Translation work and Gay Marriage - To Translate their 'marriage' certificate or not?

  • Thread starter Thread starter TorresE
  • Start date Start date
Status
Not open for further replies.
T

TorresE

Guest
Hello All,

This is the first time I am asking and question/creating a new thread. I am an Australian university student but at home my dad and I run a small home-based official NAATI Accredited translation business (Spanish<->English).

My question is: What to do if a homosexual sends their ‘marriage’ certificate to us for it to be translated? As Catholics should we proceed as any other translation project or should we reject it, just like we would reject to work on documents which are of offensive or illegal material (or against the Church for that matter)? Also what if the person sends us the ‘marriage’ certificate as one of many other documents (e.g. birth certificate, drivers licence, academic papers, etc…), should we tell him/her to find some other translator for the whole set of documents or just for the ‘marriage’ certificate? (Well, in the latter case I would image the potential client seeking someone else for the whole project, but anyway, hypothetically.)

Such a document has never come to us, but with the equal marriage movement having more influence now, I fear, it might be likely to come across such a ‘marriage’ certificate in the near future.

Thank you and God bless you,
Ave Maria,
Eric
 
TorresE said:
Hello All,

This is the first time I am asking and question/creating a new thread. I am an Australian university student but at home my dad and I run a small home-based official NAATI Accredited translation business (Spanish<->English).

My question is: What to do if a homosexual sends their ‘marriage’ certificate to us for it to be translated? As Catholics should we proceed as any other translation project or should we reject it, just like we would reject to work on documents which are of offensive or illegal material (or against the Church for that matter)? Also what if the person sends us the ‘marriage’ certificate as one of many other documents (e.g. birth certificate, drivers licence, academic papers, etc…), should we tell him/her to find some other translator for the whole set of documents or just for the ‘marriage’ certificate? (Well, in the latter case I would image the potential client seeking someone else for the whole project, but anyway, hypothetically.)

Such a document has never come to us, but with the equal marriage movement having more influence now, I fear, it might be likely to come across such a ‘marriage’ certificate in the near future.

Thank you and God bless you,
Ave Maria,
Eric
Click to expand...
The Catholic Church does not recognise same-sex marriage. Nor does the Catholic Church recognise marriage between two divorced people. Would you translate a marriage certificate for two divorced people?

rossum
 
Thank you for your reply rossum.

I do understand the Church’s teaching in regards to same sex ‘Marriage’ and I am in complete agrement with them.

To answer your question, yes, we have in the past translated documents of divorced people but we never real given thought about it. Your reply has made us think. Is it your view that we should stop translating divorced certificates also? Have we done something wrong or even sinful? :confused:

There is a difference between commiting a sin and serving a sinful person (e.g. giving a sinful person some water). In translating such above mentioned documents, do we do act in somesort of unformal material co-operation in the ‘marriage’ or divorce? Please correct if wrong, but is unformal material in a sinful act a sin, our understanding is that it is not? Or have we missed the point? :confused:

Note: The are some marriage certificates that does not state if the couple (either of the parties) were married before.

Thanks again, God bless you,
Ave Maria,
Eric
 
TorresE said:
Thank you for your reply rossum.

I do understand the Church’s teaching in regards to same sex ‘Marriage’ and I am in complete agrement with them.

To answer your question, yes, we have in the past translated documents of divorced people but we never real given thought about it. Your reply has made us think. Is it your view that we should stop translating divorced certificates also? Have we done something wrong or even sinful? :confused:

There is a difference between commiting a sin and serving a sinful person (e.g. giving a sinful person some water). In translating such above mentioned documents, do we do act in somesort of unformal material co-operation in the ‘marriage’ or divorce? Please correct if wrong, but is unformal material in a sinful act a sin, our understanding is that it is not? Or have we missed the point? :confused:

Note: The are some marriage certificates that does not state if the couple (either of the parties) were married before.

Thanks again, God bless you,
Ave Maria,
Eric
Click to expand...
If you look at the top right of my posts, you will see that I am Buddhist. Hence I cannot advise you on what Catholic doctrine is. For that I suggest you talk to your parish priest.

My point is that civil marriage and Catholic marriage already differ in a number of points: divorcees etc. A marriage certificate pertains to civil marriage only, not necessarily to Catholic marriage. Think of it more as a legal document relating to a contract in civil law.

rossum
 
Okay, Thank you anyway rossum.

If there are any Catholics which comes across this thread and have any comment/advice, please post. Thank you.

God bless you,
Ave Maria,
Eric
 
As a translator, you are not being asked to sanction their attempt at marriage, you are simply being asked to translate a legal document from one language to another. All you are doing is saying that this particular document says these specific words, dates, etc. You are in no way whatsoever giving approval or disapproval to the event which was documented. There is no sin in telling someone what the document says. You are in no way cooperating with any sin of the people who are asking you to translate that legal document.
 
I’m struggling to think of any other instance where you would refuse to translate a government document that was “illegal or offensive”.
 
The document is a legal certificate. I would say you can translate it with no fear of sin. If it said somewhere on the document that the Catholic Church has sanctioned the union, THEN it would be immoral to have anything to do with it. But it has nothing to do with the Church. Nothing has changed in the Church’s stance on gay “marriage.” However, legal authorities are separate from the Church. No, it should not be legal but in some places, it is.

Why don’t you just pray for the people involved as you do the translation?

🙂
 
Thank you juno24 for your relpy. You have cleared up much of our minds.

