Translating =CE=98=CE=B5=CE=BF=CF=84=CE=BF=CE=BA=CE=BF=CF=82_/_=D0=91=D0=BE=D0=B3=D0=BE=D1=80=D0=BE=D0=B4=D0=B8=D1=86=D0=B0

Sun Feb 16 20:17:19 UTC 2014

Dear Slavists,

Thank you all for your generous and insightful comments (both on- and off-list) on the problem of translating "Bogoroditsa" / "Theotokos" into English.  The diversity of responses to the problem indicates… well, that there is a problem.  I am inclined to accept R. M. Cleminson's "Mother of God" as the most appropriate solution for now, since 1) he has given very good reasons, and 2) the passage in question follows an analysis of what happened in Ephesus in 431, where the designation "Theotokos" (as opposed to "Christotokos," suggested by Nestorius) was accepted.  So the reader will already have been informed of the main christological issue as well as the covert mariological agenda which Cyril of Alexandria was apparently bringing to the city of Artemis (cf. Acts 19:23-41).  And, having provided the example of "Bogoroditsa" displacing "mat' syra zelia" in Rus'/Russia, I wish to follow up with some examples of Christian objections to persisting pagan mother figures.  Perhaps I can ask Seelangers for additional help here:

Begin quotation

            Purist Christian authorities have never been too pleased with the interchangeability or syncretism of any pagan maternal metaphor with their own maternal metaphor, that is, Mary the mother of Christ.  Alluding to the old cult of Cybele in an eighth-century homily on the feast of Mary’s dormition, John of Damascus declared, “we do not bring flutes and revelers, or join in revels like those that are said to be celebrated for the mother of the so-called gods.”[1]  In sixteenth-century New Spain (Mexico) a Franciscan priest complained that devotees of Tonantzin (any Aztec goddess specifically in her maternal aspect) were coming from afar to worship their goddess at the Christian church of Our Lady of Guadalupe at Tepeyac.[2]  In … //A RUSSIAN EXAMPLE HERE//.

[1] John of Damascus 1998b, 219.  Cf. Borgeaud 2004 (1996), 130.
[2] Ruether 2005, 209.  See also Carroll (1986, 182-194) for evidence that the Guadalupe story “. . . arose as part of the effort to Indianize the shrine dedicated to Our Lady of Guadalupe at Tepeyac, and that it was constructed simply by Indianizing the original Guadalupe legend” (187) i.e., by Indianizing the fourteenth-century legend which led to construction of the shrine dedicated to Our Lady of Guadalupe in the Estremadura region of Spain.

End Quotation

A RUSSIAN EXAMPLE, then, is what I am hunting for in order to round out that paragraph.  Any suggestions you might have would be welcome.

With kind regards to the list -

Daniel Rancour-Laferriere

On Feb 15, 2014, at 1:23 AM, R. M. Cleminson wrote:

The objection to all the alternatives in the list is that they sound totally unnatural in English, and are, to that extent, bad translations.

Before the Reformation expressions such as "Goddes Moder" were widely current in English, but were then banished as symptomatic of what was perceived as an excessive devotion to Mary, and have remained foreign to the language of the Reformed tradition to this day, though an awareness of equivalent expressions in other Western European languages means that "Mother of God" is not unnatural in modern English, but marked as "Roman Catholic".  (Slightly ironically, the original theological resonances of Θεοτόκος are an affirmation of an orthodox christology - in opposition to Nestorianism - that Western Christianity, both Catholic and Protestant, shares.)

It is also relevant that Russian may designate Mary as Богоматерь or Матерь Божия, both expressions which are absolutely equivalent to Богородица without any perceived cultural or theological nuance; that on all the countless icons on which she appears she is identified as Μήτηρ Θεοῦ; and that in worship conducted in English in Orthodox churches in England Θεοτόκος is rendered as "Mother of God".

I think that one can be confident, therefore, that "Mother of God" fully conveys the semantics of Богородица - as fully, that is, as one can ever hope to convey semantics when translating between languages and cultures.  The other expressions fall far short of this, partly because they sound so awkward to the English ear, and partly because they point so markedly (and exclusively) to certain theological technicalities in a way that neither Богородица nor Θεοτόκος, as normally used in everyday language, do.

----- Pôvodná správa -----
Od: "Daniel Rancour-Laferriere" <darancourlaferriere at COMCAST.NET>
Komu: SEELANGS at LISTSERV.UA.EDU
Odoslané: piatok, 14. február 2014 21:57:06
Predmet: [SEELANGS] Translating Θεοτοκος / Б��городица

Dear Slavists, 

I am considering possible alternatives to "Mother of God" in translating Russian "Bogoroditsa" (which is a calque on Greek "Theotokos" according to Fasmer). Some possibilities: 

Godbearer 
Birth-giver of God 
Godbirther 
Birther of God 
The God-bearing One 

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