Biblical Hebrew Forum

[Jonathan Robie <jonathan AT texcel.no>]

At 11:58 AM 3/31/99 +0200, Rolf Furuli wrote:
>Dear Jonathan,
>
>I do not intend to continue this discussion, but would like to make a few
>comments on your chicken-egg problem or better, on circularity.

I agree that it's probably time to let this end, but the issue of lexica is
probably one of the issues more relevant to those interested in the Hebrew
scriptures, so I'll allow myself a comment on this.
 
>>Since Louw and Nida have both influenced a great deal of influence on
>>modern linguistics, including lexicography, I assume they know how it's
>>done. You may disagree with their results, just as you may disagree with
>>certain translations of this passage.
>
>Your quotations above are excellent examples of how the "functional
>equivalence" model of Nida (and de Waard) and the "semantic domain" model
>of Louw and Nida both allows and encourages  Bible translators to read
>orthodox theology into the biblical text.
>
>Nida's two central principles were: (1) There is only one target group: the
>general readers (who do not want to work with the text themselves). (2) The
>individual words have little meaning, what is to be translated are not
>words, but "kernels", which are found by a semantic (interpretative)
>analysis. (See J de Waard, E.A. Nida, 1986," Functional Equivalence in
>Bible Translating From One Language to Another")
>
>A central principle for "semantic domain" is thus expressed: "a word does
>not have a meaning without a context, it only has possibilities of
>meaning." J. P. Louw ,1982, "Semantics of New Testament Greek", p 40. When
>the words does not have any meaning in itself, who are the ones who can
>find the meaning by help of the context? Of course the translators! And
>this gives all power to the translators.

To some extent, this was an issue long before Waard, Nida, and Louw.
Philologists have generally believed that words needed to be understood in
their original works, which is why many lexical provide quotes from a text
corpus. Both of the major Greek lexica, BAGD and Louw&Nida, provide some
glosses or definitions stemming from their understandings of individual
texts. Regardless of the theoretical description used, it is hard to get
around the fact that, especially for relatively small text corpora, we have
individual uses of words that require explanation, and seem to differ from
other uses. This is not surprising since we also have word hapaxes.

Functional equivalence has advantages and disadvantages. I have done a lot
of prison ministry, and I think it's worth keeping in mind that the average
Bible reader does not have a particularly high level of education, and is
not well versed in biblical culture or history. Translations like "The Good
News Bible" - and I mean the English version (I didn't like the German
"Gute Nachricht") - made the Bible much more accessible. Of course, it
requires the translator to keep two things in mind: (1) the meaning
something would have had in the original culture - something which you also
seem to believe should influence translation; and (2) the meaning of
potential translations in the target culture. Sure, this requires
intepretation. For a scholar, the best choice is always the original
language.  

Translators have been called interpreters for a very long time, and it is
true that "all translators are traitors" - especially the ones who deny
this and claim that their translation is the one most accurate translation
that people should rely on.

When significant translation choices need to be made, as in PRWTOTOKOS, I
think the only thing to do is add a footnote explaining the issues and the
various reasonable alternatives. But footnotes scare off some readers, too.
Furthermore, there are other differences in assumptions and uses - should
the oral tradition influence translation? must the translation be easy to
read out loud? should it be easy to memorize? should it be beautiful
English, or woodenly reflect structures of the original language? Since
each of these choices implies a different approach, I think we are stuck
with different translations for different purposes. But claiming that the
approach taken by any one translation is the One True Approach is a little
silly, as is claiming that the translations that take different approaches
or understand the original culture differently are just biased.

>With other words: When the single word neither has an individual meaning
>nor play the role as the fundamental translation unit, there are no longer
>any controls which the readers can use to avaluate the translation, but
>they are at the mercy of the translators.

Frankly, this is one of the things that really irks me about all the
"literal" translations that claim that if the user just rely on this one
translation, they can understand what the original text without
understanding the original language. This is particularly true when these
"literal" translations, without exception, also decide that one word should
not always be translated the same way due to their understanding of the
original intent.

Jonathan
--
Jonathan Robie
R&D Fellow, Software AG
jonathan.robie AT sagus.com