The History and Practice of Bible Translation: A Brief Survey
Author: Dr. David G. Burke
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Why Must the Bible be Translated?
Why is it that the Bible must always be “translated” in order for people to understand it? And why in many contemporary languages does it continue to be freshly translated?
The Anglican archbishop of Dublin, Richard Whately (1787-1863), is remembered for astonishing the clergy of his archdiocese when he once held up a copy of the Authorized Version (AV; or, commonly, KJV for King James Version, first published in 1611 and subsequently revised and updated frequently) [Scrivener, 3-39; Lewis, 27-68; Kerr, 114-134] at one of their meetings and declared: “Never forget, gentlemen, that this is not the Bible!” After a careful pause, he went on: “This, gentlemen, is only a translation of the Bible.” [Metzger, 1993, 150]
From one point of view, Archbishop Whately is correct; the books of the Bible that came together over a period of more than a thousand years were originally written in ancient languages: Hebrew, Aramaic, and Greek. None of the books of the Bible were originally written in English; the AV is clearly a translation. Yet there is another point of view that is strenuously argued by the AV translation committee itself; namely, that for most people the only way they will be able to understand the Bible is in a translation, because they will not be able to read the ancient languages the Bible’s books were written in. The AV translators themselves thus argue that, just because the AV is a translation doesn’t mean it is not the Word of God. In their preface to the AV readers they say:
We do not deny, nay we affirm and avow, that the very meanest translation of the Bible in English, set forth by men of our profession,…containeth the word of God, nay, is the word of God: as the King’s speech which he uttered in Parliament, being translated into French, Dutch, Italian, and Latin, is still the King’s speech, though it not be interpreted by every translator with the like grace nor peradventure so fitly for phrase, nor so expressly for sense, everywhere. [Beegle, 142; cf. Rhodes and Lupas, 16,47,78]
This, I think, sets the stage for answering the opening question. Beneath the reality of a Bible in any modern language–English or Spanish or whatever–lies the whole world of ancient texts and manuscript copies in ancient Greek, Hebrew and Aramaic (and as well, copies of the ancient Versions into which the Scriptures were translated; e.g., Septuagint Greek, Syriac, Latin, Armenian). If the Bible does not get translated from the original languages in which its constituent books were composed into a language form that people can understand, its message will only be comprehensible to those willing to learn the ancient languages (none of which languages are in any way “living” today in the form they had at the time of the Bible’s coming together).
A fascinating illustration of this is the situation with modern Greek. The NT books were written in what is called Koine Greek during the first century AD. Modern Greek uses the same alphabet, the same script, and yet, because spelling, grammar, syntax, and word use has changed so drastically over the many centuries, the Koine Greek of the NT has to be translated into modern Greek so that Greeks today can read it. [Simons] Although the time span is not nearly so great, English speakers need only think of the 14th century English of Beowulf, which many today cannot even recognize as an early form of English, to see how this could happen.
The Background and History of Bible Translation
The American Bible Society (ABS) periodically receives letters about one of its modern English translations (TEV or CEV), accusing the ABS of “changing the words of the Bible” because what is seen in the modern translation doesn’t look like the English of King James. In response, the letter-writers are assured that no translators are changing any of the words of the Bible; the words remain right where they have always been–in the manuscript copies, and the critical editions of the Hebrew Bible and Greek NT. No one is changing those words, but what Bible Society translators are doing is trying to bring the meaning of those words into as clear and understandable an English form as possible, so that the message will be clearly communicated rather than obscured or lost.
