NO ROOM AT THE TRAVELODGE
Noonan, John T. Jr.
No Room at TruveLodge The uses to which the New American Bible is put Commonweal published a short article "The Devious Employees," on October 28, 1977, in which I surveyed the damage done to...
...In idiomatic English, the judge acts "lest her coming finally give me a black eye...
...She gave birth to her first-born son and wrapped him in swaddling clothe s and laid him in a manger, because there was no room for them in the place where travellers lodge...
...Those who are confident in their own goodness are seen by their judges as mean, intolerant, self-righteous...
...They have replaced an exact, concrete, and common phrase and an active verb by an abstract, colorless and about obsolete noun, whose connotations of restraint and passivity clash hideously with the tone of the passage...
...Climactically, they have rendered the single word "katalymati" as "the place where travellers lodge...
...It is introduced with these words, "But to some who trusted in themselves as righteous and despised others, he spoke this parable...
...Where the tradition of translation is so strong, it is arbitrary to reject it...
...That is the point of the parable...
...The American by Goodspeed of 1948 has "inn...
...Nor is the problem that at 10:35, Luke uses pandocheion ,to specify the kind of inn to which the Good Samaritan took the man beset by robbers...
...Much of the work done on it is of permanent value...
...It is not that elsewhere, at 22:11, Luke uses katalyma in a different Commonweal: 203 sense to mean "room" or "dining room" where the Lord was to celebrate the Passover...
...they are referred to as early as Jeremias 9:11...
...In ordinary English usage "self-righteous" is a term of criticism, of scorn...
...If he trusted in his self-righteousness, he would be a remarkably self-critical hypocrite...
...They have taken the phrase "en toi einai autous ekei eplesthesan hal hemera tou tekein auten"~"while they were there the days for her to give birth were completed"--and substituted "confinement" for "to give birth...
...Jerome has sugillare--"insult...
...The choice between "inn" and "hospice," however, is not certain...
...If this correspondence is representative, there is a broad consensus of educated Catholics that the Lectionary will not do...
...The last interpretation is surely a slander of an important American company: under the circumstances TraveLodge, if filled, would have at least partitioned off the lobby for the weary guests from Nazareth...
...The problem of awkward, inappropriate, bad translation is also a problem faced by the Episcopal Church with its new Book of Common Prayer...
...The judge grants her petition "lest she end by doing me violence...
...I cite three translations chosen almost at random: The Confraternity of Christian Doctrine of 1941 has "inn...
...The Greeks even here, for this common feature of village life, had a word for it...
...ue artful simplicity of Luke at this point would seem proof against all but the most hardened will to mar and deface...
...In Luke 18:1...
...The problem of translation by committee is exacerbated if, as appears to be the case, the chief redactors were notably insensitive to the traditions of their community and the refinements of their mother tongue...
...The kind of mistakes mentioned so farDthe devious employee, the mau-mauing widow, the self-aware hypocrites, the confused men to be shunnedDall seem to represent a combination of two vices in the translators: an attenuated moral sense and an insensitivity to English usage and English prose...
...Writers of Greek did not stammer five words because they lacked a concept of inn or hospice...
...Charitably, we can suppose that the translators made the change out of their mistaken belief that repetition is not an important element of style, their sportswriter's view of how English prose is constructed...
...Protest is useless if it is directed at the New American Bible as such...
...The sense of the parable is diminished if not destroyed when the widow is made into a violent youth, a Molly Maguire or an unreconstructed Panther...
...There is, however, a problem which presented the opportunity for these translators...
...The author of Thessalonians did not share the translators' sense of moral ambiguity...
...If a hospice is meant here, "inn" is inexact in connoting something more businesslike...
...that a word have multiple meanings and that context should specify the meaning is not a problem...
...I write in response to such encouragement...
...One shrinks from attributing such malice to men of such patent good intentions as the translators...
...The issue, while it is of central religious importance, reaches beyond the confines of Catholicism...
...It exists...
...In any event however the problem is solved, there is no reason to give us five words where Luke had one...
...There is evidence independent of the Gospels for its use to designate a charitable hospice...
...The difficulties arise from Luke's combination of erchomene (coming) ~vith hypopiaze (strike under the eye...
...Jerome, who was a good deal closer to the village economy of the Near East than we are, used diversorium, a word meaning "inn": he saw no nuance in katalyma...
...The Greek word is used as a substantive in Luke 23:41, apropos of Jesus on the cross: "this man has done nothing wrong (atopon)"~not "this man has done nothing confused...
...It is a fact...
...No room at the inn"rathe expression has become proverbial...
...Here the brethren are asked to pray "hina rusthomen aim ton atopen kai poneron anthropon"~"in order that we may be saved from wicked and malicious men...
...It should not be supposed that the Epistles are~ any easier for these translators to manage...
...Or somewhere, in their minds attuned to the English of the sports pages and television commercials was there an echo of a billboard they must have seen outside some American city...
...The Jerusalem of 1966 has "inn...
...He trusts, therefore, in his righteousness...
...31 March 1978: 204...
...It is true that there are difficulties in translating the phrase "hina me eis telos erchomene hypopiaze me," and the conventional "lest she finally wear me out with her coming" does less than justice to the'thought...
...Any protest is for all of us...
