MUSICAL DIMENSIONS OF QUALITY JUDGEMENTS IN LITURGICAL TRANSLATION

Abstract

The paper is dedicated to the issues of how translation quality assessment can deal with the musical aspects of liturgical praxis. It is not limited to the matters of melody and isosyllabism (which partially overlap with the theory of verse translation), but it has also to cover the issues of functionality, perception and reception (which are integrated in translation sociology and criticism). The study consists of three foci: singability and melody (isosyllabism and local chants, collective and individual creativity), historicism (hidden interpretations, functional censorship) and phonetic and semantic prosody (problems of subjectivist perception, churchly interventions, modulations of poetic texts for liturgical use). The problem of relay translation looks very unusual: although all liturgical texts came from the same language (Patristic Greek), vernacular believers receive their national texts which were translated via the mediating language (Latin or Church Slavonic, or even more languages). The main text of the analysis is the Paschal Troparion (in the Greek, Church Slavonic, Ukrainian, Polish, and English versions), but observations over other various liturgical texts are included. The juxtaposition of the Roman and Byzantine Rites shows how great the role of vocal music is in both rites and how attentively the ecclesiastical authorities cherished the sacred music for the propaganda of ecumenical moral dogmas.