A lively and challenging style

October 27, 2009

Tags: The Way

Rev. Andrew Byrne, M.A. (Oxon) (Modern Languages), Ph.D (theology), is the producer of the Bilingual edition of The Way:

Fr. Andrew Byrne

Why did you want to produce a bilingual edition of The Way?

That is a long story. I started my “career” as an English translator of St Josemaría on the very first day I met him in the house where he was staying in Hampstead, London, on August 3rd 1962. At a certain point my translation was imprecise and Don Alvaro del Portillo, who was next to our Founder, politely pointed this out. I realised then, as a teenager, that it was very important to translate our Founder’s words as accurately as possible. Over the years I have found that many English readers have little knowledge of the original Spanish text and so are dependent on the translation which, inevitably, cannot capture the full flavour of the original. I thought it would be a good idea to print the two texts in parallel columns. Embarrassingly this also highlights the deficiencies of the translation! It needs constant revision.

So it’s an unfinished job?

Definitely! Though one could say that this also applies to some extent to the original. Amazingly, during the author’s lifetime, only four changes were made to the text. One of them was pointed out when the original English translation came out in the 1950s. I think it was Fr Cormac Burke who discovered that until then, points 381 and 940 were the same. As a result St Josemaría composed a new text for point 381. Since he died, as Spanish is a living language, it is beginning to happen that there are points of language that new generations find difficult to understand. An example is point 20 where he refers to a coin (moneda de cinco duros) which is no longer in circulation in Spain or other Spanish-speaking countries. The English translation sidesteps the difficulty by simply calling it a “gold coin”. We could have called it a “crown” but that too would now require explanation.

What else is special to this edition?

Camino, The Way: bilingual annotated edition, Scepter, London, UK, 2001

I had been working for some twenty years on a general index for The Way. I found that often when I wanted to quote a point from The Way, for a talk or a meditation, I couldn’t find it in the existing indexes. Many other people had similar experiences. This encouraged me to finish the job. I believe quite a few people have found the index helpful. But I’m always keen to hear suggestions for improving it.

And what is the story of the footnotes?

I was a bit hesitant about them. There already existed several very good published English translations of Camino (which was first published 70 years ago). However, at a number of points the translations seemed to me not to capture sufficiently the meaning and, especially, the lively and challenging style of the author. I did not want to replace the existing translations. But I thought it would be useful to have an edition which reworked them, using them of course as my starting-point. When I had finished my revision I felt a number of points needed some explanation for English-speaking readers. I remember asking an experienced translator about footnotes. His tart reply was, “A good translation doesn’t need notes!” I wasn’t too convinced. The book has ended up with 1,500 footnotes!

Are there any particular ones you would like to mention?

St. Josemaria in London, 1958

Some already existed, like the note to point 11 which mentions Cardinal Cisneros, whom few English readers would know. Some explain why the English translation leaves out something of the original, such as the one to point 433 where the translation does not refer to the battles of Navas and Lepanto. One footnote I treasure comes at point 28 which has sometimes been criticised for referring to married people as the “rank and file” in the Church. It was heartening to find that St John Chrysostom had used a similar idea 1500 years ago! Another note arises from the retranslation of point 12, which now appears translated as “Grow stronger in the face of obstacles”. This phrase had been traced back to St Bernard. But it turns out that the Roman writer Seneca had used it and even he says he borrowed it from the Stoics! The footnotes help to show how the author is steeped in culture both Christian and secular. The footnotes also bring together similar points of The Way. Often while thinking of one point one would like to know others connected with it. One thing that resulted from this was a footnote gathering the different animals St Josemaría mentions, not only donkeys and birds, but bulls, crickets, mules, dogs, foxes, etc. Another was drawn up partly to show that the author does not confine his references to women to the three famous points 980, 981 and 982. He refers to women in several others, not to mention Our Lady and many women Saints. In listing the Saints, I found that there were more than thirty saints mentioned in the book.

Does The Way tell us much about St Josemaría?

The critical edition of Camino published a few years ago shows that many of the points are autobiographical although the author has effectively hidden this fact, wishing as was his wont to “pass unnoticed and disappear”. Yes, the book tells us a lot about him, not least in the wonderful expressiveness of its style. Again and again one finds that he has changed the obvious word-order so as to drive a point more deeply into the reader’s heart. It is a marvellous book and can be read and reread many times.

The edition referred to is:
Josemaria Escriva, The Way, Annotated edition / Spanish & English text, ed. Andrew Byrne, Leominster: Gracewing, 2002.