A couple of days ago, while I was working on editing our upcoming Advent devotional, I came across a name I hadn’t known before: Catherine Winkworth. I’m going to make a bet that no one reading this has heard of her. (Write me an email if you have!) Well, who is she? She was a 19th-century hymn translator. Sounds exciting, right?

Well, I can understand why I (and most likely you) have never noticed her before, even though she has translated 19 of the hymns in our blue Presbyterian hymnal and over 30 of the hymns in a recent Lutheran hymnal.  When you look at a hymn on the page, if the hymn was first written in another language, the name of the person who translated the hymn into English is there…but it’s really small and obscure. No reason to look at it, really. When we sing these hymns, it seems like they always existed in English. This is true when we read the Bible, too; we hardly think about it having come to us from other languages, but more on that later.

Here’s the story on Catherine Winkworth. She was born outside of London, England in 1827, but grew up near Manchester. She had a solid education from her mother and by two prominent Unitarian ministers of the Manchester area, and when still a teenager she went off to Dresden, in Prussia, to live with relatives and study German. It was there that she fell in love with German hymn traditions. By the age of 18 she had begun translating hymns into English. By 28 she had published her first book of translations, which were said to be “polished and yet remaining close to the original.”  According to The Harvard University Hymn Book, Winkworth "did more than any other single individual to make the rich heritage of German hymnody available to the English-speaking world." Throughout her life, Catherine was a pioneer in promoting women's rights and put much of her energy into the encouragement of higher education for women. She passed away suddenly in Geneva at the age of 49.

What I find remarkable about Catherine’s work is that hymn translation is no easy task. It’s not like translating scripture (and that’s hard enough). In translating a hymn, you have to match exactly the original hymn’s meter (the same number of syllables and the same word stress), to recreate the same pattern of the rhyming, and capture the same theology and mood of hymn in the new language.

The earliest hymnbook of the Christian church is the Biblical book of Psalms. There have been countless translations of the Psalms into multiple languages. These works are all to be lauded. It’s a herculean effort to bring the Psalms into another language. Yet, most translations of the Psalms do not have to create meter and rhyming. (Sometimes translators do this. These are called “metrical Psalms.”)  The gift of hymn translators is that, if they do their job well, we never notice them. We receive the gift they leave behind: the treasures of Christian hymnody that we can sing in our own language.

One of the most recognizable gifts that Catherine Winkworth has left is her translation of “Now Thank We All Our God” (Nun Danket Alle Gott). We’ll probably sing this hymn this month for Thanksgiving. You might also recognize “Deck Thyself, My Soul, With Gladness” and “Praise to the Lord, the Almighty.” Some of her hymns we might never have sung, like “If Thou But Trust in God to Guide Thee” or “O God, Our Faithful God.” As we draw closer to the season of Advent, I want to draw your attention to two hymns of the upcoming season, “Comfort, Comfort Ye My People” and “Lift Up Your Heads, Ye Mighty Gates.” We’ll see these hymns highlighted in our Advent devotional (along with seven other hymns.)

I encourage you, when you encounter these two hymns, remember Catherine Winkworth, and the remarkable feat she achieved for the English-speaking church: making accessible hymns of deep faith and striking beauty for us to employ in our praise and sung prayer. And, next time you open a hymnal, look to see all the hymns that come to us from other languages, and give thanks for translators who with skill and artistry, enrich our faith with these hymnic gifts.