ROME: 20th September '04 --  What began as something of a hobby well over a year ago has by now developed into the only available (to the author's knowledge) complete handy online reference to many things Salesian.  It functions as a dictionary, in simple terms.  Its purpose, at least on the surface, is to make available to the English speaking world as much accurate and condensed Salesian reference as possible in a single 'click'.  The item is, of course, Lexisdb which has been referred to briefly a number of times over the past year.  It has now reached a stage, with 550 terms, of being able to offer the one browsing it, a good deal of information about almost any term you can think of that is used (or was used) in Salesian 'talk'.

There could be a number of reasons why you would want to consult Lexisdb.  You may simply want the most likely English translation for an Italian term (99% of our official terminology is in Italian, understandably).  What is the way we traditionally translate 'Giovane Provveduto'?  Lexisdb will tell you that our accepted gloss for that is 'The Companion of Youth', which does not directly translate the Italian term.  You may want to know how to best translate a raft of terms that invite transliteration, i.e. simply turning the Italian term into what looks to be the nearest English version - often with problematic consequences.  'profetico' immediately seems to invite 'prophetic' but the reality is that the Italian concept is broader than the English word 'prophetic'.  Often 'inspirational' or other synonym will be more accurate.  Fr. Chavez is fond of 'profetico'.  It is worth checking each time to see if the context means precisely that or rather 'significant' or even 'foreseeing'.  Lexisdb attempts to tackle many of these common 'false friends' in Salesian language. 'umanizzazione' sounds very awkward in English as 'humanisation' when in fact it may really best be translated as 'integral human development'.

Lexisdb will offer comment on variants in our terminology, in English.  Well known is the use of 'director' in the US where in many other parts of the English-speaking world they say 'rector'.  Less known would be the use of 'convent' in the Philippines for the Salesian community residence.

But the most useful aspect of Lexisdb may well be its notes on the history of use of a term.  In some cases, the research into this cannot be found other than in works by those with linguistic training in the Congregation - and there is not much available in English on this score, nor even in Italian.  How many are aware of the history of the word 'dicastero', which is in common use for what we would call the 'department' of, say, Youth Ministry?  Our English translation of the C&R uses 'department' to translate the official Italian term 'settore'.  The Italian C&R nowhere refers to 'dicastero' - yet in daily spoken reference, 'settore' (obviously 'sector' in English), is never used, rather 'dicastero'.  That's just a fact of language use, especially of vocabulary which refuses to follow set rules in any language.  Who opened out the word 'sistema' for the first time to refer to things OTHER than the Preventive System?  Do we realise that the use of 'pastorale' (substantive in Italian, adjective in English, hence avoid 'youth pastoral', please) has its origins in Salesian history from GC 19, when the official designations for these kinds of roles (departments) at leadership level in the Congregation were adapted in the light of Vatican II? When was the word 'coadiutore' first officially used in Salesian discourse? 

Put together comments of the above kind on 550 common - or not so common - Salesian terms, and you see that you have quite a handy reference to things Salesian.  Nothing in there is invented...it all comes from some authoritative and acknowledged source.  The purely linguistic comments rely on the authority of the author however!.

You will find Lexisdb at www.bosconet.aust.com  Test it out - and given that any work of language is ongoing by its very nature, please offer (by email preferably) suggestions, additions, corrections, especially where elements are still missing.  One important hint: a search on Lexisdb is best done by appending % (yes, percent sign) to the term or any part of the term - that way you will pick up several references to the term or associated terms.  orat% or even %orat% will pick up any term including those letters.

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'austraLasia' is an email service for the Salesian Family of Asia-Pacific.  It functions also as an agency for ANS, based in Rome.  Try also www.bosconet.aust.com