07:42 Jan 8, 2009 

I do realise that sometimes it is better to 'not translate' a word when it is unknown in the target country but this time it is for Belgium where half of the children do their communion and the other half have a lentefeest, so my question really was to the point as I had no clue how to go about describing it, finding the wording spring festival, or spring party too broad! and by the way, church communion is communie and lentefeest is the secular communion!

22:11 Jan 7, 2009 

With such a culturally specific term, you have to ask yourself whether the context and purpose of the text justify the effort of finding a 'faithful' translation and the associated risk of unintentionally confusing the reader or distorting the significance of the term in the context. For instance, organised secular humanists are rather few and far between in the USA, so specific mention of their spring ceremony in lieu of Catholic communion might only create puzzlement in a US audience -- and if the fact that this ceremony is a counterpart to communion is not essential to the purpose of the text, you might be better off to use some sort of innocuous quasi-paraphrase (such as 'church communion or secular communion' for 'lentefeest of communie') or quietly ignore it.

16:24 Jan 7, 2009 

de collectie kleding voor je communie of lentefeest ? so it is the secular kind of the communion celebrations you do as a child of about 8 and 12. how to describe the lentefeest in english. Thank you all!

16:11 Jan 7, 2009 

In a Belgian context? Would you please post the full sentence in Dutch?