[Wikipedia-l] Re: Wikipedia-l Digest, Vol 1, Issue 1307

[Anthere]

Message: 3
Date: Fri, 29 Aug 2003 11:46:44 -0400
From: "Matt M." <matt_mcl at sympatico.ca>
Subject: [Wikipedia-l] Culte, cult, secte, sect
To: <wikipedia-l at Wikipedia.org>
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>  "Cult" is more often used to refer to deviant
religious groups,
> heretics with significant doctrinal differences. 
Outsiders sometimes
> tend to believe, without a stitch of evidence that
the cultists do 
weird
> things like drinking blood or engaging in orgies.
>
> I haven't researched the matter, but my impression
is that in French
> "culte" is far more socially acceptable.

I would use the French "secte" to translate "cult" in
the sense of
"antisocial cult." When Heaven's Gate, the Solar
Temple, etc., are 
mentioned
in the French-language media, or when they ask "Is
such-and-such a 
little
religious group a cult or not?" the word they use is
"secte."

In English, "sect" means a denomination of a religion;
I would probably
translate it as "dénomination" or something similar.
("Northern 
Conservative
Fundamentalist Baptist or Northern Conservative Reform
Baptist?")

"Culte" in French means worship, as in "heures de
culte" (hours of
prayer/worship/mass at a church). English sometimes
uses "cult" for 
this, as
in "the cult of the goddess Athene" in ancient Greece,
meaning the 
worship
of Her, but it's rarer and, in view of the pejorative
meaning of cult, 
seems
to be dwindling and increasingly able to be
misunderstood. (I would 
probably
not want to refer the "the cult of the Goddess" within
earshot of any
Pagan - and I am one!) "Worship" is probably the best
translation of
"culte".

Matt

Thanks Matt and Ec

That is a tricky word, not to mistranslate
unintentionnally :-)

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