An example is the word “manger” which has traditionally been used in the Luke 2 narrative of Jesus’ birth. It translates the Greek word phatne which means the “trough” or “feed box” from which animals eat. “Manger” came into English from Latin via the Old French word for “eat.” But it is no longer in common use in English. Indeed, it is so largely restricted to ancient texts like this (or Aesop’s dog in the manger) that many readers mistake it for, and mispronounce it as, “manager.” When the ABS initially decided to use “feed box” in its CEV translation (1991-NT), it was felt that the meaning would be clear. Some readers, however, saw this as ‘changing the words of the Bible.’ It is as though they understood Bible translation to be a matter simply of substituting English words or word orders for those in the AV, rather than a process of transferring the meaning of ancient original language texts into a modern language in such a way that understanding of the message of the ancient text is made as accessible as possible for the modern reader/hearer. [Duthie, 51-63; Hoberman, 51f; CEV Guiding Principles, 1-4]
How Bible Translation Works
The initial stage of Bible translating involves a careful sorting and assessment of all available ancient biblical manuscripts, so as to arrive at a critical edition or standard text from which to do the translation. Whatever variant readings are found among the manuscripts are generally noted at the bottom of each page of the critical edition or standard text, so that these can also be handily consulted for translation. [cf., e.g., Deist; Tov, 1992, 371-378; Metzger, 1994, 1*ff; Silva; Danker, 24-29, 58-60; Duthie, 39-48] Until the discovery in 1947 of the Dead Sea Scrolls, the oldest manuscript copies for the Hebrew Bible were from the 9th or 10th centuries AD. The great model codex (i.e., leaved book) known as the Leningrad Codex (on which the standard Hebrew text is presently based) contains a signed colophon dating it to the year AD 1008. [Wuerthwein, 36-37] The tiny Nash Papyrus (containing only the 10 Commandments and the Shema’, apparently joined for liturgical use), found in 1902, is one of those exceptions, since it most likely dates from the Maccabean period, [Albright; Tov, 1992, 118] but the Dead Sea discoveries now have enabled modern scholars to examine manuscript copies that are fully 1,000 years older than the Leningrad Codex. [Tov, 1992, 100 ff; Wuerthwein, 31-34]
The manuscript situation for the Greek NT reflects two distinct periods (essentially before and after the 9th century AD) and three main types: [Aland and Aland, 1989, 81ff.]
(1) Papyri: Papyrus is the oldest writing medium used for NT manuscripts, and was the only medium in use until approximately 200 AD, when the use of parchment began to supplant it. It is thus only natural that the NT papyri (almost 100 in total) occupy a prime position of importance for NT textual scholarship because of their age and the value of such ancient witnesses to the text. Beyond this distinctive medium, the two other characteristic features of the ancient NT papyri are the use of continuous script and capital letters. [Epp]
(2) Majuscules: Formerly (and less precisely) referred to as Uncials, [Mayvaert, 1983] and ranging in date from the 2nd century AD up to the 9th, majuscules also feature capital letters and continuous script, but are distinctive in regard to the medium used–parchment. The parchment medium clearly distinguishes these from the papyri, but it is the “large hand” or capital letter style of the script (as well as age) that sets the Majuscules apart from the next type (there are approximately 300 majuscules). [Parker; Aland and Aland, 1989, 103-128]
(3) Minuscules: In the 9th century AD a revolution in writing took place and things changed drastically. Already in the 7th century, some manuscripts began to be written in a much “smaller hand,” as part of a movement toward a more cursive style. By the 9th century this new style was fully in place. This style of writing, which not only improved speed, but also saved space (and thus cost for expensive parchment), is the source of the name–Minuscules (there are nearly 3,000 of these). [Aland and Wachtel] This new scribal invention, 500 years before the printing press, also had a significant impact on output. [Metzger, 1992, 10ff; Aland and Aland, 1989, 78-81]
This work of consulting all available manuscript copies and preparing a standard text has now by and large been done for translators. Today translators use the critical editions of the Hebrew Bible and Greek NT prepared (and regularly updated) by teams of highly competent scholars. [Danker, 22-60; Duthie, 39-48; Aland and Aland, 222-267; Metzger, 1992, 207ff; Tov, 1992, 371ff.] Nevertheless, translators do still need to consult the manuscript evidence carefully, since there are only manuscript copies of the biblical books, and no original author’s documents available.
