English translation or equivalent of Unetane Tokeff (title/phrase)

[hagar_972]

This is a bit of a strange question. It's for a story though, and it's not exactly google-able.

I am trying to translate - or find an English equivalent of - the name of the Hebrew Atonement Day chant, ונתנה תוקף. (On Wikipedia.) It's old and weird Hebrew, and I need a translation that will both preserve the original sense (rather than, say, using

Comments

[hagar_972]

It has pretty natural imagery and the invoked sense of Father has something more than sternness in it. That, on my standards, is postively cheery. High Holiday prayers - which were my startpoint - are about 50% lists of sins and strange death and 50% "You're very great and we're very small" so next to that, the psalm you linked to is a cheery and warm Sabbath song.

Eek, the end of the world is... not exactly what I meant. I intended not so much "Judgement Day" as "personal Judgement". (Again, my cultural context is of a religion where you'd judged for life or death every year, on a date that's equivalent to ten days after a happy holiday like Christmass, complete with a 25hr fast, 16hr prayer and a week and a half of aplogizing to anyone you may have hurt in the passing year. And that's the secular-to-standard-observant, not the orthodox+ version. This practice is so deeply ingrained that about 70% of declared seculars fast on this day, and virtually everyone to the apologies and treat them as sacred.)

"Catchphrase": ideally, the phrase would be something I can use as story title (even if with little tweaking) and reference in the text in some way that won't be a direct quote. In the case of the suggested "Deliver us from Evil" I probably can't use the phrase as title - too cliche and not the right emotional cadence - but I can use variations on "deliverance" in the text to help invoke the atmosphere and emotional context I want.

My MC, the team leader, treats everything that went wrong as his fault which while not exactly healthy, also gives him the sense that if he broke it he can fix it. His captor is someone who was supposed to be on his team, and a family member of someone else. So there are the main themes of guilt and accountability (a person accounting for themselves or, more importantly, for another person). Throwing deliberate psychological torture into the mix both adds layers, and also enables me to introduce penance and forgiveness. (And creates various interesting psychological twists, but we're on the conceptual level here.)

The Hebrew phrase I started from was darn perfect, because Atonement Day is equally - or even more, in modern time - about sins unto fellow people than sins unto the Lord. Seems i'm subverting religious themes for interpersonal ones, so it's less about the god's greatness and more about accounting before him...

Many thanks again! You're being very helpful.

[jamoche]

I'm Catholic; sounds like you might want something like what we sing during Lent (the period leading up to Easter; this will give you some sense of it, though it's probably not as generally well known as you're looking for).

[hagar_972]

Yes, this is the equivalent of what I had in mind. There are a number of elements in there I can probably adapt and use. Thank you!

[azalaea]

Heh. Yeah, to me it sounds beautiful but definitely menacing, very much "great while we are small." Maybe it's because there's no Jesus in there, I'm probably more trained to associate all the optimistic bits of religion with him.

Hmm: you could try this from the Book of Common Prayer http://www.xpeastbourne.org/cw/trad.txt (scroll down to the section beginning "Almighty God our Heavenly Father," though you might find other parts of the service helpful too). That's a prayer for forgiveness, and "thought and word and deed" would be quite adaptable in the text. But it's not particularly doomy. I think possibly a problem is, in Christianity, confession/apology/prayer for forgiveness is an optimistic act, because, as it says there "God... forgives all who truly repent." All the DOOM is really reserved for the end of days, Hell, etc, not for this life.

However I think "Judgement Day" overlaps more with the idea of personal judgement you're looking for than perhaps it seems, because, well, Christianity is a more eschatological religion than Judaism, and it's meant to be personal. "He will return to judge the living and the dead" is part of Apostolic and Nicene creeds common to the main branches of Christianity. So... to me it seems like the same thing, really, just God is saving it all up for later rather than doing it once a year.

Take the "ye know neither the day nor the hour" thing, the point is:

1) Judgement Day could happen any minute, i.e RIGHT NOW TO YOU, at which point you personally will be judged, so sort yourself the hell out.
2) Even if Judgement Day is millennia away, you, personally, might die any minute. Which amounts to the same thing, as next thing you know you personally will be getting judged, so sort yourself the hell out.

