Q-Eye – 16 July 2010

Quaker views on the world

The sun shining over modern-day Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. | Photo: mknobil/flickr CC:BY.

Friends of the religion

While preparing material for their new website, Friends connected to Friends House Moscow played around with the online software tool Google Translate to convert text from their Russian Language website into English. The results tended to fall a little short of Quaker principles of simplicity and clarity. Here is what the automatic translator did to part of the Russian website’s home page:

‘You went to the site of the Religious Society of Friends (Quakers). Here you can find plenty of information about our faith and practice. We believe that each is a creative force that helps people do what is destined to, helps to understand the value of themselves, is love for others. In any person there is a particle of the Divine Spirit, listening to the voice of whom everyone can grow in the highest measure of spiritual perfection. Spiritual growth – not the inheritance of the elect. It is common to all, always and everywhere. For the Friends of the religion is not some external activities aimed at caring for a “holy” part of himself. Our faith affects every aspect of human life and leads us to the assertion that life can not be divided into categories of “sacred” and “worldly”. There is no place either in ourselves or in our relations with the world, wherever God is not present.’

So that’s all clear then!

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