Biblical Hebrew Forum

[Peter Kirk <peter AT qaya.org>]

On 16/11/2005 23:28, Read, James C wrote:

> Putting all our pre-indoctrinated ideas aside and having considered
> the merits of both the NIV and the NWT translations, could it be
> that a 'good' translation would be a balance of the two?

I must say I doubt it. I think it would be a curate's egg, good in 
parts! But then I don't consider consistency to be a merit, in cases 
where words are used in various senses. Well, you seem aware of the 
danger when you criticise "exagerated faithfulness to any one particular 
word".

James and some others, you might be interested in the Better Bibles 
Blog, http://englishbibles.blogspot.com/, to which I am an occasional 
contributor.

> ...
> My programme will soon be sweeping the internet in a manner similar to
> Google's algorithm (crawling from link to link) and will parse and store
> the frequency of every word and combination of words (mistakes included)
> in every modern language that the visible web has to offer.
> This database of word/phrase frequencies will be the basis of a new 
> database
> of numbers. Each unique number will represent one 'concept', which I 
> believe
> to be common denominator of all languages. And through intelligent self
> correction mechanisms the programme will decide when a particular phrase
> can map to a particular concept. As the entire algorithm is guided by 
> concepts
> (with meanings) and phrases alone it will not be able to produce unnatural
> language yet will remain faithful and consistent in its mappings.

Sounds fascinating! Please keep us posted about your progress.

> ...
> Nor will it fall into the trap that the NIV has of denying the right 
> to interpret
> the text of the reader by forcing any particular random idiom which 
> supports
> any particular doctrine as idiomatic translations will only be 
> performed as a
> result of careful meaning establishing mechanisms which map contexts 
> to idiomatic
> expressions.

This is not fair criticism - although I don't want to claim here that 
NIV is better than any other translation. There is nothing random about 
how NIV was translated, but its wording was carefully chosen by a large 
and varied team of scholars, who also know the English language and how 
phrases are used in it just as well as your computer is likely to be 
able to learn it. These scholars did of course have their biases, and 
the resulting translation is not entirely free of them. But I don't 
believe that it is possible even in principle for translation to be free 
from such biases. It certainly is not true of NWT, which, as an example, 
biases the understanding of nephesh and `olam by its choice of the 
particular consistent renderings "soul" and "to time indefinite". (NWT 
has been accused of other kinds of bias, of course, but I don't want to 
get into such matters which chiefly concern the NT.)

> When my project is complete the entire source code will made available 
> under open
> source license so that the code can be subjected to rigourous 
> international
> peer review. This will be to ensure that I am not allowed to inject my 
> own personal
> beliefs into the mechanism (something which we are all guilty of from 
> time to time).
Good!

--
Peter Kirk
peter AT qaya.org (personal)
peterkirk AT qaya.org (work)
http://www.qaya.org/