This is illustrated strikingly at 1 Th 2.7, where some of the manuscripts have ‘gentle’ and some ‘infants,’ and the difference in Greek between the two words is only one letter:
epioi (gentle) and nepioi (infants).
The last letter of the preceding word in the text of 1 Th 2.7 is “n” and the translators must decide here whether the copying scribe may have accidentally added an “n” or left one out.
The criteria for making decisions of these kind involve such matters as:
1. quantification–how many ancient manuscripts support one reading or the other?
2. antiquity– what is the age of the manuscript? (the older the weightier)
3. external evidence to the text (e.g., new knowledge of the languages).
4. internal evidence in the text (context & logic of the text itself). [cf. Metzger, 1994, 10*ff.; Metzger, 1992, 207ff.]
In 1 Th 2.7, both the Nestle-Aland Greek New Testament (27th ed.) and the UBS Greek New Testament (4th ed.) print “infants” as the text because of the manuscript support, but many English translations adopt “gentle” because of the internal logic of the passage (usually appending a footnote to show that the other possibility has support as well; e.g., RSV, NRSV, TEV). [Metzger, 1994, 561-62]
Today, almost all new Bible translation work is undertaken on the basis of the critical editions–the base texts for the OT and NT that have been carefully worked out as the result of long years of work with manuscript copies, and of constant updating of the evidence as new ones are discovered (e.g., the Dead Sea Scrolls). [cf. Fitzmyer; Scanlin; Tov, 1988; Tov, 1992, 100-117; Vermes, 1982; et al.] In ancient times, translation was done without benefit of such a broad scholarly base, and done in various ways, but always translation was done. This is a most salient fact to remember. The very first Bible translation–the Septuagint, i.e., the translation of the Hebrew Scriptures into Greek that was already begun in the third century BC–was done so that Jews in Alexandria who no longer could use Hebrew could have these books and understand them in the most modern and influential language accessible to them. [Wuerthwein, 52-54; Tov, 1992, 134ff.]
The significance of this first translation is enormous, because it establishes the principle that, in fact, translation istheway to enable the word of God to be clearly communicated near and far, to the ends of the earth. It is absolutely consistent with the incarnational nature of the God of the Jewish and Christian Scriptures that the good news of God can be incarnated in the mother tongue language of people everywhere. The significance of this can also be seen by comparison with Islam, where this has never happened with respect to the Qur’an. The Septuagint–that first ancient Scripture translation–established the precedent, and other important translations followed as the early followers of the Christ began to bear witness in all directions outward from Jerusalem and Judea; e.g., Syriac in the East, Latin and Gothic in the West, Ethiopic and Coptic to the South, and Georgian and Armenian in the North (paralleled as well by the great Targumic tradition that developed in Jewish centers of learning). [Metzger, 1977; Wuerthwein, 79-104; see further, Shenk; Sanneh, 16-23]
The Bible in English
The history of Bible translation into English has as its wider communications context the world of Western Christianity, dominated from the 4th to the 15th century by the Latin text established by Jerome in the late 4th century. It was out of the context of the lengthy Latin dominance in the British Isles that the initial efforts to “English” the Scriptures began to emerge–out of the concern that Scripture in the vernacular would be readily communicable to the ordinary person (which in Latin, it was not). This was the aim of Wyclif (ca. 1320-84) and Tyndale (ca. 1492-1536), in their turns, and later also of the AV translation committee, drawn largely from the theological faculties at Oxford and Cambridge. [Hills, 27] Wyclif and his confreres had to work from a Latin base, since they did not know Greek or Hebrew. [Greenslade; Kerr, 31-41] By the time of Tyndale, thanks to the Renaissance recovery of the classical languages and learning, things were changing. Tyndale was able to translate the NT from Greek, and the parts of the OT that he did from Hebrew. [Hills, 8-12; Daniell, 1992, 1994; Kerr, 43-59] Working as they did in the early 17th century, the committee of scholars assigned to produce the AV were able to use all the ancient languages nimbly, yet were limited (as we can now see by hindsight) by the fact that they were working before the discovery of the oldest and most weighty of the NT Majuscule manuscripts (e.g., Codex Vaticanus, Codex Sinaiticus, and Codex Alexandrinus, the texts of which are complete or largely complete), and by having access to relatively few manuscripts, all of which were relatively late copies. [Duthie, 213ff; Danker, 181; Lewis, 27-34; Metzger, 1983, 286; 1992, 136f; 1994, 7*-10*; Aland, 1987, 131f; cf. also Wallace]
