On Thursday, the DDF issued a document called Venite ad me, (“Come unto me”, from Matt. 11, 28) subtitled “Considerations on the Transmission of the Faith in the Change of Epoch.” Assuming the Italian text to be the original, the official English version slightly bungles this subtitle as “in an Epochal Change”; the French, Spanish, Portuguese and German versions all agree with the Italian. And there is another interesting translation error which was just brought to my attention.
The document refers three times to the Paschal candle, in paragraphs 27, 33 and 140-141, and compares the passing of “the light of Christ” from the candle to one person, and from him to another, and so on, to the transmission of the Faith from one person to another. But in the last of these, it speaks of “the lighting of the paschal candle and its placement on the altar, following the procession through the nave of the church...”No, this is not the accidental leak of some strange new variant planned for the rite of the Easter vigil. The Italian original reads “...l’accensione del cero pasquale e della sua collocazione sull’ altare.” The preposition “su” (compounded with the definite article to make “sull’ ”) is used here in a broad sense to mean “in the sanctuary.” Likewise, one can and does say in Italian that a person “serve sull’ altare – serves at the altar”; this does not in any way suggest that he is climbing up and standing on top of the altar itself.
We make bold to suggest to the Dicastery that in the future, they avoid issuing translations made with the kind of program that also made this picture.
