Of Neighbors and Wounds: English and Spirituality

By Pedro Paulo Oliveira Jr. | April 1, 2015

It’s not unusual that the Anglophone media has problems parsing Pope Francis. This problem relates in part to a lack of vocabulary to express spiritual concepts or translate accurately what was said in Spanish or Italian.

Last year I participated in a book club in which we discussed Open Mind, Faithful Heart: Reflections on Following Jesus by Cardinal Bergoglio. Among other issues discussed, I made some remarks about the translation. Although my mother tongue is Portuguese, I know Spanish quite well, and certain comments by others in the group made me aware of some of the unique challenges that English poses for dealing with spiritual themes, especially Catholic ones.

Multiple concepts condensed under a single word usually means there’s a limitation to expressing each individual concept, and people end up collapsing all those concepts as if they are the same. In the United States, the most popular sports are baseball, football, and basketball, and the English spoken there includes a wide variety of expressions derived from those sports that confer special meaning to some words: You tackle a question, a trick question is a curveball while easy ones are called softballs, you talk about ballpark figures, slam dunks, etc. Those expressions refer to concepts that are difficult to translate into other languages.

In a similar way, Christian spirituality depends on concepts that were developed over the course of centuries by way of Latin and other romance languages, and throughout our book club I tried to express what is lost when some of those concepts are applied in English.

My first encounter with preaching in English happened in Cambridge, MA; and it sounded particularly odd compared to language I would expect to hear at Harvard University less than a quarter-mile away. In the shadows of one of the world’s most distinguished universities I listened to a preacher whose grasp of language rivaled that of a high-school student. At other times I’ve felt the same in Australia, New Zealand, and England, and then something clicked. The problem was not the preacher, or the person talking about spiritual subjects; the problem is that I expect a certain rich spiritual vocabulary that is simply not available in English.

Don’t get me wrong, I admire the growth of the Church and the faith in the United States. And English is the most versatile language, and the most well adapted for a great number of subjects from medicine to physics. But my experience is that of a foreigner; and it relates to the particularities of a certain language to capture—or not—a spiritual tradition that is quite universal.

A cornerstone of Christian doctrine is the commandment to love one another. The parable of the Good Samaritan and the mandatum novum do vobis summarize the nature of caritas. Jesus begins the Good Samaritan’s parable answering a question: Et quis est meus proximus?, translated in the USCCB version as: “And who is my neighbor?”

Neighbor is used as a translation of the Latin word proximus, which is prójimo in Spanish and próximo in Portuguese. In all romance languages there is another word for neighbor (Spanish: vecino, Portuguese: vizinho, French: voisin) used only to describe the person who lives close to us.

Thus proximus is a word employed to describe not only physical but rather spiritual neighborhood. I’m neither the vizinho of the reader nor his friend, as we don’t have a close relationship, but I could say that the bond created by reading this article makes me his proximus, at least more proximus than someone who’s never heard about me. This is not to say that the use of “neighbor” as a translation for proximus is a naïve choice; it’s just that by collapsing the spiritual neighborhood with the physical one the language loses punch.

Another word that presents challenges in English is tibieza. Both Portuguese and Spanish speakers use this word to describe a spiritual disease when one becomes what’s described in Revelation 3:16: “So, because you are lukewarm, neither hot nor cold, I will spit you out of my mouth.” In either language there is another word to express the concept that “lukewarm” expresses: morno in Portuguese and templado in Spanish. Although at times tibio is used in Spanish as a synonym for templado, as a substantive it has only one meaning. Tibieza is a disease of the soul whereby people have a spiritual laziness, an arduous time doing prayers. A tibia person will do almost anything to avoid taking time for God. He doesn’t hate God, but he might prefer a root canal over a weekend of spiritual exercises in silence.

“Wound” is also a problematic word in Anglophone spiritual literature. In the aforementioned book by Pope Francis, he talks a number of times about praying out of “woundedness” (in the English translation). In the romance languages specific words are almost exclusive to the wounds our Lord Jesus Christ suffered. In Portuguese it’s chagas and in Spanish llagas. I would never say in my native language: eu tenho uma chaga na mão (“I have a wound in my hand”) because it would sound very strange. We have another word for this sort of wound: ferida, or in Spanish herida. Both ferida and chaga would be translated in English by “wound” although the latter is reserved originally for a spiritual concept.