There were as many as ten early English Bibles already in brief circulation when the AV was undertaken in the early 1600s. [Greenslade] Among these were the Coverdale Bible (1535), an influential though secondary translation; [Hills, 12-15; Kerr, 63-66] Matthew’s Bible (1537), largely the continuation and completion of Tyndale’s work; [Hills, 15-17; Kerr, 67-69] the Great Bible (1539), to which also Coverdale was a major contributor; [Hills, 17-20, esp. 18, in re Coverdale’s Psalter, which was later taken directly from the Great Bible into the Book of Common Prayer, from where, much later, it became the basis for the LBW Psalter; [Kerr, 71-76] the Bishops Bible (1568), which was preferred in the Church of England; [Kerr, 91-95] and the Geneva Bible (1560), which the Puritan separatists preferred. [Hills, 20-24; Kerr, 83-89] It is widely held that Coverdale’s NT is essentially Tyndale’s first edition revised in light of Luther’s German. The OT of this secondary translation seems to have relied most on the Zurich German, along with Tyndale, Luther, Pagninus’ Latin and the Vulgate. Coverdale’s title page attributed the work as done “out of Douche [i.e., German] and Latyn.” The name Matthew was a pseudonym for John Rogers, used to disguise his connection to Tyndale, whose earlier work formed the baseline for this Bible (two-thirds of the OT and NT is from Tyndale). Matthew’s Bible was completed by Coverdale, and it is this base text that in large measure underlies the Bishop’s Bible, the Great Bible, and the AV and its later revisions. [Hills, 16]
Already in the first year of his reign, James I took action on this matter, appointing a committee of 54 learned divines, largely drawn from Oxford and Cambridge faculties. Of these, the names of 47 are preserved in available lists. [cf. Hills, 27] The AV committee was mandated to draw on the best features of all these, using the Bishops Bible as a kind of baseline for the English, while consulting the Greek and Hebrew texts available at that time, and the latest biblical scholarship, and to produce a translation that would stand above all others and thus serve and unite all users of English. The AV translators also sought to rise above the divisive polemics of the notes and prologues of these early translations by presenting a translation that did not engage in the kind of acrimony that had been common. Although their efforts were initially vilified and condemned by many (the Puritans who came to the American colonies wanted nothing to do with the AV), [Metzger, 1983, 287] the AV rather quickly became accepted as the standard on both sides of the Atlantic, to the extent that all the other early English Bibles within a short time became archaic museum pieces, while the AV continues to be in demand to this day.
The history of English Bible translation from the early 1600s to the middle of this century has been largely that of the AV, [Hills, 26-30; Lewis, 27-68; Scrivener, 3-39; Weigle] with numerous limited updates of its spelling and phrasing introduced over the years in an effort to prevent archaisms of Elizabethan English from getting in the way of communication with people who were less and less used to speaking that way. The period from 1611 to 1881, despite the AV’s dominance, witnessed the preparation of some 70 English translations. [Kerr, 133] As early as 1810, scholars were signaling that the AV was in need of revision, in order to come up to date with new learnings and text discoveries. Authorization for a major revision finally was given in 1870, leading to the two major AV revisions–for British English in 1885 and for American English in 1901). [Hills, 30-34; Kerr, 135-148; Lewis, 69-105] The 20th century, particularly the latter half, has witnessed a proliferation of new English translations and revisions of important earlier ones. [cf. Hills, 34-43; Lewis,107-362; Weigel; Duthie, 181-208; Kubo and Specht; Orlinsky and Bratcher; and elsewhere in the standard literature]
The following translations of the Bible, or of the New Testament, into English are among the more influential of those done in the twentieth century–whether by individuals (I) or by committee (C).
