The Challenges of Translating Liturgies

Abstract Translating liturgies presents specific instances of larger issues, beginning with the human phenomenon of language itself. As long as humans have been speaking, there have been also translations. A “good” translation is not only words, source to target language, but also how these nestle in the target culture. Beyond word-to-word “literal” translations, translators today seek “sense-to-sense,” called “dynamic equivalence.” Liturgies are ritual re-enactments of “originary scenes,” and translations must take into account that liturgies are not texts: they are oral events. Besides choices of words, translations also raise questions about who makes choices about what gets translated and how. The author was the chair of the committee that made a new translation into French of the 1979 Book of Common Prayer (United States), and details of specific decisions serve as examples of these larger questions.