Every now and then, I lose a URL to a story that I really intended to address here at GetReligion.
This happens in my daily tsunami of email. I am sure this also happens to lots of journalists and news consumers. In this case, we are talking about a BBC story from earlier this summer that ran with this headline: “Coronavirus: Covid-denying priest Father Sergiy Romanov seizes Russian monastery.”
Let’s face it. The degree-of-difficulty rating on covering this particular story is sky high.
For starters, controversies in Eastern Orthodoxy can be really complex and the participants often use images and terms that can be read on several layers. In this case, those terms were also spoken in Russian.
But let’s assume that the BBC correspondents in Russia all speak fluent Russian or work with skilled translators who help them navigate the verbal minefields. I’ll state right up front that I don’t speak Russian (although I go to church with several folks who do). However, GetReligion has a faithful reader who is an editor in Moscow and I will share his comments on this piece.
Let’s start with the overture:
An ultraconservative Russian priest who denies coronavirus exists has taken over a women's monastery by force.
Father Sergiy Romanov entered the Sredneuralsk convent outside the city of Yekaterinburg. … The mother superior and several nuns have left and armed guards are patrolling the site.
Fr Sergiy has stated church authorities "will have to storm the monastery" if they want him to leave.
Police visited the site on Wednesday but made no arrests.
The controversial cleric was barred from preaching in April and then stripped of the right to wear a cross in May after he encouraged the faithful to disobey public health orders. Fr Sergiy helped found the Sredneuralsk Convent in the early 2000s, and hundreds of supporters have flocked there over the years to hear his sermons.
What, pray tell, does “stripped of the right to wear a cross” mean? Was something lost in translation?
In this case, there are ordinary crosses and then there are the special crosses worn by priests.
Here is some commentary from our editor friend in Russia:
Are they referring to his baptismal cross, like those worn by Christians of all different denominations? No. They are referring to the right to wear a *visible* pectoral cross above his clothes/vestments. We are not talking about his own (baptismal) cross. Losing the right to wear a pectoral cross is a visible means of showing that he has been suspended from preaching and/or conducting services.
Think in military terms, for a moment. What does it mean when a person is stripped of the visible symbols of his or her rank? It’s not the removal of a mere piece of cloth — it’s the removal of key elements of that person’s job and vocation. (Consider this classic scene from “Mary Poppins.” Not the umbrella!)
Let’s look at another crucial passage:
Reports suggest many of the armed men now guarding [the monastery] are veterans of the ongoing conflict in eastern Ukraine. Journalists are barred, though one reporter from Russian newspaper Novaya Gazeta managed to get inside past the guards and met Fr Sergiy.
"The diocese forbids me to serve, forbids me to speak. But I was blessed to speak," he told the journalist.
What does “blessed” mean, in this context?
Back to our man in Moscow:
"I was blessed to speak" sounds, in English, as if he is grateful to have been able to speak. But what he's actually saying is that he was, as some protestants might say in English, "anointed" to speak. In the linked article in Novaya Gazeta, he refers to elders from Mount Athos, the monastic republic in Greece, that (supposedly) gave him a blessing (in some cases, we might translate this is "permission," in other cases we might say "encouragement") to speak.
In other words, the BBC author(s) translated благословить correctly from the point of view of English, but they don't understand the context.
So what is happening here?
Let’s say that a major newsroom — BBC is one of the world’s most important — sent someone to cover the World Cup who had little experience covering soccer/football. They could hear a player say that the key to the game was a brilliant, beautiful “cross.”
What if one does not know what a “cross” means in this sport, as opposed to that same word in other contexts? How about the word “pitch”? That means one thing in baseball and something else in soccer.
Or maybe a foreign reporter is sent to cover the National Basketball Association and they hear someone say that the starting point guard for a contending team has done a great job improving his “handle.” What happens if a journalist accurately translate that word from English into another language, but does not know what it means in a hoops context?
Here’s one final image.
In my career, I rarely did much work overseas. However, at a crucial moment — days after the 1991 events that collapsed the Soviet Union — I spent two weeks (tmatt column files here) working with fantastic translators in Moscow and areas nearby. This was part of a trip arranged a year earlier.
These women were brilliant and their command of English was excellent. They were wise enough to know that it was not enough to be able to speak the words. They needed to know the implications of the words, images and expressions that Americans might use. We spent hours in what amounted to informal classes on the meaning of American metaphors and catch phrases.
After two weeks, our parting was quite emotional. We had been through so much together and almost everyone shed tears.
After I went through security, I walked near a low wall and, from a distance of about 10-20 yards, had my last chance to wave and say goodbye.
Our translators were waving and crying out, “Get a life! Get a life!”
I shouted back, “No! Wait! You don’t understand that phrase yet!” but security personnel pushed me on.
Words are funny things, especially in the world of religion. It’s important to know what words mean, as well as what they “mean.” Be careful out there.