ASV Bible (1901-C): This work by an American committee is based on the RV of 1885, attempting to modify the extreme archaism and Aquilla-like literalism of that revision of the AV. It aims at a greater naturalness of (American) English, but is still highly concordant in approach, and maintains use of the artificial medieval pronunciation of the Hebrew Tetragrammaton–“Jehovah.”The NASB (1971-C) is an update of the ASV.
The Moffatt (1935-I) and Goodspeed (1935-I) Bibles: These are each very influential individual translations from the early part of the century, each aiming to achieve a more freshly American idiom over against the more wooden AV and its revisions. The Bible in Basic English (1949-I) was prepared by S.H. Hooke in the hope of facilitating increased readability and understanding of the Bible through an approach which rigidly limited the vocabulary.
RSV Bible (1952-C; NT-1946): Probably the most influential translation of the century, the RSV is a revision of the 1901 ASV, but with thorough attention to the original language texts. The textual work of the RSV committee–bringing the broad tradition of the AV text up to date with the enormous new wealth of manuscript discoveries (the Dead Sea Scrolls came to light during the time of their work)–is highly significant. The RSV, in keeping with the AV tradition it is trying both to maintain and update, is highly concordant in approach. Its English is thus not always natural for communication, but is useful in classroom settings because the concordant syntax tends to mirror the Greek and Hebrew. The NRSV (1990-C) is an update of the RSV, again with an aim to keep current with textual scholarship, but also now (by introducing for the first time into this “Englishing” of the AV tradition some audience-oriented translation principles) with an eye on improving communication of the message to readers/hearers.
The Knox (1955-I) and Lamsa (1957-I) Bibles: These are two significant individual translations from the mid-century, but both, it must be noted are secondary translations; i.e., not done from the original language texts. Knox used the Latin Vulgate as the base, and Lamsa the Syriac Peshitta.
J.B. Phillips (NT, 1958-I) and Living Bible (1971-I): These two influential individual efforts at increasing communicability by means of more freshly colloquial English usage are primarily distinguished by the fact that they are each (self-described as “paraphrased”) secondary translations; i.e., done from an English base toward a more natural English style of communication (K. Taylor, e.g., worked from the ASV to what he originally called The Living Bible Paraphrased). Both these proved highly popular, because they achieved much greater readability, but they remained problematic for many because they were not translated from the original language texts. The NLB (1996-C) is a major update of the LB, a revision by a new committee of scholars which worked from both the LB and the Greek and Hebrew texts, according to the principles of functional equivalence translation, to make NLB a translation of the Bible, rather than a paraphrased Bible.
The Jerusalem Bible (1966-C), first done in French in 1961, was brought into English by a team of Catholic scholars, largely British, who used the French as a model for working from the original language texts into English. This largely functional equivalence translation aims at achieving the natural English of educated speakers of British English. It was extensively revised as NLB (1985).
The New American Bible (1970-C), prepared by American Catholic scholars, has been characterized as functional equivalent, yet it has valued word-for- word concordance highly. The revised NAB (NT,1985-C) tends by design toward increased formal correspondence [cf. below, Stahel, in re M. Bourke]. Just as the JB, NAB is a highly literate translation, with explanatory notes of great depth and range.
The New English Bible (1970-C) was produced by a British interconfessional team. The translation approach is functional equivalence at a high literary level. It was marked, however, by numerous adventurous textual decisions. Its recent revision, REB (1989-C) made many advances on NEB, particularly abandoning many of the more speculative textual decisions NEB had ventured for obscure passages in the Hebrew text.
