that’s true, but it still makes me cringe when we sing a hymn I’ve known since childhood and I find that OCP has changed the words to eliminate all the masculine pronouns referencing God.

Not to mention changing the Elizabethan 2nd-person pronouns to modern ones, which sometimes wrecks the rhyme schemes. I sing the old lyrics that I remember.

D

 

[pnewton]

It kind of defeats the point of being so meticulous about the new translation in the first place.

I agree, except I have no problem at all with this. Translation is not just about strict literal substitution. Some of these parts are songs, and make good songs in Hebrew (as in the Psalms) but are clunky if translated too literally. As long as error is in injected and a translation is just as close, I do not mind it being somewhat dynamic. In fact, some idioms make literal translation harder to understand, and thus a poorer translation.

So we put some parts into song because that is how they are meant to be proclaimed.