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9780310246855

Challenge of Bible Translation : Communicating God's Word to the World

by
  • ISBN13:

    9780310246855

  • ISBN10:

    0310246857

  • Format: Hardcover
  • Copyright: 2003-05-01
  • Publisher: Zondervan

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Supplemental Materials

What is included with this book?

Summary

This collection of 21 essays by leading scholars brings together the carefully nuanced insights of years of experience devoted to the challenges of responsible biblical interpretation and translation.

Supplemental Materials

What is included with this book?

The New copy of this book will include any supplemental materials advertised. Please check the title of the book to determine if it should include any access cards, study guides, lab manuals, CDs, etc.

The Used, Rental and eBook copies of this book are not guaranteed to include any supplemental materials. Typically, only the book itself is included. This is true even if the title states it includes any access cards, study guides, lab manuals, CDs, etc.

Excerpts

ARE TRANSLATORS TRAITORS? SOME PERSONAL REFLECTIONS.

Moisés Silva

During my student days, while looking over a Spanish theological journal, I happened to notice an article on a topic I knew would be of interest to one of my professors. When I brought it to his attention, he asked me whether I would be willing to translate the essay into English for him. Since Spanish is my mother tongue, he figured I'd be able to come up with a rough translation quite quickly. I thought so, too, but to my surprise, the project became a nightmare. I labored over virtually every sentence and felt burdened that at no point was I communicating in a truly satisfactory manner what I knew to be the "total" meaning of the Spanish. Possibly for the first time I sensed what factors may have motivated the old Italian complaint, Traduttore traditore -"A translator is a traitor."

This incident was rather puzzling and troubling to me. True, I was unduly concerned over precision-my teacher needed only a general understanding of the article's main points (and I was too afraid of writing down something that might be misleading). It was also true that at that stage in my life, although I had served as an interpreter on a few occasions, I had little experience in the translation of written literature. But my inadequacy as a translator was not the real problem. What was disturbing to me was that I found it much easier to render Greek and Hebrew into English, even though my knowledge of those languages was almost infinitely inferior to my knowledge of Spanish! In a very important sense, my understanding of the latter (simply because it was a living language learned from infancy) was far greater than the understanding that anyone can have of an ancient language no longer spoken. Yet I struggled to express in English the meaning of a Spanish sentence in a way that I did not experience when translating a biblical text (naturally, I might struggle trying to figure out what the Greek and Hebrew meant, but that's a different question).

In truth, there is a simple solution to the mystery. The answer is twofold. First, the very fact that Spanish was a living language for me meant that I was much more conscious of its subtleties and connotations than I could be of comparable nuances in Greek and Hebrew. As a result, I was fully aware of my failure to reproduce such features in English, whereas in the case of the biblical languages, well, ignorance is bliss. True, increased practice in translation develops one's skills in finding adequate equivalents, but it takes years of intensive work-to say nothing of the need for an inherent linguistic and literary gift-to become a truly competent translator. There is an important lesson here for the many students, and even professional scholars, who think that after two or three years of Greek they are qualified to translate the New Testament.

But I am more interested here in the second part of the answer. College and seminary courses in the biblical languages consist primarily of guiding the student in translating word-for-word. If the resulting rendering violates English syntax or makes no sense at all, changes may be introduced, but as a rule these translations are stilted (sometimes barely intelligible to a layperson) and rarely express the thought of the original in the most natural way that the rich resources of the English language make available. Most of us have thus been led to believe that if we manage to represent the Greek and Hebrew words in as close a one-to-one correspondence as possible, we have succeeded in the task of translation. But who would consider successful a Spanish-to-English translation that had such renderings as "I have cold in the feet" (instead of "My feet are cold") or "He has ten years" (instead of "He is ten years old")-even though these sentences conform to English syntax and their meaning can be figured out?