Also, in Christian teaching what you do to others, especially to the vulnerable, is supposed to be considered the same as doing it to Jesus, so there's not as much distinction between sins against others and sins against God. Some versions of the prayer I linked to above say "we have sinned against thee and against our neighbour," but some just say "against thee."

Aaargh, bizarrely Christian Teal Deer. They clearly dinned more of this stuff into me at school than I thought...

[hagar_972]

Yes, this is closet - certainly gives me a better idea of the culture my characters are coming from. (It's... quite remarkable.)

Having read through the page - were I to use the word Kyrie, how recognizable would it be? On the scale from "Is that Japanese?" to recognizing the context right of the bat.

[azalaea]

Oof, tough question. Well, speaking for myself, I went to a Church of England school, am now non-practising and agnostic but feel "culturally" Christian, and my reaction to that word was a sort of "What's-that-oh-yes". I mean, it's so short that even if you're actually in a church and DOING it you might not realise it had a name. And the experiences of people from different denominations are obviously going to vary. So, somewhere between your two poles, I think, and my FEELING is that practising, church-going Christians would probably recognise it, people who'd never gone to church probably wouldn't unless they had picked it up from books, and vague, once-upon-a-time or occasional worshippers might or might not recognise it as something religious, especially if there was context, but might not be able to pin down exactly what it was.

I would think it wouldn't be too hard to explain and jog the reader's memory, though, especially in dialogue.

[hagar_972]

Well, it seems this was just picked as the first part's title. Fairly recognizable, easily searchable if at first obscure, and considering what's going on in that part of the story - guaranteed to mess with whoever's recognizing what it means.

[azalaea]

Cool!

[azalaea]

I might suggest having the actual thing as an epigraph under the title, seeing as it's so short. Should stop people thinking it's a SF thing or a girl's name or whatever.

[azalaea]

Oh or you could go with Kyrie Eleison as below.

[dustthouart]

I'm a Roman Catholic and we sing the Kyrie Eleison in Greek at a number of parishes I've been in. I don't think it's uncommon--I've been in parishes in many places in Pennsylvania, and in Vancouver CA, that used the Greek.

I assume Greek Orthodox would know it too.

I was raised Protestant, however, and when I was about 13 I wrote a fantasy story with one of the characters named Kyrie. Which I pronounced /'kai ri/ instead of /'kir ri e/. (Imagine that the actual IPA symbols for English r etc are there, I am too lazy to copy/paste them.)

And I attended a somewhat liturgical Protestant Church (the Methodists).

Honestly, in modern day American society, you can't even assume that people know the names of the Evangelists, much less anything more esoteric. I've compared something to a parable in class and had people go "What is that, Aesop?" We don't read the Bible or learn about Christian culture in school, so if people aren't raised Christian, a lot of times they don't know anything, unless they've made the effort to become biblically literate. I find this very sad, because you don't have to believe that the Bible is the word of God to realize that it's the basis for so much other published work.

So you have the absurd situation in some universities where you have people who haven't read Genesis, but they have read Milton.

Anyway, off-topic tl;dr there, sorry. ^_^ Just a pet peeve.

[hagar_972]

Israel has bible class from elementary school, and they sort of fail at being critical about it. Plenty secular ("non-practicing") families aren't happy about it, but at least everyone has a basic idea where we've come from.

So you have the absurd situation in some universities where you have people who haven't read Genesis, but they have read Milton.

Ah, meta-post-modern society: read the ripoff, forget the original. I understand with the sentiment.

Kyrie Eleison seems to be a recognizable enough phrase, and the meaning works perfectly with the first half of the story. I think it got picked as a title for that part.

[emily_shore]

I assume Greek Orthodox would know it too.

Oh yes, oh yes.

[jamoche]

The entire phrase - Kyrie Eleison - would be more recognizable. Kyrie by itself only means "Lord".

There was a pop song some years back called "Kyrie" that used it in the refrain; I would imagine that a lot of people would find it vaguely familiar.

[hagar_972]

This helps. Thanks!