Deber de piedad

Question

The phrase is used by a native English/ bi-lingual English-French speaker writing in Spanish (Castilian) to the editor of a publishing house in Barcelona (Spain) in the late 1950s expressing his willingness to have his English language autobiography published in Catalan !

The author is Fr Louis (Thomas Merton) and the book is The Seven Storey Mountain.

An important piece of context is that Merton was in fact born (almost exactly 100 years ago) in the town of Prades de Conflent in French Catalonia and Merton in the same letter stresses his sense of feeling himself to be to some extent "a Catalan."

The full phrase is:

Claro que es para mí un deber de piedad y un gozo inmenso permitir la edición catalana de mi autobiografía....

There is an existing "authorised" translation which renders the central italicised section as:

I, with pride and pleasure, grant permission

I am however unconvinced by the word "pride" and in the context of the above biographical information am minded to translate this as:

For me, it is obviously a moral duty and an enormous pride to authorise the Catalan edition of my autobiography...

What do people think of "moral duty"?

Muchas gracias por responderme.

Answer 1

The fact that the book was written by a Roman Catholic monk and it is about faith in God, leads me to propose the literal translation of "deber de piedad"- duty of piety (officium pietatis), a concept that in a theological context involves not only moral obligations, but the dissemination of the knowledge of God and the promotion of religion as well as its institutions.

El hecho de que el libro fue escrito por un monje católico romano y trata sobre la fe en Dios, me lleva a proponer la traducción literal de "deber de piedad"- duty of piety (officium pietatis), concepto que en un contexto teológico involucra no solamente obligaciones morales, sino la diseminación del conocimiento de Dios y la promoción de la religión además de sus instituciones.

Thanks, Clío - sanlee, Dec 18, 2014

The word pedad always reminds me of the pawnshop here in Mexico called Monte de Piedad. - gringojrf, Dec 19, 2014

The word piedad, not pedad. Typo. - gringojrf, Dec 19, 2014

Answer 2

Thomas Merton is without doubt the most influential spiritual writer in my life search. Although I never read "The Seven Storey Mountain", I did read and possess many other of his writings. I think Clio's answer is important because although Father Merton went outside the norm of mainstream Catholic spirituality, he took his faith as a monk very seriously and would have followed the concept of "officium pietatis" especially at the time of the publication of this book. I agree with Daniela on the "gozo enorme" as being "immense joy".

My take would be: "For me, it is obviously a moral duty and an immense joy to authorise the Catalan edition of my autobiography...

Pride is too vague a word for any serious spiritual writer to use in this context. Merton was very articulate in his writing.

Mil gracias por mencionar su nombre y obra en este foro.

Pride could also be misinterpreted / is open to misinterpretation because pride is mentioned in the bible as a sin When people today say "we are proud to ." they usuually actually mean: We are very pleased to " etc... - FELIZ77, Dec 20, 2014

I am very fluent in English, but things like you (Feliz) mentioned still confuse me at times. - Daniela2041, Dec 20, 2014

Answer 3

Here's my "take" on this,

"For me it is certainly a moral duty and a tremendous joy/pleasure to authorize------etc."

I like the "moral duty" but "gozo" is certainly "joy" or even "pleasure" but not "pride".

Gracias, Dani! - sanlee, Dec 18, 2014

Answer 4

Muchas gracias @Daniela, @Clio y @Jubilado.

Each one of you has added something valuable for me.

I'm very busy at the moment but I'll try to post my concluding thoughts in the next few hours.