Perhaps a fuller illustration from Spanish may be helpful. The Larousse Gran Diccionario Español-Inglés, English-Spanish (1991) has a foreword in both languages; presumably, the editor wrote it in Spanish and himself translated it into English. The Spanish of the last paragraph, if translated literally, would read like this: "We would sin of ingratitude if we did not mention finally the names of ... valuable collaborators without whose help the execution of our effort would have been much more arduous, and [we would sin] of immodesty if we did not beg our readers to have the courtesy of indicating to us the omissions and imperfections that we might have incurred, errare humanum est , so that we may emend them in future editions."

Such a literal translation is not only too long, awkward, and complicated for acceptable English style, but it also reflects certain cultural elements that are out of place in an English-speaking society. Accordingly, the English foreword reads very businesslike: "Finally, we would like to express our gratitude to ..., whose valuable assistance greatly facilitated the task. Since errare humanum est , we would also be grateful to readers for kindly bringing omissions and imperfections to our notice so that they may be corrected in future editions."

Admittedly, this is an extreme example, but the principle it illustrates needs to be appreciated. All successful translations of literature (for example, contemporary German novels) sound natural , as though they had originally been written in English (while also preserving a feel for the original cultural setting). Therefore, they are more easily read and understood than if they reflected the foreign syntax and word usage. (Incidentally, since the message communicates more clearly, one can argue that they are more accurate than literal renderings would be.) In contrast, one can hardly call accurate or faithful the KJV's word-for-word translation of Micah 1:11-"Pass ye away, thou inhabitant of Saphir, having thy shame naked: the inhabitant of Zaanan came not forth in the mourning of Beth-ezel; he shall receive of you his standing."

The preface to the recently released English Standard Version describes its philosophy of translation as "essentially literal" and as "word-for-word" (over against the thought-for-thought approach of some modern Bible versions). Literalness in translation, however, is something of an illusion, and although the preface goes on to qualify these claims ("Every translation is at many points a trade-off between literal precision and readability"), the unwary reader can hardly suspect how many major syntactical transformations are adopted by the ESV. Here is a fairly word-for-word rendering of Hebrews 7:20-22 (but respecting the word order required by English):

And according to which [= inasmuch as it was] not without an oath-for on the one hand the ones having become priests are without an oath, but he with an oath through the one saying to him, "The Lord swore and will not regret: 'You are a priest forever'"- according to so much Jesus became a guarantee of a better covenant.

Some versions (e.g., the NASB), while making this complex sentence a bit more understandable, retain the basic structure of the original. The ESV, however, renders it this way:

And it was not without an oath. For those who formerly became priests were made such without an oath, but this one was made a priest with an oath by the one who said to him: "The Lord has sworn and will not change his mind, 'You are a priest forever.'" This makes Jesus the guarantor of a better covenant.

By (1) breaking up one long sentence into three, then (2) transforming a binary comparative structure (with a long parenthesis in the middle) into a set of independent clauses, and finally (3) adding quite a few items absent from the Greek ("it was," "formerly," "were made such," "was made," "This makes"), the ESV successfully clarifies the statement to modern readers and makes its meaning clear to them. But to call such a rendering literal (let alone word-for-word) is a fantasy.

It is not surprising that my illustration comes from the letter to the Hebrews. Although examples of this sort could probably be found in every book of the Bible, the author of Hebrews makes greater use of the stylistic resources of Greek than other New Testament writers do. And here precisely is part of our problem. Because most New Testament books (as well as Old Testament Hebrew narrative) are characterized by a fairly straightforward syntax, many of whose features can be paralleled in English syntax, we are lulled into thinking that literal renderings of the Greek text "work." But just because a certain Greek syntactical pattern can be reproduced in English, that hardly means it should , as though such reproduction were the best or most faithful representation of the original.

Things are quite different in the translation of classical Greek literature generally. A recent and successful translator of Plato's dialogues, R. E. Allen, defends his method in a manner reminiscent of arguments in favor of literal Bible translations:

Claims of fidelity presuppose that the underlying Greek text is fully understood, that is, interpreted, and that translations can be done in terms of this interpretation. Interpretive translations, like newspaper editorials, have their value; but they decide in advance issues on which students may reasonably differ and on which the English reader may be invited to make up his or her own mind. Some degree of interpretation, no doubt, is unavoidable, and a wholly neutral translation which preserved every ambiguity and all the overtones of connotation would require constant reference to the Greek in order to make sense of the English. Yet neutrality, no less than fidelity, remains an important value in translation. Let no man tell you what is in the text of Plato if you have means of finding out for yourself.

