Beg to differ
2008 July 2
Update: Added Bob’s post.
Note: There have been quite a lot of posts recently about Bible translation and the role of the original languages. Rather than shout back, I thought I would nail a few assertions to the rhetorical door and beg my friends to differ.
Lingamish’s List of Bible Translation Axioms
- God intends for the Bible to be communicated to all peoples in all times.
- A translation of the Bible is the Word of God.
- A translation should approximate the meaning of the original in understandable language.
- A team of experts producing a translation has more chance of conveying the original message than a single expert criticizing their work afterwards.
- Ancient concepts in the original may be expressed in contemporary translation without resorting to archaic language.
- There are many instances in the original documents where we are unsure of the meaning. A translation will note this through footnotes or other means.
- Translations are produced within ideological frameworks and traditions.
- Every tribe and tongue and nation is entitled to have the Bible translated in their language regardless of the size or prestige of the group.
- Unless the Bible is translated into a language, the Gospel has not been proclaimed in that language.
- What would you add for #10?
How many of these assertions do you agree with?
Related posts:
- Bob MacDonald: Where is the word?
- ElShaddai Edwards: Three types of Bible translation readers
- Iyov: On the liberating possibilities of viewing translation as commentary
- David Ker: birds and wirds – ‘Tis the gift to be simple – Beware of Bible experts
- Jim West: Why Modern Translations of the Bible Bungle it
- John Hobbins: Translating Poetry: The Example of יגדל Yigdal (The God of Abraham Praise)
- Doug Chaplin: The perennial translation playground fight
- Rich Rhodes: Scholarly Legends
Let me know if I’ve left out a post written recently on this topic.
Speaking of begging to differ, I am sure you know that the little latin phrase in your header is from the Gospel of John, right? And has nothing to do with God creating Adam, right? Jesus speaking to Mary is not quite the same as God forming Adam. So, in the context of the header, what on earth does ‘Don’t cling to me’ mean?????
Yes, I wondered when someone would mention that. It is an intentional twist on the original citation. Here the lingapotamus is telling God not to touch her (the alternative interpretation of the Greek phrase). ElShaddai did the artwork but I gave it the title.
Great! I am glad that even the GAFCON group, the conservative Anglicans, affirmed the importance of Bible translation:
But I do have a couple of minor issues about what you write.
On #2, I don’t like to see “A translation of the Bible is the Word of God” without qualification. No translation is the inspired and authoritative Word of God. They are certainly not inerrant, as this error-prone translator well knows.
On #9, I am not sure. How much of the Bible needs to be translated for you to accept that the Gospel has been proclaimed? Anyway what really matters is who the Gospel is proclaimed to, not the language.
What would you add for #10?
10. A translation always begs, begs to differ that is. And the translation should never ever substitute (unless you’re in a hotel room on a trip a long way from home, after the airline lost your luggage in which you kept your books because you thought you’d work on your computer or watch the inflight movies instead, only to find a Gideon KJV and a Book of Mormon in the drawer next to the bed). So, the translation should never ever substitute for the textS and the messageS and all the various intended and UNintended different meanings in the more than three languageS of the more than 60 various historieS, dialogueS, poemS, love songS, prophecieS, legal statementS, and letterS packaged as “the Bible”–in other words, any translation is best read, always, alongside some facsimile of an “original”-language “pre-”translated version. Which is another way of saying this: Regardless of your own tribe and own tongue and own nation, you’d do well to look beyond your own and then back again. And my translation of all of that is this: A translation is just a personal story of yours sitting alongside someone else’s personal story thrown right at you. It’s always personal, unless you read it only in translation–If you don’t catch it, it falls along the wayside. If you catch it too fast and eagerly, you’re in for hard times with some heat. If you fall in love with your own stories or some favorite translation by the best team of expert, well forget about anyone else’s story. If you’ve got the kind of ears that like to hear, then you get more out of translation and the other language tribe and nation than you ever bargained for.
καὶ λέγει αὐτοῖς οὐκ οἴδατε τὴν παραβολὴν ταύτην καὶ πῶς πάσας τὰς παραβολὰς γνώσεσθε
Peter, I think “respectful of the church’s historic and consensual reading” deserves more consideration than we give it in our debates (Thus axiom #7).
Ed. Note: JK quotes Mark 4:13 in his comment above.
