Talk:Magnificat

Text vs. Translation

I changed the usual textpage heading "Original texts and translations" to Texts used in settings and translations to highlight that Douay is a pretty close translation of the Latin, while Book of Common Prayer is an approved liturgical text with a different division of verses, and an 'original' in its own right. Of course since 1970 the number of "approved" translations in various languages has exploded, but I think it makes sense to distinguish the Vulgata (with Ambrosian variants), the BCP, Luther's Meine Seel', and the Slavonic Величай, душе моя texts from 'mere' translations with as yet very little choral tradition behind them.

A standard sung Greek text would certainly qualify in this sense as an 'original', but I dont speak Greek and am not sure whether the slight differences in the Greek texts are Modern Greek vs. Koine, or whether there are liturgical books with a sung version of the New Testament text. (In either case, I find "Ancient Greek" confusing as a tag, unless used to refer to classical Attic :-P) Let's just not shed blood over which Aramaic version should go at the top of the page. Richard Mix 17:42, 7 April 2012 (CDT)

Yes, I agree with you that texts considered as "approved translations" may receive the 'Text' tag in place of the 'Translation' tag. WIth respect to the "Ancient Greek" text, it certainly is not modern Greek, judging from the long/short vowel accents and the aspiration marks. Changing the 'Ancient Greek' title to something other is no problem for me. What about using 'Classical Greek' instead? —Carlos  10:39, 8 April 2012 (CDT)

"Koine" is a standard term, but "New Testament Greek" is widespread and perhaps more obvious. Wikipedia divides thus: Proto-Greek; Mycenean; Ancient Greek (equivalent with Classical, and subdivided into many dialects besides that of Euripides and Sophocles); Koine or New Testament Greek; Medieval or Byzantine Greek; Modern Greek. Again, I'm too inexpert to say whether we might ever need a Category:Byzantine Greek.

The page is long enough to benefit from a table of contents, so I think I'll try adding headers for each 'text', and maybe for some translations... but see you've reformatted in long columns. Would it be OK to go back to pairing up some items, so that for example we preserve a line-for-line layout of the Vulgata & Douay, and similarly the Slavonic and Russian, Norse & Bokmal? Richard Mix 17:47, 8 April 2012 (CDT)