The letter itself said that marking the 16th centenary of St. "May the example of this great doctor and father of the church, who placed the Bible at the center of his life, awaken in us a renewed love for the Sacred Scripture and the desire to live in a personal dialogue with the word of God," he said. 30.Įarlier in the day, before concluding his weekly general audience, the pope told pilgrims he had signed the document to coincide with the 16th centenary of St. "The different ways by which the word of God is proclaimed, understood and experienced in each new translation enrich Scripture itself since, according to the well-known expression of Gregory the Great, Scripture grows with the reader, taking on new accents and new resonance throughout the centuries," he wrote in the letter released by the Vatican Sept. The variety of translations of the Bible in the world today "teaches us that the values and positive forms of every culture represent an enrichment for the whole church," the pope said in his apostolic letter, "Scripturae Sacrae affectus" ("Devotion to Sacred Scripture"). We can only hope that both sides keep this in mind when they convene in Mar-a-Lago next week.VATICAN CITY (CNS) - In an apostolic letter dedicated to Sacred Scripture, Pope Francis said that even today, Christians can learn new things from the countless translations of the Bible that exist. But it should remind those of us anxiously watching the upcoming Trump-Xi meeting in Florida that misunderstandings can arise from even small differences in translation. No meaningful damage to US-China relations will ensue from the MND’s imperfect translation. I don’t want to make more of this episode than it deserves. To be sure, the full statement is still troubling for reasons I won’t go into here, but not quite as troubling as it first appeared. And the Chinese would not come off quite as arrogant and blind to international criticism of its actions as the Reuters headline made them out to be. NSC staffer Gorka would never have been misled into sneering at the Chinese statement by citing Google Earth. It would certainly never merit a headline in a Reuters story about the press conference. When the word “issue” (roughly a translation of wenti问题) is added back into the translation, the meaning of Wu’s statement is less startling. To me (and several of my fellow Chinese-reading Twitter friends), the first sentence in Wu’s statement should really be translated as something closer to “First, no issue with the ‘man-made islands’ exists” (emphasis added). Alternatively, it suggested China doesn’t think it is building islands, but simply building on top of existing islands.īut in reviewing the original Chinese transcript, I noticed that Wu actually said: Either way, it makes the Chinese seem arrogant in blithely rejecting even the existence of the artificial islands. This official translation appears to be the origin of the Reuters report, although Reuters added the words “no such thing” to the official MND translation. Whether we build facilities on these islands, what we do and how we do that are within our sovereign rights. Secondly, the Nansha Islands are inherently Chinese territory. The official MND English translation reported Wu’s response as the following:įirstly, there is no “man-made” islands. media describing the completion of facilities on China’s controversial South China Sea man-made islands. The spokesman, Senior Colonel Wu Qian, was asked a series of questions, including some about reports in the U.S. On March 30, the Chinese Ministry of National Defense held a press conference for reporters in Beijing. And although this mistranslation had only a minor impact, this whole episode is a cautionary tale of how even a tiny nuance in language and translation can negatively affect U.S.-China relations. It is all based on a minor but non-trivial mistranslation of the Chinese spokesman’s comments. Gorka then went on to decry China’s “territorial expansionism.”īut there is just one problem with this story and Gorka’s reaction to it. National Security Council, to deride China’s statement by pointing out that the islands can be seen on Google Earth. These stories led Sebastian Gorka, a top official on the U.S. This curious statement was quoted in the story’s headline, and the quote and the story were then republished by several other media outlets around the world. Earlier this week, Reuters posted a short report quoting the official spokesman of China’s Ministry of National Defense as saying "there is no such thing as man-made islands” in response to a question about the South China Sea.
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