The word llagas derives from the Latin word plaga, the origin of the Italian word piaga, which was the center of a small media frenzy surrounding a mistranslation of Benedict XVI’s Sacramentum Caritatis as it was mistaken for “plague.” The Latin word plaga is used, for instance, in the hymn Adoro te devote: Plagas, sicut Thomas, non intueor, usually translated in English, less poetically, as:

“Thy dread wounds, like Thomas, though I cannot see.”

A few rather simple practices are available to Anglophone preachers and laymen, alike, that would improve the communicability of Christian spiritual concepts and benefit the Church as a whole. Naturally, if one has the ability to work at least a little with a foreign language, especially one of Latin roots, it can drastically and almost immediately affect one’s appreciation for otherwise hidden concepts, including those given in Scripture. As English is especially flexible, coining and using new terms—in response to original concepts or adding to them—is a natural advantage that could be more widely employed. (It shouldn’t be only social media conventions that drive our functional vocabulary.) One also shouldn’t be afraid to use foreign words in a familiar context, as they can reinforce specific meanings simply by exposing the listener—and the speaker—to an unfamiliar term.

Aaron Taylor

The author is obviously right that when translating (e.g. Pope Francis’s books, Thomas Aquinas’s hymns) from another language *into* English, something will be lost in translation. But, of course, the same is true when translating *from* English. Try translating “The Cloud of Unknowing,” or the spiritual writings of Richard Rolle, or Margery Kempe, or Julian of Norwich, or John Henry Newman into Latin — with its more precise but much, much narrower and unnuanced vocabulary — and you will find yourself in the same predicament.

To say that “Christian spirituality depends on concepts that were developed over the course of centuries by way of Latin and other romance languages” is uncommonly silly. All of the New Testament authors and most of the early Christian authors wrote in Greek! What he means is that the kind of spirituality specific to countries who speak romance languages depends on understanding their own languages, which is unsurprising, but Christianity is not limited to France, Spain, Italy, Portugal, Romania, and Latin America.

P.S. Jesus did not recount the parable of the Good Samaritan in Latin.
http://www.ryanhaberphotography.com Ryan Haber

I think you make some good points. It’s important, I think, not to go too far in making them. I’m also not entirely convinced that English has a “lack of vocabulary to express spiritual concepts,” although, as Aaron Taylor and you state, it is obviously true that there are difficulties in translation and that things get lost. And you’re correct that a good and common example is the misuse of nearly equivalent words. I admit that this is frequently my mistake.

My background is being native English speaker, with 25+ years of daily Spanish study, practical use, and travel under my belt. I read French and Italian comfortably, in part because I studied Latin for three years as an undergraduate. I also have three years’ of undergraduate and graduate level Greek in two different dialects, and can inch my way through Hebrew and Syriac texts after a year of each of those in grad school. I don’t say all this to show off, but only to make the case that I know something about languages.

Now, there is a tendency to mystify languages, and especially foreign languages. I’ve heard it preached a number of times that in John 15 the use of words derived alternately from “agape” and “phile” has some hidden meaning obvious in Greek but hidden in English, which has only one word for love, rather than three. The fact is, this is not true. Meanings packaged into a word evolve over time, and this was no less true in Greek than it is now. There is a tremendous amount of writing available in Greek for almost 3000 years, and it is pretty clear to Hellenists that the words for “love” in Greek were shifty and intermingled in connotation for much of that time. The categorization of the Greek words with which we are familiar (eros, phile, storge, agape, etc.) becomes crystallized only during the Christian period, at least a couple centuries after John is written.

An example you give of mistranslation, the Lord’s plagae/piage, is just that: a case of mistranslated false cognates. The fact that English does not have a semi-reserved word for the Lord’s wounds does not mean that Anglophones understand there to be nothing special about them. Of course we do.

You point is much stronger, I think, in the case of vecinus/proximus. The words are both in common use in Latin and in romance languages, and in the languages with which I am familiar, the original distinction holds true, and they would not be misused - it is not simply a case of poetic inflection, but of different - albeit related - meanings. It is more specific than “projimo.”In Spanish, at least, “vecino” wouldn’t be used of inanimate objects, to my knowledge, nor would it be used to describe a “next” event. Still, I think the point is expressible in English pretty well. Ultimately, of course, “Et quis est meus proximus?” is not the question put to Jesus. He was asked the question probably in a late form of Aramaic, or perhaps Greek. All sorts of meanings might have been smuggled and bundled in along the way that are lost in the Latin and never even noticed along the way.