Thanks JK, I always enjoy your perspectives. You know I’m a populist on this topic and so I’m most concerned with the average person who will interact with the Bible. That’s why I hold so strongly to axiom #2. Otherwise God’s message is really only for a select group of privileged scholars.
Is the personal story angle a postmodern approach to reading? Your language is inspiring (I’m being serious) but I don’t know how to apply that for the average Jack and Jill. And frankly they are the ones who treasure God’s word and for whom it was in general written for.
10. Their sound is gone out into all the world – doesn’t even need a text! I did post briefly on this here
Bob, I’ve added your post to the list. It’s a great one.
David,
This rather average Jack (me) thinks the personal story (and translation) has been around a lot longer than French postmodernisms. (Thanks for asking me a question like I might have something to say; you know that’s not why I read your inspirational blog).
Here’s a couple of translations of Mark 4:13,
He continued, “Do you see how this story works? All my stories work this way.”
(Eugene Petersen’s The Message translation of Mark’s translation of what Jesus said)
Jesus told them: If you don’t understand this story, you won’t understand any others.
(Contemporary English Version)
Context: Jesus (aka “Joshua”) is telling stories to get people to listen to “God’s Word” and the “Gospel.” Of course, he’s speaking Hebrew Aramaic, and Mark’s changed that into written Greek. The Greek word for “story” here is παραβολὴ, which can be transliterated as parabole and shortened into “parable.” Quite literally (us average Jacks see) it is a “thrown beside,” or a story thrown beside. Jesus’s first parable translated by Mark is this key story. Mark and Jesus both are signaling that this “original” story is key. It’s like your original “Bible” or the quintessential “Gospel.” You get it, but you have to get more to get anything else. Like the seed in the story, it has to go deep and to die and to come back to life in multiple, fresh, refreshing, fruitful ways. There are analogies here to translation. Not necessarily all and only what Jesus (or Mark) intends. But something very clear is that Jesus himself never wrote anything down that we have today in Greek. Rather, he left all of what he said in the hands of translators, and retellers, of the original.
The whole (God’s word, Gospel, Mark, ch 4, v 13) enterprise of telling Hebrew rabbinic stories in colloquial Aramaic to be translated into Greek first is an endorsement of the kind of translation projects you and your friends in Mozambique have going.
And yet, I think, Iyov makes a tremendous point about all that gets resolved with translation by “learning Hebrew.” And average Jacks and Jills like Nathan Stitt and Judy Redman and Suzanne McCarthy and me (actually they are quite exceptional, hardly average) resolve much by learning if by looking back at some of the other original translations.
Personally, I learn so much more reading, side by side, both a translation in one of my heart languages and the original whether in Hebrew or Greek. (There are real scholars who study this kind of thing, not-so-average experts like Mikhail Epstein, who we average types could call postmodern because he coins helpful terms like “interlation” and “stereotexting” to get us imagining the discoveries and changes that go on when reading at the same time something written in two different languages. It’s Vladimir Nabokov’s metamorphosis.)
Which brings me back to the point Jesus (or Mark) was making: this is very personal stuff. It makes personal demands, sometimes unpredictably, uncontrollably personal demands. If there’s any discovery of treasure in the treasuring of God’s word, then there’s at the same time change (learning and a new daring to be different). There are worse ways to do this (i.e., the three that Jesus’s key parable identifies) and there are better (the fourth way in the parable, where things are plowed up, and softer because of water, and nourished deeply rather than scalded).
I don’t know if that’s overly simple (for some of us Jacks and Jills) or so complex that it’s off topic (in ways that Michel Foucault and Jacques Derrida and Helene Cixous might start writing in off in other directions which James K. A. Smith might see as not post-fall, as he’s written a very interesting pre-fall book he calls The Fall of Interpretation. Now, he’s no average Jack) . I think, originally (before for I started thinking about the lost baggage in translation), all I wanted to say was that “You get so much more if you read your favorite translation, as best you can, along side the Hebrew or Greek (or Aramaic if you can get that)”.
Two translators on a ship are talking.
“Can you swim?” asks one.
“No” says the other, “but I can shout for help in nine languages.”
Translator gets 400 words to translate.
Client : How long will it take?
Translator : About a week.
Client : A whole week for just 400 words? God created the world in 6
days.