He goes on to argue that a literal approach should be part of the translation process (while acknowledging that "literalness requires interpretation after all").

It soon becomes clear, however, that literalness for this classical scholar means something a little different from what it means to many biblical students. On the very first page of the translation, when Socrates says that a certain Meletus has brought an indictment against him, Euthyphro asks him what the charge is, to which Socrates replies, ouk agennne -"not an ignoble one,"-but Allen renders it, "One that does him credit." Or consider one of the statements by Socrates in his speech before the Athenians. Translated word-for-word (as much as English syntax allows), it reads: "And certainly and entirely, O Athenian men, this I ask of you and beg for." Allen's rendering: "So I must specifically ask one thing of you, Gentlemen."

And yet, typical translations of classical Greek literature are even freer (though it is also true in classical studies that some scholars argue in favor of a very literal method of translating). As an illustration, take the beginning sentence of Thucydides' History of the Peloponnesian War . First I provide a literal rendering:

Thucydides an Athenian wrote down the war of the Peloponnesians and Athenians, how they warred toward one another, beginning immediately [with] its establishment and expecting [it] to be both great and more worthy of note than those that had taken place before, judging that both were at their height for it in all preparation and seeing the other Greek[s] banding together to either [side], some on the one hand immediately, but some also intending [to do so].

Here is Rex Warner's translation (1954; Penguin Books, 1972):

Thucydides the Athenian wrote the history of the war fought between Athens and Sparta, beginning the account at the very outbreak of the war, in the belief that it was going to be a great war and more worth writing about than any of those which had taken place in the past. My belief was based on the fact that the two sides were at the very height of their power and preparedness, and I saw, too, that the rest of the Hellenic world was committed to one side or the other; even those who were not immediately engaged were deliberating on the courses which they were to take later.

For comparison, I also quote the earlier translation by Richard Crawley (Loeb Classical Library, 1910):

Thucydides, an Athenian, wrote the history of the war between the Peloponnesians and the Athenians, beginning at the moment that it broke out, and believing that it would be a great war and more worthy of relation than any that had preceded it. This belief was not without its grounds. The preparations of both the combatants were in every department in the last state of perfection; and he could see the rest of the Hellenic race taking sides in the quarrel; those who delayed doing so at once having it in contemplation.

It should be pointed out that, as far as Thucydides' style is concerned, this is not an abnormally difficult example; much more complicated passages could readily be found. And of course, even these are child's play in comparison with the demands that Greek poetry places on translators. Here are the last lines of book 9 of the Odyssey , first in the Loeb translation by A. T. Murray (1919):

And as soon as early Dawn appeared, the rosy-fingered, I roused my comrades, and bade them themselves to embark and to loose the stern cables. So they went on board straightway and sat down upon the benches, and sitting well in order smote the grey sea with their oars. Thence we sailed on, grieved at heart, glad to have escaped death, though we had lost our dear comrades.

Next is the poetic and highly regarded version by Robert Fitzgerald (1961):

When the young Dawn with finger tips of rose touched the world, I roused the men, gave orders to man the ship, cast off the mooring lines; and filing in to sit beside the rowlocks oarsmen in line dipped oars in the grey sea. So we moved out, sad in the vast offing, having our precious lives, but not our friends.

The first time I taught extrabiblical Hellenistic Greek, I had a small group of advanced college students who had shown strong competence in two years of New Testament Greek. One of them was an unusually gifted student who, nevertheless, felt quite frustrated and discouraged because of the difficulties she was experiencing.

Continues...

Excerpted from The Challenge of Bible Translation by Glen G. Scorgie, Mark L. Strauss Copyright © 2003 by Zondervan
Excerpted by permission. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.

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