...An inn is the word for katalymati ia the Arndt-Gingrich lexicon of New Testament Greek, as well as the word for katalymati in the old Liddell-Scott dictionary of Greek...
...What the judge fears from the widow is the equivalent of a blow on the face...
...The widow has always been seen as the prototype of a petitioner persistent in prayer...
...The Lectionary translation is taken from the New American Bible, a production of the Catholic Biblical Association in 1970...
...This new anecdote enlivened the Twenty-Ninth Sunday in Ordinary Time...
...Jesus goes on to tell the story of the judge who did not fear God nor respect man, but who finally granted the petition of a widow who pursued him with her plea...
...Did these original translators hope to shake us from our lethargic acceptance of a phrase rooted in our tradition by making it awkward if not ridiculous-"No room at the place where travellers lodge...
...When they are cheapened and distorted, their images and metaphors destroyed, their resonant phrases and distinctive vocabulary reduced to newspeak, the entire culture is injured and impoverished...
...None of these botches quite prepared the listener for the rendition of Luke 2:1-14, the Gospel read at Midnight Mass on Christmas...
...The Mass readings and the Book of Common Prayer are part of the literary and moral heritage of all English-speaking people...
...The Lectionary has the prayer to be saved from "confused and evil men...
...The same morbid hesitancy appears in their translation 2 Thessalonians 3:2 for the Thirty-Second Sunday...
...The Jews had inns, as the Good Samaritan's payment to the innkeeper makes clear...
...Did these translators resent the reproach the true original so pungently conveys and desire to rid us of regret by giving us a stuttered substitution that destroys the compact and brilliant thrust of Luke...
...Let it remain for scholzrs to delve into and discover diamonds in its dust, but let it not be used in liturgy...
...surely any author is permitted to employ synonyms...
...The author of Thessalonians might even have been inclined to call those who misinterpreted his language not confused, but something worse...
...Did they think in their deepest subconscious that the greatest deprivation of all would be to be denied a room at a snug and ubiquitous hostelry and did they consciously, so far as in their power lay, construct a phrase which with irresistible comic genius recalls the motels of America...
...I quote verbatim: "While they were there the days of her confinement were completed...
...But such stylistic misconceptions are scarcely an excuse for turning "the wicked" into "the confused...
...But what have they done...
...As far as I know from a rapid survey, these translators are original in providing this awkward paraphrase...
...I had been moved to write by hearing this odious distortion read aloud at Mass the day before and by finding that it was indeed the translation of the Lectionary which enjoys a quasimonopoly in liturgical reading in Catholic churches...
...In a basically friendly review of the New American Bible which appeared in 1971 in the Catholic Biblical Association's own journal, The Catholic Biblical Quarterly, reference was made to "the omnipresent redactor(s)," to "the politics that inevitably enter into a committee-executed publication," and to the maxim "too many editors spoil the copy...
...Doing over the parable of the steward, they showed a curious uneasiness about calling him "unjust...
...Never has any article I have authored received such a prompt, wide, and enthusiastic response...
...The Lectionary has rendered "trusted in themselves as righteous" as "those who believed in their own selfrighteousness...
...All of it has been in agreement with the theme of my critique...
...No Room at TruveLodge The uses to which the New American Bible is put Commonweal published a short article "The Devious Employees," on October 28, 1977, in which I surveyed the damage done to the parable of the unjust steward in Luke 16:6 by translators who described the story's protagonist as a "devious employee...
...Jesus "spoke to them a parable in order that they must always pray and not lose heart...
...In the Lectionary's version, she has turned dangerous...
...When the judge fears a black eye, he fears a blackened reputation not a punch changing the color of the iris...
...The following Sunday the Lectionary made a gaffe due, apparently, to the translators' simple ignorance of English...
...Let it be banished from the Lectionary...
...Did a figure of a touseled bear in a nightcap swim before them with his promise of a "Good Night's Rest...
...But the person who is so judged is not conscious of his meanness and intolerance...
...From his own point of view, he is righteous, not self-righteous...
...What can rationally and effectively be objected to are the uses to which the New American Bible is put...
...They have done away with the opening "Egeneto de"--"And it came to pass...
...The clear and solemn note struck by Luke in his introduction, the storyteller's portentous pause has been eliminated as surplusage...
...but the Lectionary has changed all that...
...As a result of the article, I have received a quantity of mail from readers throughout the country, laymen and priests, college professors and college presidents, monks and abbots, liberals and conservatives, from the current Kress Professor of Art at the National Gallery to the editor of National Review...
...As the great scholar on Judaism and the New Testament, David Daube, has observed, a blow 31 March 1978:202 on the face was the orthodox mode of shaming insult among Jews, Greeks and Romans...
...The Gospel was Luke 18:9-14, the famous story of the Pharisee and the publican praying in the temple...
...What it means for a congregation to hear the Lectionary as it now stands incorporating the New American Bible may be illustrated as follows...
...No one before the makers of this translation had supposed that selfcritical hypocrites made up Jesus's audience...
...There is no warrant for substituting "confused" for "wicked...
...The problem is that katalyma in Luke may designate not a commercial hostelry but a communal hospice...
...The theme of the parable is transformed from the power of patient prayer to the success of mau-mauing an official...
...The sense is that the widow's persistence will bring shame to the judge...
Vol. 105 • March 1978 • No. 7