Translator : Then just take a look at this world and afterwards take a
look at my translation.
More! More!
I’m not sure that I agree with any of your axioms, and some of them (such as #6) are not axioms at all, but guidelines.
What are you hoping for from this exercise? Do you wish a proof that your axiomatic system is logically inconsistent? (And thus, we don’t need to worry anyway, and can just be happy.)
Or are you looking for a reassuring conclusion that a substandard translation is actually just fine?
For me, I think the interesting questions are:
(a) How can we make translations better?
(b) How can we best approximate or explain or illustrate or elucidate the aesthetic and literary qualities of the original?
(c) How can we best approximate or explain or illustrate or elucidate the semantic qualities of the original?
(d) How can we best approximate or explain or illustrate or elucidate the mystical qualities of the original?
(e) How can we make translations that help readers access original texts (and actually result in large numbers of readers reading those original texts with some comprehension)?
(f) What is the most effective pedagogical framework for presenting the text?
It seems to me that many translations present, in a written form, something akin to a comic book or novelized or cinematic version of the Bible. I’ll mention The Message as an explicit example. There is nothing wrong with this, and it can be entertaining, but Scripture is manifestly not a comic book, a novel, or a movie. Now, perhaps, these translations are appropriate for those who can only process material at these levels — but I would no more say that those people had “read the Bible” than I would say that folks who saw the movie, read the Classics Comic Book, or perused the Cliff’s Notes read Moby Dick.
Some time back (1958 to be exact), Leland R. Phelps published an essay, “Moby Dick in Germany,” in which he puzzles over why Germans at first didn’t and then very much did read Melville’s novel. Carl Jung in his essay, “Psychologie und Dichtung” (1930) referred to Moby Dick as the greatest American novel ever written and great for psychological investigations too. Likewise, H. G. Scheffauer, an editor of the publishing house that put out the 1927 German translation of the book wrote a glowing review, saying “in which he heralded the novel as one of the most original and impressive works of modern literature, and predicted that the metaphysical undercurrent in Moby Dick would speak more clearly and urgently to the German spirit than it had to the Anglo-Saxon. He was right”
… but not until 1946. The problem wasn’t that no one read or trusted Jung or Scheffauer. The problem was the first translation, which was “woefully inadequate” according to Phelps. And no body much knew Melville in Germany. He didn’t have much of a reputation yet. Then comes along a better translator! And another! And voila la (as we say in English and German and French now), people started reading Moby Dick like crazy in German in that German spirit.
Any lessons from that parable?
A Mexican bandit made a specialty of crossing the Rio Grande from time to time and robbing banks in Texas. Finally, a reward was offered for his capture, and an enterprising Texas Ranger decided to track him down. After a lengthy search, he traced the bandit to his favorite cantina, snuck up behind him, put his trusty six-shooter to the bandit’s head, and said,
“You’re under arrest. Tell me where you hid the loot or I’ll blow your brains out.”
But the bandit didn’t speak English, and the Ranger didn’t speak Spanish.
As luck would have it, a bilingual lawyer was in the saloon and translated the Ranger’s message. The terrified bandit blurted out, in Spanish, that the loot was buried under the oak tree in back of the cantina.
“What did he say?” asked the Ranger.
The lawyer answered, “He said, ‘Get lost, Gringo. You wouldn’t dare shoot me.’”
(ps. “voila” in Texan is “there yew got it” and sometimes lawyers are referred to as rattlesnakes.)
Any lessons from that parable?
That people will go to any lengths to avoid writing their dissertations.
OK, I read that essay. It turns out that the 1927 translation was translated in a style reminiscent of some Bible translations advocated here. Below I give the entire paragraph, of which you JK only quoted the first sentence. As you read it, and see the entire context, think about whether people want a watered down translation or the real thing:
Furthermore, the first German translation of Moby Dick was woefully inadequate. The German text consisted of sixty-three untitled chapters and the epilogue. There was no dedication, and the sections “Etymology” and “Extracts,” each abridged to about one-third, appeared at the end of the work. Great liberties were taken with the novel in preparing it for its first publication in German. Sentences, paragraphs, pages, and whole chapters were omitted. The famous opening words of the novel, “Call me Ishmael,” were omitted. Approximately one-half of the original chapters were not translated and an additional one-fourth had deletions ranging from a sentence to several pages. Only thirty-six chapters and the epilogue appeared unabridged. The result was an emasculated version of the novel which Scheffauer had described as one of the most original and impressive works of modern literature.
