Tuesday, June 19, 2007

Tramps?

Via Fr Z:
The Holy See’s new document Guidelines for the pastoral care of the road from the Pontifical Council for the Pastoral Care of Migrants and Itinerant People and its president Renato Raffaele Cardinal Martino. After talking about "Street Women" and "Street Children" we get:
PART FOUR
THE PASTORAL CARE OF THE HOMELESS (TRAMPS)
In the words of Bishop Trautman (*cough*): This is not American English.

Actually, I would be interested to find out just how the word 'Tramps' made it into the final version? I doubt that the translation was done by a non-native English speaker. Is it at all possible that it may have been translated by someone from some of the former British colonies (Indian sub-continent, parts of Africa) where various archaic words and grammatical forms have endured longer than in American or British English? Or is this an intra-office piece of humour that managed to escape into the wild?

3 comments:

TheCrankyProfessor said...

I think it might be British - after all, they still have widely advertised foundations to care for the Spastic and such.

(still my favorite, though it might be a parody, is the foundation for war injured veterans with the tag line "We, the Limbless, Salute you!"

--the Cranky Professor

Zadok the Roman said...

I very much doubt it. Whilst 'tramp' is still used informally in English, I cannot imagine a native speaker of British English using it in such a formal context.
Incidentally, the literal translation of the Italian is:
The Pastoral Care of Persons without Fixed Residence.
Please note that there is no explanatory word in parentheses after the title.
Incidentally, even in British English, being homeless and being a tramp are not synonyms. The tramp is very much a subset of the homeless population.

Argent said...

Forgive me, I can't help it, but you've got me singing:

Gypsies, tramps, and thieves
We'd hear it from the people of the town
They'd call us gypsiess, tramps, and thieves
But every night all the men would come around
And lay their money down