Judge: Just use app to translate Chinese grave
A GRAVESTONE featuring Chinese i nscriptions has been granted permission by a Church of England court, after a judge ruled that visitors could “use an app” to translate its text.
The Rev Sharon Wilkinson, vicar of St Mary’s church at Woodkirk, near Dewsbury, sought guidance after a parishioner applied for Chinese wording to be included on a gravestone in her churchyard.
Prof Mark Hill QC, chancellor of the diocese of Leeds and also a judge of the Consistory Court, has given a signpost ruling making it clear he does not consider translations on gravestones to be necessary because people can “make use of one of the myriad apps currently available” to translate for them.
The ruling permitting the Chinese text comes in the wake of a dispute surrounding a similar judgment in which another judge ruled that the family of an Irish woman cannot have words written in Gaelic on her gravestone unless there is an English translation.
The original ruling, which prompted controversy in both this country and Ireland, was given earlier this year by Judge Stephen Eyre QC, Chancellor of the Diocese of Coventry in his role as a judge of the Church of England’s Consistory Court.
His decision, in which he held that the proposed words – “In ár gcroíthe go deo’ – for the gravestone of Margaret Keane, at St Giles’s church yard at Exhall near Coventry, could only be used if the Engl i sh t ranslation, “in our hearts forever”, was also included on the gravestone. That decision is under appeal.
In his own j udgment, Chancellor Hill said the plan for the gravestone at Woodkirk was for the deceased’s name in Chinese and English and possibly an additional phrase in Chinese.
“I can see no objection to either provided, in the case of the latter, that the phrase is consistent with (or at least not contrary to) Christian doctrine,” he said.
Referring to general guidelines on the Church’s view of translations on gravestones, he added: “There is no general prohibition on the inclusion in inscriptions on headstones of words or phrases in a language other than English.”