[maryz]

Since there is no such thing as a native Latin speaking cadre in the Vatican all the "pure" Latin documents are necessarilly translations from some other language.

Maybe you've never studied a language in depth, but my own experience, when I was taking Hebrew, is that I tried from the beginning to think in Hebrew when I wrote an essay -- obviously, with more and more success as the years of study piled up. IMO, you can always tell someone who's mentally translating from his own language.

This may account for so many "poor" translations over the years.

Maybe I missed something, but the only "'poor' translations" I've seen referenced here are translations from the Latin.

[OLD REGGIE]

Maybe you've never studied a language in depth, but my own experience, when I was taking Hebrew, is that I tried from the beginning to think in Hebrew when I wrote an essay -- obviously, with more and more success as the years of study piled up. IMO, you can always tell someone who's mentally translating from his own language.

The operative words are "I tried".

Maybe I missed something, but the only "'poor' translations" I've seen referenced here are translations from the Latin.

I agree. OTOH would you expect an ackmowledgement that the translation "confusion"/"error" was made in the Latin version?