Derzhavnaya bogoroditsa?

Thu Oct 29 17:42:31 UTC 2009

What about the following example:
Праздник Успения Пресвятой Владычицы нашей Богородицы и Приснодевы Марии
Should it be translated as 
The Feast of the Dormition of Our Most Holy Lady, the Theotokos and Ever-Virgin Mary 
or it would be better to say 
The Feast of the Dormition of our Lady the Mother of God and Ever-Virgin Mary 
Any other suggestions?

--- On Thu, 29/10/09, Michele A. Berdy <maberdy at GMAIL.COM> wrote:

From: Michele A. Berdy <maberdy at GMAIL.COM>
Subject: Re: [SEELANGS] Derzhavnaya bogoroditsa?
To: SEELANGS at bama.ua.edu
Date: Thursday, 29 October, 2009, 5:10 PM

This is very interesting. And sorry to beat a dead horse, but… I still don’t agree. I think language and religion are being confused. “Virgin” “Virgin Mary” “Our Lady of” etc are common Catholic names of religious paintings; "Mother of God of..." is a common Orthodox name of an icon. The former is more familiar to an English-speaking audience, but that’s just because there are more Catholics in the US/UK than Orthodox. Mother of God doesn’t sound “foreign” to English-speaking Orthodox.

When you translate Bogomater’ as “The Virgin Mary” or "The Virgin," you are not just switching languages, you’re switching religious traditions. I think it’s inappropriate to add Catholic associations/connotations to an Orthodox icon, as it is also inappropriate to add Orthodox associations/connotations to a Catholic religious painting when translating into Russian. I’m not sure that this is a big deal (despite my nattering on about it), but I’m sorry the art world is doing it (on both sides). Why not just translate literally? Accurate translations would seem a bit odd or cumbersome to audiences raised in different religions and religious environments, but in time they’d get used to it.

My two (perhaps overly sensitive) cents

----- Original Message ----- From: "William Ryan" <wfr at SAS.AC.UK>
To: <SEELANGS at bama.ua.edu>
Sent: Wednesday, October 28, 2009 9:15 PM
Subject: Re: [SEELANGS] Derzhavnaya bogoroditsa?

> I absolutely agree with this.
> 
> For many words, titles, names, expressions etc there is no such thing as a 'correct' translation, only an appropriate one, and that may depend on such variables as context, stylistic register, and convention. And even within specialist areas (e.g. specific religious communities, or the world of art and culture) there may be considerable variety of usage.
> 
> The comparative Google searches which I quoted in my previous posting may not have been very scientific but they were very illuminating - I recommend a little browsing.
> 
> Will Ryan
> 
> 
> Margaret Anne Samu wrote:
>> Since Russian icons and liturgical images started moving into the art world about a century ago, let me chime in from the art historian's viewpoint.
>> 
>> The standard name used by art historians is the Virgin (Virgin of Vladimir, etc.) almost regardless of the image's country of origin. There are notable exceptions with famous images whose historical names stuck, such as Raphael's Alba Madonna (National Gallery of Art, Wash., D.C.).
>> You will see this usage in most art history publications, including ones with objects from diverse countries, such as the catalogue from the Metropolitan Museum of Art's recent exhibition, Byzantium: Faith and Power, which included an entire gallery of Virgins--many from Russia. I see the Met as a standard of scholarly  neutrality, which may or may not be the goal here.
>> 
>> Some publications dealing exclusively with Russian and Byzantine objects do aim for linguistic accuracy by using the term Mother of God, such as the catalogue for the traveling exhibition The Gates of Mystery. This exhibition had a very different aim, it seems to me, from the Met's. The Gates of Mystery (as its title implies) was very much about creating an aura of foreignness around the art, giving the visitor access to a mysterious Russian spiritual world, while the Met's Byzantium exhibition tried to place late Byzantine (including Russian) images in a broader context that visitors would readily understand.
>> 
>> The main problem with using the phrase Mother of God is that it the extra preposition can get unnecessarily bumbly when you are trying to create a readable sentence, since most of them are "of" something or somewhere, and you are usually dealing with attribution (by) and place of origin (from). But it is used sometimes, especially when the images' liturgical aspects are being emphasized.
>> 
>> Similarly, art historians usually use "Christ" (figure of Christ, infant Christ, Christ Pantokrator, etc.) instead of the liturgical Jesus (baby Jesus, etc.) or Savior--not that the latter never appear, either.
>> 
>> Meanwhile, I hope the original question about sources on the image under discussion has been answered.
>> 
>> Margaret
>> 
>> ======================
>> Margaret Samu
>> Ph.D. Candidate in Art History
>> Institute of Fine Arts, New York University
>> 1 East 78th Street
>> New York, NY  10075
>> 
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