We’re approaching the postmodernist problem of incommunicability here, and it’s a problem I don’t put too much stock in. The reason is this: as Wittgenstein himself noted some years after arguing for incommunicability, for all that, language works. One of your examples will suffice.

A “curve ball” (as a difficult question) isn’t hard to translate into Spanish: “pregunta dificil” (forgive my lack of accents). Now, of course it’s not an exact translation - it’s lost a whole shade of meaning derived from a saturation in the context of American sports culture, as you say. Probably only Cubans or Japanese have a chance at *feeling* the way Americans *feel* about that word. But for all that, actually, when Americans usually use that phrase, they aren’t intending anything about baseball, and for the most part, I’m pretty sure we don’t feel or think anything about baseball. We think, “difficult question.” The phrase hasn’t become grammaticalized, but it’s used so broadly now that, except specifically in baseball contexts, its actual content no longer has anything essentially to do with baseball. It just means “difficult question,” and that can be translated very nicely.

I think the same thing is true of your example of “tibia”. Tepidity is not, in English, reserved for spiritual sloth, acedia - but those words exist in Spanish, too, and tepidity can also be used to describe a soul grown lukewarm and resistant to God. It does get used in just such ways, and people seem to know what is meant.

In the end, I’m not trying to contradict you flat out, Dr. Oliveira , as much as I’d like to add that we must not make too much of these chasms of language. We cross them all the time, and usually lose precious little.
http://elflandletters.wordpress.com David Russell Mosley

I feel as though there is a besetting temptation in responding to this excellent article. It is for native English speakers to defend the English language and its ability to nuance spiritual language. It’s a temptation I also feel strongly. I also want to point out the great works put out in the English language (however old and different from today), one might add George MacDonald, G. K. Chesterton, C. S. Lewis, Dorothy Sayers, Dorothy Day, and J. R. R. Tolkien to the lists already mentioned of spiritual writers in English. I have now indulged that temptation, backhandedly.

Of greater importance, I think, is the the issue of translation. As has been pointed out, the Scriptures themselves were not written in Latin, they were written in Hebrew, Aramaic, and Greek and then translated in Latin. So the issue, I think, has less to do with English and more to do with translating ideas through languages. Take the parable of the Samaritan mentioned in the article. A Jew asks the question, who is my neighbour? So even within the text the question has to be asked, what do you mean by neighbour? The context of the story does not leave an English speaker room to assume that the text only means those who live on your street, or your block, or next door. The parable makes clear the radicallity of the command to love our neighbours as ourselves. English’s lack of multiple words for neighbour does not effect the answer given in the parable.

All this said, it is easy in this day to assume that English is the primary language for theological or spiritual discussion. This is, of course false, and we native English speakers need to open ourselves up more to other contemporary languages as well as ancient languages and their ability to communicate theological and spiritual insights. So that point is well made, but it goes too far when you suggest that English is simply less capable of communicating theological or spiritual truth than romance based languages (which of course Greek, Hebrew and Aramaic––the original theological/philosophical and spiritual languages––are not).
Joseph McDonald

Nice.

My father was a very astute and able linguist who loved languages and precision in expression. He was also a missionary to the Jews in Argentina where I was born and grew up. Many times I watched and listened while he preached in Spanish, his Tanach (for the Hebrew word to be translated into Spanish; he never “preached” to the Jews) and Greek New Testament (sometimes two, he was never sure which he trusted, Nestle or Westcott and Hort), A Reina de Valera Spanish Bible, and a couple of English versions (KJV and perhaps JB Phillips or, his favorite, the English Revised Version of the late 19th Century) arrayed before him. He moved effortlessly among them, using and translating the words of scripture that best fit his message and the needs and understanding of the Argentine congregation to which he was preaching.

He never sermonized for the Jews. The sophisticated, highly educated European/Argentine Jews to whom he presented Jesus, Messiah, wouldn’t have tolerated it. Instead, he discussed and argued endlessly with them in his study, using, as did many of them, whatever Spanish, English, Yiddish, Hebrew, Russian, and later, Italian words were best for the occasion, sometimes descending to the most abstruse lexicographical arguments imaginable.

It rubbed off on us siblings. At table, we chose whatever English, Spanish, or Italian word best expressed or obscured (we were less than fully loving siblings, after all) our intent. We conversed publically, trilingually. And we were seen as insufferable snobs (well, we were, Americans were so poorly educated it seemed) by the US congregations to whom we presented our missionary dog and pony shows and it may well have cost us a few used tea bags for the missionary barrel.

