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Thu 31 Jan, 2008 03:54 am
My question has to do with names given to persons in charge of churches of various denominations. You have a word for a Catholic church, another word for a Protestant church, and so on.
In a text in Chinese, I came across a Chinese term "mushi" for a person in charge of a certain church, but which church was it, it was not told. So this "mushi" might be one of a Catholic church or of a church of any other denomination.
So there is a problem we encounter when we are translating "mushi"
back to English.
Do you have any suggestion? Do you have a generic term which can be used to cover any possible situation?
representative of an unlikely being
ebrown_p wrote:How about church leader.
Sounds a bit...Pentecostal?
Tigershark wrote:ebrown_p wrote:How about church leader.
Sounds a bit...Pentecostal?
If I remember correctly (I stopped by churchy ways years ago), the Pentecostal church leader is called a "Pastor".
Mushi is usually translated, from Chinese to English, as priest.
However, it means insect in Japanese, which makes me laugh...
clergyman, clergywoman (sounds a little too PC but the term does exist), member of the clergy. Cleric is also good. Pastor is generally used in the military, even for Jewish and Muslim spiritual leaders (yes, spiritual leader is another term).
If you're just going with Christian and/or Catholic, you can use minister, too.
minister/cleric for the kingdom/realm of the creator of all things who may, but is more likely to not, be there as our supreme overlord and judge.
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