Bible and he/she.

Number 4 of the six norms

Our commentary continues, on the Six Vatican Norms for Bible translations (for No. 3, see April 1998 edition). We now come to Norm Four, which is on the gender of words (nouns, pronouns) referring to persons. We recall that feminist pressure since the 1970s had been demanding that masculine nouns and pronouns not be used when these denote persons in general or God, on the grounds that such masculine usage excludes and therefore offends women. Having noted this, here now is the text of Norm Four. It is in six short parts.

Norm Four

4/1 The natural gender of personae (Latin for persons, ed.) in the Bible, including the human author of various texts where evident, must not be changed insofar as this is possible in the receptor language.

4/2 The grammatical gender of God, pagan deities, and angels according to the original texts must not be changed insofar as this is possible in the receptor language.

4/3 In fidelity to the inspired word of God, the traditional biblical usage for naming the persons of the Trinity as Father, Son and Holy Spirit is to be retained.

4/4 Similarly, in keeping with the Church's tradition, the feminine and neuter pronouns are not to be used to refer to the person of the Holy Spirit.

4/5 There shall be no systematic substitution of the masculine pronoun or possessive adjective to refer to God in correspondence to the original text.

4/6 Kinship terms that are clearly gender-specific (e.g., brothers, brethren, sons, fathers - ed.), as indicated by the context, should be respected in translation.

Part one of Norm four says, "Do not change the given gender of persons in the Bible." Gender does not mean sex. The Bible is words, and words often have gender, meaning masculine or feminine, especially if they refer to persons. The norm here uses the Latin word personae, which is nominative plural of the feminine noun persona. Persona, being Latin, has a more technical and theological flavour than person. It includes divine and angelic as well as human persons. The prime case for this rule is the use of Brothers or Brethren, especially in St. Paul, to mean everyone, as it traditionally does. To substitute brothers and sisters is out of order. There is no objection for the priest to call the people "brothers and sisters" in his homily or announcements.

To be continued.

Scriptures in 2,197 languages

Toronto - According to a press release from the Canadian Bible Society, the number of languages having at least a portion of the Bible has reached 2,197 (United Bible Societies' (UBS) 1997 Scripture Language Report). This means that since 1996, eight more languages have translations of the entire Bible and 30 more languages have either a New Testament or a portion translated.

As well as eight complete Bibles, the 1997 Scripture Language Report lists 31 new New Testaments, three of which are the first Scriptures to appear in those languages. Forty-one portions were recorded during 1997 for languages that do not yet have a New Testament or Bible, and 27 of these are in languages not previously recorded as having any translated Scriptures.

Due to modern technology, the speed of translation work is steadily increasing. Almost 200 more language groups have been added since 1993, when in that year, the number of languages with one or more books of the Bible reached 2,000. With the use of computers, manuscripts can be altered quickly, revisions made at the touch of a key, and programs written to ease the translation of related languages.

But technology cannot do it alone. Without the help, expertise and dedication of the many organizations and translation teams working around the world, the daunting task of making the Bible available in all of the world's 6,000-plus languages would never be realized. The Canadian Bible Society's Translation-CAP (Computer-Assisted Publishing) department located in Kitchener, Ontario, is an integral part of this work, consulting on various translation projects for native Canadian languages, and acting as a world service centre in the area of computer support for translation teams worldwide.

The UBS is currently involved in 681 translation projects, from the Inuit (Eskimo) languages in Canada to languages in Africa (Hausa, Fulfulde). It also produces the Scriptures in Braille, on audio cassettes and in other formats.

Scriptures translated and published by other Scripture organizations are also included in the report, and while most of the newly-registered Scriptures (81 per cent) first appeared in the last two years, some were produced as far back as 1988. Some Scriptures are in languages spoken by very few people in isolated settings.