austraLasia #3418

 
* Cooperators EAO/R Elect World Councillor
* Salesian Sources now complete

  26 April 2014 --  Two items of good news:
The 1st of 11 regional congresses for the Salesian Cooperators (ACS) has  now wound up in the Philippines. Philip Yu has been elected as World Councillor. This will be Philip's second run at this task.

The translation of Salesian Sources Volume 1 (Fonti salesiane) is now complete. It will of course be printed, but digital copy of the Introduction and four parts is available for whomsoever should want the entire effort in digital format.

World Coordinator, Mrs Noemi Bertola,
World Delegate Fr Giuseppe Casti
and for the first time PNG has a delegation at the EAO Regional Congress

MA NILA26 April 2014 --  Mr Philip Yu ASC has been elected as Word Councillor for the EAO/R ASC Region. The election concluded with the second ballot.  Here is basic information concerning Philip, who had a previous term in this role some years back:
Full name Philip Yu
Nationality Chinese Hong Kong
Age 50
Date of Promise 1980
Marital status Married
Languages
     written English, Chinese
     spoken English, Mandarin
Education background: PhD in building energy use from Hong Kong Polytechnic University
Occupation: Environmental and applications engineering in HVAC for buildings; work coverage includes Asia Pacific countries and India
Involvement in Assoc. of Salesian Cooperators:
    Provincial Coordinator – CIN, 2009-2014
    Regional Councillor – EAO Formation, 2008-2014
    World Councillor for EAR, 2001-2008
On the final day of the COngress 18 new members made their Promise at a Mass celebrated by Fr Joseph Casti, the SDB World Delegate.
Please refer to the EAO Blog for additional information and photos. This blog is being actively maintained by the EAO Regional Fr Vaclav Klement.


Melbourne: 26 April 2014 -- The Fonti salesiane or Salesian Sources are now fully translated into English.  This is Volume 1 of a projected multi-volume series, but at more than 1300 pages, is already a sufficient collection of Don Bosco's original material to keep people happy for a while! It is not clear when further volumes will be ready in Italian - possibly some years away.

Obviously this translation has been done with a view to a printed English edition of the large tome given to all GC27 members (many of whom have chosen to mail it back home rather than risk overweight luggage, but a digital version of the item is bound to be of use as well - and while the printed version may take anything up to a year to finalise, the digital is available now.

There are 5 parts to this volume: a general introduction and four major sections, three of which deal with Don Bosco's history, pedagogy, spiritually, and the fourth contains his major biographical and autobiographical writings.

Some of this material has been previously available in English, but not so much of it. Fragments were translated by Arthur Lenti in his 7 volume series, and where these existed they have been incorporated, obviously. No sense in re-inventing the wheel. In some cases where it was possible to find old and out-of-print editions in English of some of Don Bosco's material: early Constitutions, Bonetti's Cinque Lustri, etc., these too have been used - this means some differences in translation styles.

But where larger items already existed in English - caution! In almost every case, almost as if the editors were following Murphy's Law, if we had the 2nd edition translated into English long ago, they chose the third or fourth or whatever edition they regarded as 'definitive'! It is not our task to argue with the scholars, so accept the 'Salesian Sources' editions as definitive in each case. It also gave us an opportunity to make corrections to eaarlier digital versions.

A second word of caution
The digital collection of some 309 documents plus commentaries is in view of a printed edition. A first and in some cases second proofing has been done to eliminate obvious errors (mostly typos or technical issues like a period following cf., which Italian does not do. It must be clear that a final and more thorough poffing will occur when this material goes to print.

This means that you may still find occasional errors - and here is the good part! If you do, pass this information on, please. Let there be any number of proof-readers!! It will ensure a much better overall product.  Certain choices have already been made. The translator uses British spelling conventions, for example.

Do you want a copy?
The items are all available individually on SDL This would allow someone to hunt through and find Salesian Sources - Part 1 etc.  We have not chosen at this stage to combine all five parts, since that is not as simple as it sounds and would require further lengthy checking to ensure all footnotes, pages etc are sequential, and becomes a little heavy for download or opening from SDL.  But what we have done is to make a separate zip file, and it is not so heavy, of all five parts.  IF you would like this zip, just email austraLasia and we'll make sure you get it.

Enjoy!