When the dissertation’s over, I’m going to read lots of comic books. Oh, that’s why I’m not making any progress!
Iyov, thanks for quoting Phelps a bit more. I do think he makes some of your points! His very next sentence is “The [lousy 1927] translation can be read as an adventure story.”
But the better translations lead to more important reads of the book. I think Germans even started looking at Melville’s English. Here’s more; what do you think?
“They [German readers of the better translations] rank Moby Dick high not only in American literature but also in world literature, and Melville is linked with Shakespeare and Homer. He is lauded as one of the first writers to sense the impending collapse of the structure of the nineteenth century and to see the chaos behind the masks of middle-class convention. Moby Dick is praised because, like the works of Ernst Jünger and Franz Kafka, it fulfills a deep metaphysical need for men [and women] living in a world wracked by two world wars.
Ahab’s struggle with the white whale is interpreted variously as man[kind]’s striving for the infinite, an insolvable riddle, man[kind]’s search for truth, his [or her] struggle for salvation by fighting evil, his battle with fear, and a theodicy in the Leibnitzian sense. In Ahab, Melville created a figure somewhat similar to one of the great symbolic characters in German literature, Faust.
The reputation of the work in Germany is now firmly established; Moby Dick is finally recognized as a great work of art [in German and in the original English].”
The personal subjectivities, the identifications with cultural and with universal human issues, through the translation language, and back again, make the appreciation of Melville and his Moby Dick profound.
Ok, back to Mad Magazine, or Aristotle.
“That people will go to any lengths to avoid writing their dissertations.”
You tell him, Doc.
Now that I’m a bit more awake I want to reply in more detail to a few points. First, thanks JK for the pomo notes. I work from the basis that we are all pomo but don’t know it. The irritating people are those who think they are pomo but aren’t.
Iyov, aha! So we differ. I never would have guessed.
Maybe you could write an alternative list of axioms. I think our differences are fundamental and thus our debates tend to not resolve.
Again the populist/elitist distinction seems key. But I think you and Hobbins have the upper hand when arguing for the primacy of the original text and the tendency of translations to caricature. I’m always participating in this debate with one foot in another canoe: I am seeing the Bible translated into an African language by translators who are woefully undereducated for the task. If you think something like NIV makes you wince just try to imagine some of the translations being produced in preliterate cultures using a translation as their base. Part of that comes from a missionary “Matt 24:14″ urgency to hasten the apocalypse but at least in Africa it is churches themselves that are driving the translation movement resulting in rudimentary first translations into local languages. While Christianity seems to be shutting its doors in Europe it is exploding in Africa so it is possible we will see many many more translations and even multiple translations for some of the major languages.
Well, let me cite a reference that I bet you have already — Eugene Nida and Charles Taber’s The Theory and Practice of Translation (p. 31):
As will be seen in Chapter 7, in which basic problems of style are considered for languages with a long literary tradition and a well-established traditional text of the Bible, it is usually necessary to have three types of Scriptures: (1) a translation which will reflect the traditional usage and be used in the churches, largely for liturgical purposes (this may be called an “ecclesiastical translation”), (2) a translation in the present-day literary language, so as to communicate to the well-educated constituency, and (3) a translation in the “common” or “popular” language, which is known to and used by the common people, and which is at the same time acceptable as a standard for published materials.
Now, this makes perfect sense to me. I think all of us here qualify as the well-educated constituency. So, what is wrong about talking about the desirable features for Bibles in groups #1 and #2? (After all, everyone who comes to your blog — well, almost everyone — qualifies as members of the well-educated constituency.) Why must we always be focusing on group #3?
Please ignore the redundant reference to “well-educated constituency” above– or just think of it as emphasis.
I think you’re on to something. For a separate project I’ve been looking at ways to make translations widely available in many languages. I’ve tried to find non-inflammatory terms for two basic types of translations. Until now I have been thinking “classic” and “contemporary” but your #2 definitely seems to be what most of us are looking for which is neither “classic” or “contemporary” but… “cultivated,” “classy” …”literary?”
Once again Nida saves the day!