You are quite right in saying that we don’t give approval or otherwise to the acts recored in the documents. In fact we have to be transparent and impartial in the most possible, so the the translation is a faithful reflection of the original document. I suppose a good example is that as translators we really don’t know if the doument sent to us is even real, that is the prerogative of the govenment or other body to check when the client pressents his/her documents to them (translation plus originals), so all we do is make them as faithful as possible, usually in summary format. Following this example, if a person fakes a degree and we translate it, it would not be a sin for we don’t approval or disapprove the students graduation or even the say anything regarding the authenticity of the degree.

So I suppose I can think of such ‘marriage’ certificates and divorce documents in a similar way. We simply do a faithful translation, we don’t agree with the act recored.

More views on this topic most welcomed.

Once again, many thanks and God bless you,
Ave Maria,
Eric
 
Thank you chepner3.

As a translators based in Australia, we are not employed by the government (as is the case in other countries) so even though we have govenment accreditation, we are not public servants and thus work as freelances with govenment approval to produce offical translations. In that way, people approch us needing translations, most of them are standard identification documents but at times were have done reports, personal letters, articles, speeches, etc… So what I was saying was in the case that an anti-Catholic or other kind of crazy person requested a translation of their matterial. For example, we would reject translations projects of Jehovah Witness’ Watchtowers or plans to do a criminal act (in that case we would have to pass the documents to the authorities).

Ave Maria,
Eric
 
juno24 said:
As a translator, you are not being asked to sanction their attempt at marriage, you are simply being asked to translate a legal document from one language to another. All you are doing is saying that this particular document says these specific words, dates, etc. You are in no way whatsoever giving approval or disapproval to the event which was documented. There is no sin in telling someone what the document says. You are in no way cooperating with any sin of the people who are asking you to translate that legal document.
Click to expand...
Amen 👍

Also, consider 1 Corinthians 9-12. It tells us that we need to be “in the world.” Our problem isn’t with non-believers … actually, it’s with fellow believers. I guess I’d think twice about translating for a “Catholic” who brought you any of those documents. But people who aren’t Catholics? Be a light, not rude nor obnoxious. :cool:

1 Cor
9 I wrote to you in my letter not to associate with sexually immoral people— 10 not at all meaning the people of this world who are immoral, or the greedy and swindlers, or idolaters. In that case you would have to leave this world. 11 But now I am writing to you that you must not associate with anyone who claims to be a brother or sister but is sexually immoral or greedy, an idolater or slanderer, a drunkard or swindler. Do not even eat with such people.

12 What business is it of mine to judge those outside the church? Are you not to judge those inside? 13 God will judge those outside. “Expel the wicked person from among you.”
 
Thank you TheRealJuliane.

The Church is the pillar of Faith and Truth so it can never change it’s stance, not in this issue or any other; God can never change his mind for He’s all knowing. But governmets don’t work that way unfortuantelly and only do what will get them the most votes, so if gay votes and their supporters wish to get equal ‘marriage’, it easy for the goverment to install such as they already the regestry and the staff so no extra expensses for them

Praying for the documents holders is a very nice idea. We shall do that. Thank you for reminding us of the power and importance of prayer, even at work.

Once again thank you,
Ave Maria,
Eric
 
I think you have the right balance.

A legal document simply records a legal state that will continue to exist whether or not you choose to translate the document itself. You lend no co-operation to the sin because that state is not affected by your translation work.

And, quite rightly, translating a proselytising document for another faith would be one step too far because you would be lending material assistance to someone who’d use that to spread untruths.

For other situations, say, if you were asked to translate a document for a legal case that was to be used in evidence in order that someone might win an immoral judgement (about abortion, for example), again you could recuse yourself on the basis that you would not be acting for them in that capacity against your conscience. I would go so far as to refuse to participate in translating a witness’s spoken words in a live court situation in that sort of context, since I could not guarantee being an impartial translator.
 
Thank you LPS.

You are right. Our problem is with fellow Catholics which do not accept the Faith and truth fully and wish to do with it whatever they wish.

Maybe we should test Catholics before doing their translations of Church documents (e.g. Confirmation certificates or First Holy Communion Certificates). :cool: Such a good idea but a tad impractical unfortunatelly.

Thank you once again, God bless you,
Ave Maria,
Eric

PS. Thank you all again for your great and informative posts.
 
Thank you DexUK,

I also think our great poster here gave a good balance in their posts to my question. Every time I check this thread I find more great posts.

That is true, we can’t trun back time so what is recorded in such a document can be undone no matter how much we might wish to. The sinful act has already been commited.

I would have to agree with you, in cases in which the professional can’t act in a professional manner due to not being able to be impartial, as per your example of the court cast of an immoral act, the professional needs to act according to the code of ethics and reject such a project.

Just a technical note: Translation is in regards to the written word, and interpreting is in regards to the spoken words, so in your case example you missed use the term ‘translating’ for the court witness’ spoken words. Just something I can pick up as in the translation/interpreting industry, but not to worry as clients always get it mixed up.

Once again many thanks,
God bless you,
Ave Maria,
Eric
 
TorresE said:
Just a technical note: Translation is in regards to the written word, and interpreting is in regards to the spoken words, so in your case example you missed use the term ‘translating’ for the court witness’ spoken words. Just something I can pick up as in the translation/interpreting industry, but not to worry as clients always get it mixed up.
Click to expand...
I learned something new today! 🙂
 
Status
Not open for further replies.
Back
Top