Translation vs. Paraphrase in Spanish (Fanny Crosby)

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Haruo's picture

In Himnario Bautista (1978) there are a couple of hymns, and in the Methodist/DOC Mil voces para celebrar / Caliz de Bendiciones (1996) there's another, described as translations of hymns by Fanny Crosby that seem to me so divergent from her texts that they qualify at most as very loose paraphrases. If anybody here has enough of a command of Spanish to have an opinion—I'm not very good at it myself—I invite agreement or dispute. The songs in question are:

HB #323 (=MV/CB #65)
En Jesucristo, el Rey de paz, "Blessed Assurance" tr. E. A. Monfort Díaz.
Not as amazingly divergent as the next one, and yet it sure isn't very close to the original. The Methodist/Disciples text alters "el Rey de paz" to read "mártir de paz". ¡Seguridad en Cristo Jesús! at The Cyber Hymnal™ is a much tighter translation.

HB #356
"Lejos de mi Padre Dios", tr. Tomás García
This purports to be a translation of "Jesus, keep me near the cross", yet it manages never once to mention the Cross!! except in the footer in the tune name. The Cyber Hymnal™ in this case is no help, though it does offer a fourth, still crossless, stanza.

MV/CB #169
"Alabad al gran Rey", tr. Roberto C. Savage
This four-stanza text beginning "Solemnes resuenen las voces de amor" claims to be a "translation" of "To God be the glory, great things he has done", but I can't see much of Fanny's text in it. In this case the Baptists come to the rescue with HB #22 "A Dios demos gloria", translated by Adolfo Roberto.

I'm hopeful that at some point translingual links will become a basic feature of the Hymnary.org database.

Leland