A correspondent raised with me some reservations concerning the official translation of paragraph 92 of the Roman Canon, and I thought I would record my reflections here. The Latin text is:
offerimus praeclarae maiestati tuae
de tuis donis ac datis
hostiam puram
hostiam sanctam,
hostiam immaculatam,
Panem sanctum vitae aeternae
et Calicem salutis perpetuae.
And the official English version:
. . . we, your servants and your holy people,
offer to your glorious majesty
from the gifts that you have given us,
this pure victim,
this holy victim,
this spotless victim,
the holy Bread of eternal Life
and the Chalice of everlasting salvation.
We use the English word victim only to refer to animates, that is, to humans or animals. But Latin hostia can also refer to inanimates. For instance, an Advent collect refers to devotionis nostrae hostia, officially translated as 'the sacrifice of our worship'. A well-known version of O Salutaris Hostia as 'O saving Victim' may have suggested that 'victim' be used in the passage under discussion, but here, the Blessed Sacrament being spoken of as 'bread' and 'chalice', two inanimates, I suggest that 'sacrifice' would be a preferable translation. Moreover, the use of 'this' has no counterpart in the original. If we were to omit it in translation, instead of the repetitive insistence of the current version, we should have a paragraph that builds steadily to a conclusion and to the full revelation of its meaning:
. . . we, your servants and your holy people,
offer to your glorious majesty
from the gifts that you have given us,
a pure sacrifice,
a holy sacrifice,
a spotless sacrifice,
the holy Bread of eternal Life
and the Chalice of everlasting salvation.
