Translation Tribalism 3

Well --- NASB bashing? A tribe under attack.

Good points here about the philosophy of translation. There is room today for a variety of translations meeting slightly different purposes. I prefer a translation that uses little dynamic equivalence (although footnotes giving dynamic equivalence for obscure expression are always good).

Your post made me wonder why ... and I think it is because a more literal translation helps me put myself into the framework of the author and original audience better than a dynamic translation. This keeps front and center the importance of wrestling with the text, considering the "alien" context, and moving it into application today.

As I read the post, something came to mind that I had heard this past week. I wish I could remember what and who, but I think it was an Orthodox priest. It captured a tension or a caution when we speak about our Holy Scriptures that I think we need to always keep in mind.

First, I will say that it's always important to refer back to the texts in the original language when translating. Translations of translations inevitably lose ever more coherence. Further, even formal equivalence is dynamic as Scot points out. Other than for the simplest and most concrete words, there are almost never fully equivalent words in different languages. The culture and experience of the people shape languages such that even on a one-to-one basis words rarely carry precisely the same meaning. In translation, there is no such thing as a strict equivalence. And the further removed another culture is, the more dynamic even the word for word (never mind idea by idea) translation becomes.

However, it's important, I think, to keep in mind that we are not Muslim and the Bible is not the Qur'an. It is a teaching of Islam that the Qur'an can only be read in Arabic. A translation of the Qur'an is not the true Qur'an itself, but rather a commentary on it. (Not sure that "commentary" is the right word, but it's the best one I can come up with at the moment.) The Qur'an exists only in its original Arabic language, never in translation.

That is not and has never been the Christian perspective. We have always believed that the Holy Scriptures can be translated and, in translation, remain just as much the Holy Scriptures as the original text. Whether the translation is Latin, or Slavonic, or Aleut, or English, we do believe the result is actually Holy Scripture (even when a written form of the language has to be created by the translator) not something less than the original.

I think that also says something about where we truly place authority, but that's a different topic.

"And another point: preachers and teachers, whether they like the formal or not, always explain the text in dynamic ways."
And this is why I think that many preachers prefer formal equivalence, it gives them built in illustrations.
Great series

Regarding: The focus moves from "text in its original context" [in formal equivalence translations] to "text in its modern context" [in dynamic appraoches].

I think this is a false dichotomy. For example, a formal-equivalence translation that takes a common Greek expression and turns it into bizarre English captures neither the text in its original context (it was never bizarre) nor in its modern context.

Interesting example Derek.

Other translations commit similar "minor crimes" at times (ESV in Romans 16:7 as an example). I agree about leaving ambiguous constructions ambiguous. I made such a point on an earlier post in this series and another commenter with expertise in translation noted that ambiguity in the text was almost never intended by the author and thus we should be searching for clarity of meaning and using it in translation.

But I think that at times the temptation to push our prejudice on the text means that it would be better to leave the ambiguity in the translation. Then we are less likely to be guilty of passing our thoughts off as divine inspiration.

Anybody who thinks that it is possible to do a word for word translation of Ancient Greek needs to spend some time working in Sophocles. The main reason English versions were at one time able to follow the Greek Text closely is that the English language has been significantly influenced by the older English versions. So up until say 1950 the idioms of bible were part of the working vocabulary of the man on the street. This is probably no longer true.

The focus moves from "text in its original context" to "text in its modern context."

Actually, this is what is called transculturation, rather than translation. Translation itself does not move a text to a modern context, rather, it moves a text from one language to another. Translation has been occurring since soon after the original biblical texts were written. We would not now call translations into Syriac or the Latin Vulgate translation into a "modern context."

The distinction between transculturation and translation is crucially important because much of the criticism of dynamic equivalence mistakes it for expressing the biblical text in terms of another culture. Examples sometimes criticized (by Lee Ryken, et al.) are biblical metaphors which make no sense translated literally, but whose figurative meaning has been accurately translated in modern Bible versions such as the NIV and TNIV. The main focus of dynamic equivalence (which is largely an outmoded concept among Bible translators themselves) is what is stated in your post, Scot, i.e. that the readers of a translation get the same response to it as did the audience of the original text. The focus is on reader response. Today's Bible translators focus more on functional equivalence, or closest natural equivalence, i.e. "How do we normally express the meaning of the original text in some other language?" Great care is taken to accurately preserve the function of the words and grammar of the original text.

Transculturation would be substituting an object in the receptor culture for a different object in the original biblical text, such as referring to Jesus as the "Minnow of God", rather than "Lamb of God," where sheep are unknown but fish are a prime source of food. Current Bible translation theory does not smile upon such transculturations. Too much theological information can be lost. It is better to use other solutions, such as borrowing a word from another language, then footnoting some explanation.

Translation does not change meaning like that. Instead, it produces the meaning of the words of a text in one language through the words and grammar of another language so that the speakers of the second language can understand what was said in the first language.

All the other points in this good post are well taken, especially talking about degrees of formal equivalence and dynamic equivalence.

So up until say 1950 the idioms of bible were part of the working vocabulary of the man on the street.

True. One of the changes since then is that the vocabulary of the working woman on the street gets to be considered as well! :-)

Wayne,

I couldn't tell from the short and few reviews of Meaning-Based Translation, whether it's attempt is at providing the benefits and challenges of formaldynamic tranlation or if it's really more focussing on one or the other. The title seems to indicate the latter... What's your take?

Scot,

Thanks for more great discussion on this. I certainly appreciate you linking a Wallace article. I both love and despise him for his work on the greek genetive. :) Do you know if Stanley Porter has published anything similar (I couldn't find one via Google)? As far as I know, those are the two titans of current greek grammar and they sometimes have different takes.

Overall, I hope that as people read through these discussions, they get a sense of one thing that recurs with great frequency: Top translators and editors of various bibles and with various leanings along the tranlation continuum, consistently suggest that you read multiple tranlsations that represent differnt points along the line.