Biblical Hebrew Forum

[Jonathan Robie <jonathan AT texcel.no>]

At 12:55 AM 3/22/99 +0200, Rolf Furuli wrote:

>What I do argue, is that for a particular target group,
>namely, those who by help of their mother tongue,  want to come as close as
>possible to  the original languages, only a strictly literal translation
>will do.

Let me state my own bias: I would rather people be clear about their
presuppositions and explain why they translate one way as opposed to the
other. I love the fact that some new translations are being done in
parallel with footnotes that explain the choices they made and why. There
is no such thing as a literal translation unless it lists all the
reasonable ways that a passage might be literally translated, and weighs
them against each other.

The devil is in the details. There are many translations of the Bible that
claim to be strictly literal, and they differ from each other
significantly. What exactly is a strictly literal translation with respect
to (1) tense and aspect and (2) vocabulary? You can't just translate into
the equivalent in the target language, because these things are not
equivalent across languages. Ideally, you would like to state some clear
and consistent rules - and if you can do that well enough, a computer can
use it to do the translation for you. The current state of computer
translation shows that this doesn't work very well.

Incidentally, an interesting "literal" translation can be found here:

http://www.centuryone.com/obp.html
 
>A model of a literal translation can be based on the view that just as one
>Hebrew word, say "nepe$" (which in itself is void of meaning) could serve
>as a semantic signal for a concept, and the side of the concept which was
>stressed could be ascertained because of a common presupposition pool,
>similarly can one English word, say "soul", function as a semantic signal,
>the nature of which, and the side illuminated in each case can be
>ascertained by a study of the original Hebrew presupposition pool. 

Of course, this is anything but objective. I agree with your approach, but
it introduces subjectivity. It is rather unlikely that scholars will be
able to agree on a common Hebrew presupposition pool, and our differing
models of this presupposition pool are one of the biggest factors that
distinguish our translations. For instance, as I understand it, the Jewish
translations of the Hebrew scriptures presume that the biblical text should
be interpreted in light of an early oral tradition that came to be
reflected in extra-biblical sources, and that these reflect a
presupposition pool that must be taken into account in translation.
Christians tend to reject this view in their translation. Neither approach
is more biased than the other *given* the presumed presupposition pool.

Incidentally, if we were able to reconstruct the presupposition pool
completely accurately, we would have a number of potential pools to choose
from: should we work with the presuppositions of the author, of the
intended readers, the author's model of the presuppositions of the intended
readers, or what?

I don't think we really get close enough to objectively determining these
things that it is often meaningful to distinguish these. Unfortunately,
each of us tends to construct a model that reflects our own
presuppositions, but we can at least state our presuppositions clearly.

>A translation based on this theory is in a way a semi-finished product where
>the translators do the greatest part, and the rest of the translation work
>is done by the readers. There are different classes of words, and every
>word cannot be rendered strictly literally, as you also point out. And
>again, I am not advocating such a literal translation, I am just saying
>that it has the right to live, and has several advantages over the
>idiomatic one.

There are also drawbacks. One of the chief drawbacks is that it can convey
the illusion that people understand the original language when, in fact,
they do not, and lead them to great certainty in interpretations that are
false. The only thing that accurately reflects the original language is the
original language.

I think literal translations and hyper-literal translations can be useful,
but readers should be told that all translations betray bias, and anybody
without knowledge of the original languages should compare several
translations.

Jonathan
___________________________________________________________________________

Jonathan Robie          jwrobie AT mindspring.com

Little Greek Home Page: http://metalab.unc.edu/koine
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