The study of languages languishes in the US and we are poorer for it. The curse of Babel lives on.
Neurojapa

Hi Pedro,

This is a very nice article. Well done!

Indeed, you have raised a very important point. Different languages are not simple translations.

The same sentence may have a different interpretation not only due to the language but also because of the culture. For example the translated sentence: “behold, His (Jesus’) mother and his brothers were standing outside, seeking to speak with Him.” (Matthew 12:46). A literal interpretation would imply not only the existence of siblings but also that they were all men :-).
Of course the word “brothers” had a completely different meaning at that time and culture (e.g.: cousins, etc).

On the other hand, this opens another challenge. How can we be catholic in a “universal” sense when the same scriptures have different meaning in different cultures depending on translation?

In my opinion, this is why the role of a leader such as the pope is so important.

All the best,
Thomas Storck

“To say that “Christian spirituality depends on concepts that were
developed over the course of centuries by way of Latin and other romance
languages” is uncommonly silly. All of the New Testament authors and
most of the early Christian authors wrote in Greek! What he means is
that the kind of spirituality specific to countries who speak romance
languages depends on understanding their own language.”

Your point about the early Church is well taken, but Latin Christianity does historically depend on Latin and the Romance languages primarily. In the Middle Ages nearly all theology and most or much spiritual writing was in Latin, later when the vernaculars came more into play, because of the exit of so many northern Europeans from the Church the rich doctrinal and spiritual world of the Baroque was expressed mostly in Latin and the Romance languages. Like it or not, that post-Tridentine spiritual and intellectual world influenced much more than the ” countries who speak romance languages.”
http://newarkistheplace.com/ Thomas Mullally

Thank you- this is an important point to remember. We Americans are spoiled- we always get a translation to English! Only on vacation do we sometimes need to work harder by referring to the rich meaning of the original language, what a joy this can produce…. well, understanding the Word of God is more important than understanding a restaurant menu, street sign, or consumer service!
Pedro Paulo Jr.

It was interesting to read so many thoughtful comments and other points of view. I don’t think the average american is so much concerned about learning another language as @thomasmullally:disqus said:

we always get a translation to English

@joseph_mcdonald:disqus also mentioned it, although I don’t have data to support his claim.

he study of languages languishes in the US.

The comment of @davidrussellmosley:disqus is also something I had not considered before writing this essay

It is for native English speakers to defend the English language and its ability to nuance spiritual language.

@withouthavingseen:disqus pointed out a fair objection with interesting supporting arguments

It’s important, I think, not to go too far in making them. I’m also not entirely convinced that English has a “lack of vocabulary to express spiritual concepts,”

@disqus_nLF92yZNpq:disqus presents an objection, that other people mentioned to me through other channels

Jesus did not recount the parable of the Good Samaritan in Latin.

Sure, but I believe Latin had more time to adapt to express better the parable, if observe the flexibility of English language I don’t doubt that it will be someday the lingua franca of the Catholic spirituality.

To the other objection of Aaron I guess @disqus_iUMp6N0Wws:disqus showed a very interesting perspective.

Your point about the early Church is well taken, but Latin Christianity does historically depend on Latin and the Romance languages primarily.

And my friend Neurojapa raises an important question that could be further explored: How the Catholic spirituality grow in countries in which the language lacks the basic elements of the christianity as Cáritas
http://newarkistheplace.com/ Thomas Mullally

Thanks again, and Long Live our Glorious Pope!!
Aaron Taylor

Latin expresses Jesus’s parables better than the language in which he spoke them?

Wouldn’t that be like saying English translators actually express Pope Francis’s thoughts better than his original Spanish texts?
Pedro Paulo Jr.

I didn’t say that. I said that Latin had more time to adapt compared to English.
Cooper Davay

Thanks
Cooper Davay

We who speaks English as foreign language will never recognize the limitations of English words the way the writer pointed out rather than blaming ourselves for our own inability to better communicate point of views into spoken English. Thank you again for this insightful article.
Ralph Coelho

I remember a Greek singer ( Yanick) once remarking this language had 14 words for love. Thus for instance is very important for persons to realise that married love has two component - eros that is very often destructive and Agape that is literally constructive and nurturing. Todat media promtes eros and lut, traditional movies promted ephemarl romnce that still confuses many otherwise sane women.