(That’s for Hobbins)
Iyov, if anyone here has been advocating Bible translations which greatly abridge the original, leaving out whole chapters etc, I have missed the comments in question. But I wonder if Moby Dick became popular in Germany in 1946 because suddenly in those days of post-war reconstruction all things American were popular. I have seen a similar effect in former Soviet republics in the 1990s.
This reminded me of one of my German friends who said that his favorite English book was Oliver Twist.
First of all, to Kurk: finish that dissertation. Get hired, attain tenure, and then read your comix. It’s called delayed gratification. The rest can wait, though don’t ruin your family life in the process. It’s not worth it.
As for Nida, I have great respect for his creativity, boldness, and encouragement of type 3 translations. It makes sense to me that the first translation into a language today, if produced by SIL or Wycliffe folk, is going to be a type 3 translation. However, if there are mother-tongue people capable of producing a type 1 or 2 or a type 1+2 translation, they should be encouraged and given the funds to do so. It is no accident that the majority of believers around the world hear a type 1, 2, or 1+2 translation in worship and/or make such a translation the basis of their own devotional reading. Type 3 translation promoters just don’t seem to get why so many people prefer translations that require considerable effort to understand.
I would also point out, with respect to audio Bibles, that an excellent reader is often able to make even a difficult translation like KJV understandable through intonation and inflection. Furthermore, the perceived advantage of a type 3 translation is neutralized – indeed, it might even be a hindrance – in the context of solid expository preaching.
Like Iyov, I’m interested in seeing better type (1+)2 translations reach the market in English.
With respect to 4#: individuals and teams of translators hate being told by some wiseacre that they bungled things in one or more cases. Things really get out of hand when the bungle is fairly obvious upon examination. This is according to the old Roman law – which fits human psychology – that defamation of character is particularly heinous if it comes about by spreading truths, not falsehoods. If someone makes it up that a Roman senator is in love with another senator’s teenage slave, that’s tolerable. But if it’s true, that’s the most vicious slander imaginable.
I’ve been asked by one translation team not to do point out errors on my blog in their translation work. That’s the problem with #4; as soon as a knowledgeable individual examines a translation with a fine-toothed comb, the unpleasant truth comes out: the translation is of uneven quality, with room for improvement, with respect to the translation’s own stated goals, on practically every page.
In short, David, I agree with the principle that the Bible in translation is the Word of God. Now comes the hard part: producing a translation the first priority of which is to be faithful to the original texts. There used to be more respect for those texts than now. True, the result was often translations that only seems to be a faithful representations of the original texts. But the situation now is bad, sometimes very bad, in another way.
If you are set on passing out a Bible which is free of language which does not get past the field testing guidelines currently in use, then I submit: you will have a Bible that is unfaithful to the original texts, and quite unlike anything else in print on your shelves, poetry, prose, even comix.
Here is my attempt to provide some explanation about English Bible translations to interested laypersons:
http://scrollandscreen.com/biblestudyresources/englishversions.htm
When I actually come to recommending a Bible (http://scrollandscreen.com/biblestudyresources/index.htm#Bible), I basically say you need to get more than one.
I was going to say something about diglots; about Eugene Nida’s conceptions; and about Richmond Lattimore’s and Robert Alter’s and Willis Barnstone’s and Julia Evelina Smith Parker’s and Mary Sidney Herbert’s Bible translations. But Iyov and David and John are saying something else to me, which sounds like encouragement, if it’s just strong encouragement to butt out for a while. That might be encouragement to all of you. I do appreciate you blogging people, all three or four types of you. (I would ask what Nida might have us do to pigeonhole that LOLCat thing. Aw forget that. Be kind to one another, and remember you’re equal to the other sex too, created in One image that way. I’ll be back before you know it. Enjoy the rest of your 2008.)
oh. one more thing. don’t thro out your comics. save em for me, especially the ones that are translations, sorting them into boxes 1, 2, 3. if I don’t come back, send everything to David courtesy pastor S.
Kurk, you a good
boyperson.John, thanks for commenting. Would you like to collab on a #2? I’m really good at eliminating commas.
Hope I’m not too late to jump in.
Totally disagree with #2. The words in a translation are the words of a translation committee. They attempt to convey the meaning of the words of God but they are not the word of God, ever.
And as for #10.
Because bible translation is so important, a translation has an obligation to indicate: where it diverged from its normal methodology and why.