Biblical Hebrew Forum

[Rolf Furuli <furuli AT online.no>]

Bill Rea wrote:


>Rolf wrote:-
>
>
>>I will also refer to my book: "The role of Theology and Bias in Bible
>>Translation With a Special look at The New World Translation of Jehovah's
>>Witnesses", 1999, Elihu books. This book is about Bible translation, and it
>>discusses how the Bible can be translated in order for Bible readers to get
>>as close as possible to the original text only by help of their mother
>>tongue.
>
>Why did you chose a translation for the Jehovah's Witnesses rather than
>something more common like the NIV or NASB for your special look?
>

Dear Bill,

I chose the NWT because it was the translation which best could fulfill my
research goals. Let me explain.

If you study the books of Eugene Nida, the one who has exerted the
strongest influence upon modern Bible translation theory, you will find
that he leaves no room for a target group who wants to work with the text
of their own. The most fundamental principle for Nida is that the
translated text should be processed to the extent that even those with
little education can understand the message. This works well for missionary
translations for groups who have no previous knowledge of the Bible and
perhaps for most other groups. And this is reflected in the modern
translations, even the more literal ones, also in the NIV and NASB. I am
aware of only two modern Bible translations that have translated strictly
literally, in order to let the target group get a feeling of the original
text, namely the NWT and The Schocken Bible, by Everett Fox (where just one
volume has been published).

In a discussion of the role of theology and bias in Bible translation, the
NWT is an excellent object to study. It is a strictly literal translation
(though with some idiomatic renderings), and more than any other
translation it is accused for bias, and even of being dishonest.  My
approach is linguistic and philological, and contrary to popular opinion I
have found the NWT as a very fine translation given its stated goal and
target group.  Because of its literalness it often has a wooden style, but
the acute awareness of its translators of the nuances of the Greek and
Hebrew verbs and their search for details makes it a fine study Bible
(particularly the Reference edition of 1984). The theology of the
translators is seen in many of their renderings, as is more or less the
case in all translations, and this gives a fine opportunity to ask about
what bias really means. Is the criterion for what is biased or not biased
in translation the orthodox theology, or what is it? My claim is that bias
(defined in relation to language and not to theology) has no place in a
Bible translation but theology certainly has.

Something I explore in depth is what I call "the contextual fallacy". James
Barr introduced "the etymological fallacy", showing that what counts in
lexical matters is not the etymology of a word but its meaning at the time
when a document was written. On the basis of this fine observation the
pendulum has svung too far in the opposite direction, to the point where it
is believed that a word does not have a meaning without a context. This is
true when we, by help of lexicons and grammars and our own mother tongue
work to find the meaning of the Hebrew text, but this is *a situation of
translation*. It is not true in other situations, and it overlooks the fact
that we have to work with two different presupposition pools (the Hebrew
and the English one) and two different situations of communication (the
author/original readers/original language- the translator/modern
readers/modern language). I claim that words have individual meanings
without a context because they serve as semantic signals of concepts in the
minds of living people, and that this meaning is quite similar among the
individuals having the same presupposition pool. Further do I claim that
the context does not generate *new* meaning, but serves as a forefinger
which makes visible a certain part of the meaning which already is there.

The word np$, for instance,  served as a semantic signal for *one* meaning
in the old Hebrew presupposition pool, the shades of this meaning being
made visible by the context. Modern translators use 30 or more words to
translate this single word, while the NWT translates it and the Greek
equivalent yuce by the one English word "soul". This is a fine situation
for an investigation of whether the use of *one* word as a modern semantic
signal for one original word really do benefit the mentioned target group
or not, while most other modern translation do not give me this opportunity
of research. I will mention that I also use "Today's English version"
extensively as a point of reference or contrast.

My goal was to explore the strength's and weeknesses of a strictly literal
translation, and therefore I needed such a translation. Let me add that I
also compare the NWT and the Schocken Bible, two translations which both
are strictly literal but which often have very different renderings. This
illustrates literal translation based on prosody and music versus  literal
translation based on meaning. There is much fun in working with literal
translations, even those who generally is viewed as being sectarian and
extreme. So if we have a mind keen for research when we open such Bibles,
perhaps they are not so extreme after all.




Regards
Rolf


Rolf Furuli
Lecturer in Semitic languages
University of Oslo