4 ms·

Translations are not made every day; one has to pick from what is available (and in the public domain at that, for a website like this), and the translation use

by svat 5y ago

Translations are not made every day; one has to pick from what is available (and in the public domain at that, for a website like this), and the translation used here is evidently the one published in 1922 in 21 volumes as being by "Fathers of the English Dominican Province" but actually by one person, Father Laurence Shapcote (1864–1947). (Via the article linked from https://thomistica.net/news/2011/9/13/the-shapcote-translation.html https://thomistica.net/news/2011/9/13/the-shapcote-translati...) > In 1910 the Province decided to have the Summa translated. Fr Laurence brought out the first volumes before he left England, but the bulk of the work was done in South Africa. In addition he also translated the Summa Contra Gentes (4 volumes, 1923 –1929), and the Quaestiones Disputatae de Potentia (3 volumes, 1932–34). This translation of the Summa is ‘literal’. […] In a way, for students who have no Latin, the Shapcote translation gives a better idea, more of the feel, of the original, even though it does not make conversation with St Thomas so easy. > Laurence Shapcote never wrote anything: there is no way of telling what his own ‘Thomism’ was. It is a century since he started work. He did not respond to suggestions that he should unmask his anonymity. Readers who are thankful for this literal translation would surely be all the more grateful if they knew that it was done by Laurence Shapcote alone, in very austere conditions, on the Rand and in Natal, doggedly translating his way through the major works of St Thomas. But your comment is intriguing; I'm mostly struck by the idea that the style of 1950s is so much different from that of 2020s. (For reference, 1950 was the year of publication of Asimov's "I, Robot" collection of stories published earlier, or C. S. Lewis's "The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe"; Greene's The Third Man and Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-Four were published the previous year.) In what sense is the sentence fragment you quoted not modern English? You gave an example of what you're not looking for; could you also give an example of how you would rewrite it? And what does this have to do with "thou", which went out of use in the 17th century? (https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Thou&oldid=1025162596#General_decline_in_Early_Modern_English https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Thou&oldid=102516...) A translation into standard English wouldn't have used "thou" even in 1950 (and this 1922 translation doesn't either, except in literal quotes from the King James Bible). (Of course, neither of us is using the technical meaning of "modern English" which includes Shakespeare too https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Modern_English&oldid=1029078619 https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Modern_English&ol... .)

gerdesj 5y ago
Sorry for the late reply and thank you for spending quite a lot of time responding to me. > But your comment is intriguing; I'm mostly struck by the idea that the style of 1950s is so much different from that of 2020s. I threw the 1950s into my comment because that is post WW2 and pre me - I'm 50 ie off of 1970 and onwards. I perhaps didn't think it through too much. I am a Brit wot went through the private school system in general apart from the six or seven schools in West Germany, London and Manchester before age eight. My upbringing was loosely observant Church of England. The CofE Book of Common Prayer, Hymnal etc was full of thee and thou and was modernised to you and you around those decades. You still hear "for Thine is the Kingdom" in the Lord's Prayer even today. Thine, thee and thou (your, you and you) are still in use. You also see what looks like Ye or ye but the letter that looks like Yy is really the letter thorn so ye is really thee. Shake the spear wrote during the time of the great vowel shift in English which seems to have taken about 300 years. Spelling in his time was pretty random and looks more like hints and indications, rather than "correct". My home town of Yeovil has over sixty documented spellings since around 400CE. A lot of them are seen in those 300 years. I would put Shakey into a different brand of English because I doubt that he and I could have conversed. My mum could make herself completely unintelligible by falling back to her girlhood Devonian dialect from the 40s/50s. Language is way more interesting and diverse than a WP page can possibly describe. I do love WP - its a cracking project and I've written quite a lot of WM (M not P - I'm a nerd not a clever bloke) pages. However it does fall short sometimes due to some small minded editors who squat on their pages and refuse to allow changes. Language scholarship used to need a bit of a kicking but I think that is quietly happening over the last 20-30 years. I'm not an expert in any way but I do see signs of broadmindedness and proper scholarship in some of the books I read that have a language component. That said, you then get threads like this: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27721748 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27721748 . Search for the terms Chinese and Sanscrit for the exciting bits (or the bits where you quietly close the door and wander off.) There are some decent ideas and comments in there but they are really hard to find. Sadly, aggressive nationalism is rearing its ugly head in no small way. I'm a Brit and well aware of my nation's past. It seems like everyone wants to piss off the rest of the world a la the worst excesses of the British Empire. My forebears () invented the word jingoism and it is quite awful seeing others not learning the lessons of our past. Whoops, sorry. Back in the room ... 8) () I should point out that my documented ancestors include people who identified with all four UK nations and the male line runs back to Germany (Hanover) in around 1750 where the trail runs cold.

by svat 5y ago

gerdesj 5y ago

Sorry for the late reply and thank you for spending quite a lot of time responding to me. > But your comment is intriguing; I'm mostly struck by the idea that the style of 1950s is so much different from that of 2020s. I threw the 1950s into my comment because that is post WW2 and pre me - I'm 50 ie off of 1970 and onwards. I perhaps didn't think it through too much. I am a Brit wot went through the private school system in general apart from the six or seven schools in West Germany, London and Manchester before age eight. My upbringing was loosely observant Church of England. The CofE Book of Common Prayer, Hymnal etc was full of thee and thou and was modernised to you and you around those decades. You still hear "for Thine is the Kingdom" in the Lord's Prayer even today. Thine, thee and thou (your, you and you) are still in use. You also see what looks like Ye or ye but the letter that looks like Yy is really the letter thorn so ye is really thee. Shake the spear wrote during the time of the great vowel shift in English which seems to have taken about 300 years. Spelling in his time was pretty random and looks more like hints and indications, rather than "correct". My home town of Yeovil has over sixty documented spellings since around 400CE. A lot of them are seen in those 300 years. I would put Shakey into a different brand of English because I doubt that he and I could have conversed. My mum could make herself completely unintelligible by falling back to her girlhood Devonian dialect from the 40s/50s. Language is way more interesting and diverse than a WP page can possibly describe. I do love WP - its a cracking project and I've written quite a lot of WM (M not P - I'm a nerd not a clever bloke) pages. However it does fall short sometimes due to some small minded editors who squat on their pages and refuse to allow changes. Language scholarship used to need a bit of a kicking but I think that is quietly happening over the last 20-30 years. I'm not an expert in any way but I do see signs of broadmindedness and proper scholarship in some of the books I read that have a language component. That said, you then get threads like this: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27721748 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27721748 . Search for the terms Chinese and Sanscrit for the exciting bits (or the bits where you quietly close the door and wander off.) There are some decent ideas and comments in there but they are really hard to find. Sadly, aggressive nationalism is rearing its ugly head in no small way. I'm a Brit and well aware of my nation's past. It seems like everyone wants to piss off the rest of the world a la the worst excesses of the British Empire. My forebears () invented the word jingoism and it is quite awful seeing others not learning the lessons of our past. Whoops, sorry. Back in the room ... 8) () I should point out that my documented ancestors include people who identified with all four UK nations and the male line runs back to Germany (Hanover) in around 1750 where the trail runs cold.