Domine, non sum dignus ut intres sub tectum meum: sed tantum dic verbo & sanabitur anima mea, translates to the words of the Centurion who asked Christ to heal his servant. Since most of us still read the Scriptures in English, niether the words nor the source of the words should be puzzling at all.
Of course that’s what it refers to, except that
puer meus, “my boy,” has been changed to
anima mea, so whereas the Centurion was seeking healing for someone else, we’re asking it for ourselves. (It always struck me as a little odd that the Mass would rewrite a Scriptural text in that way.) My point is that for the revised translation to make sense, you have to be familiar with the Scriptural passage, and you have to understand the statement metaphorically (since Christ is not coming to our houses) rather than directly (“receive You” in Communion). That’s why I said that “on it’s face” the statement is puzzling, since it requires background knowledge and a non-literal reading to understand.
The important point is that this is just as true in the (new) English as in the Latin, so if one is to complain about anything, it should not be “This is an obscure translation” but “This part of the Mass was written obscurely.”
You are correct, Bugnini et al rewrote the Mass in many places. There is no doubt that the English translation “and also with you” is wrong.
I didn’t mention Archbishop Bugnini at all, so I don’t know where you’re coming from, and he did not write the English texts at all. I was talking about the process of translating the
editio typica of the Pauline Missal into English, not the process of developing the Pauline Missal in the first place.
And I’m afraid that it is not as simple as just to say that “and also with you” is a “wrong” translation. It’s not really a translation at all. It’s a rewriting, based on different principles about what the Mass should say and in what sort of language it should be expressed. So, for instance, we cannot simply criticize the Mass’s translation of “Mysterium fidei:” (“Let us proclaim the mystery of faith”) and complain that the translators were incompetent because the Latin does not contain any verb or connotation about proclaiming. They just decided that a longer statement with a verb would work better. Is the translation “wrong”? Well, it’s not quite a translation to begin with, so there’s not good answer. Likewise, “for all” isn’t a
bad translation of “pro multis”; it’s not a translation at all. These weren’t bloopers; they were the result of people who had different ideas about what the Mass should say.
The problem is that this hermeneutic that the composers of the English texts employed – one of rewriting, usually to enhance plainness and understandability, rather than faithfully translating the original texts – is one Rome has rejected. (Of course, Abp. Bugnini had nothing to do with this.) For people who do not know very much about the issues, I guess it may convince them to say “The translations were erroneous, so now they’re being corrected.” But the truth is more complicated: that the method used in composing the texts was improper (or has subsequently been decided to be so), and now the texts are to be translated faithfully.
Yes, liberal amounts of sarcasm introduced.
