Today, only 34% of Tokelauans speak their heritage language. This is why the Bible Society’s Tokelau Bible translation project is so important – it allows Tokelauans to read the Bible in their own language and helps preserve their language and the culture. The project began in the 1990s when members of the Tokelaun expatriate community Read more
The French-speaking Catholic world is heading for a tug-of-war over the translation of the Roman Missal. The Vatican is insisting on a precise translation from the Latin text approved in 2002, as it did for the translation into English. The planned new translation will be for French-speaking parts of Europe, Canada, Africa and the Caribbean. Read more
Bishops in England and Wales are discouraging the reading of secular poems or non-biblical texts during marriage liturgies. A new translation of the Order of Celebrating Matrimony will be used in England and Wales from Easter Sunday, 2016. A new translation of the Order of Confirmation will also be introduced on that date. In their the summary of Read more
Bishop Michael Campbell of Lancaster, England, has published an unofficial English translation of the synod on the family’s final document No official English translation of the Italian language document has been published as yet by the Vatican. The synod’s final report has three parts – “The Church listens to the family”, “The family in the Read more
The secretary of the Congregation for Divine Worship has ruled out going back to a 1998 English translation of the Missal. There have been a number of calls to use the 1998 version instead of the current Missal text. Critics have charged that the language used in the current version at Mass is clunky, awkward Read more
A distinguished Jesuit theologian has asked the world’s English-speaking bishops to dump the “clunky and Latinised” 2011 translation of the Missal. Fr Gerald O’Collins, who taught at the Gregorian University in Rome for 33 years and who holds several doctorates in theology, sent The Tablet an open letter to the bishops. In the letter, he called Read more
Most United States Catholic parish leaders who responded to a liturgy survey find the new English translation of the Mass “awkward and distracting”. Half of the 539 parishes who responded to questions from Georgetown’s Center for Applied Research in the Apostolate (CARA) agreed that the translation “urgently needs to be revised”. The translation went into Read more
Pope Francis spoke English in public for the first time on October 18, when he sent a video message to a conference on evangelisation in the Philippines. On the same day he met representatives of the International Commission on English in the Liturgy and praised their translation of liturgical texts. In the video message to Read more