The New International Version (1978-C) was produced by an international committee representing a variety of denominations, though all contributors were required to be evangelicals. NIV has much in common with the RSV, over against which it was consciously prepared as an alternative. While similarly concordant in large measure, NIV also employs the meaning for meaning style in some places. Its English style is thus not always natural, but its vocabulary is consistently modern. An NIV revision, tentatively put forth in 1997, met with resistence in some evangelical circles and was withdrawn by its sponsors.
The NKJV (1982-C): This (and its U.K. counterpart–the Bagster Revised AV) is based very idiosyncratically on the same (late) manuscripts as the AV. Its NT features notes which turn the world of NT scholarship upside down–claiming that the critical texts of the Nestle-Aland and UBS Greek New Testaments are aberrant. The NKJV approach (apart from its ideological and anachronistic view of the NT text}, since it is largely a verbal update of the AV, is word-for-word. Its English style could only seem natural to those deeply familiar with the AV style.
Tanakh (1985-C), a highly regarded translation of the Hebrew Bible prepared under the aegis of the Jewish Publication Society, reflects strong textual scholarship. Its approach tends largely to the functional equivalence end of the translational spectrum.
The Beginnings of a New Approach: Communications-based Translation
The American Bible Society, founded in 1816, initiated innovative publication and distribution programs [Nord] for the AV already in the early 1800s, and distributed the AV for well over a century in the USA. Yet, having assembled in the 1950s an exceptional cadre of translation scholars under the leadership of Eugene A. Nida, it also pioneered the Today’s English Version (TEV, also called Good News Bible) in the middle 1960s as a translation especially designed to reach the broadest range of people at the level of the “common language” [Glassman, 64-67; Nida, 1977, 11-18; 1989,1; Wonderly, 1968,3] that is shared in society by people who use the language at both higher and lower levels of learning. The same research that undergirded this work supported the development of the Version Popular in Spanish, and both these fresh translations won wide followings because they were easy to read and understand. [Hills, 38-40; Nida, 1977, 19-28, 45f; Wonderly, 1987] In the mid-1990s, the ABS has published another pioneering translation, the Contemporary English Version (CEV), which has taken special care to be a translation that works as well when one is hearing it as it does when one is reading it [Newman, et al., 1996]
Theory and Practice
Until the middle of the 20th century most Bible translation work was done according to a methodology that has often been called “literal” or “word for word substitution” translation (and more recently, “formal equivalence” translation). This approach, epitomized in English by the AV, aims to represent the style and structure of the original language texts as directly as possible in the receptor language. The model for this approach to translating is thus one of formal or direct correspondence in which it is viewed as desirable that both the words and the grammatical patterns of the ancient biblical texts have their formal correspondences in the receptor language translation. [Nida and de Waard, 36ff; Glassman, 47-68; Duthie, 51-63; Newman, 1977; et al.] In sum, however sincere its intent to communicate meaning, formal equivalence translation inevitably gives priority to duplicating the form of the source text in the target language rather than the clearest meaning equivalents, [Glassman, 47f.] which easily and often ends up obscuring the meaning. [Newman, 1977, 204]
With its singular emphasis on word for word equivalence, this model would appear to promise precision and accuracy. And yet, more often than not, it yields a translation in a very unnatural English (or other receptor language) which actually obscures meaning for the reader/hearer. Familiar examples would include such Bible literalisms, “holy of holies,” or “Song of Songs,” which are used in English to represent the Hebrew form for indicating superlative degree (and yet, for most modern users of English, any sense that such phrases intend to express the superlative is lost). That same sort of literalism can also apply to syntax. [Minkoff, 1992] Consider, for example, the tortuously unnatural English syntax in the AV at Nehemiah 13.26: “nevertheless even him did outlandish women cause to sin.” The 4th century dictum of Jerome, et verborum ordo mysterium est, [Jerome, Epistle 57.5 (=CSEL 54.508)] came generally to be understood to mean that even the word order has sacred character in the biblical texts, though Jerome himself did not consider himself restrained by this in actual practice. One patristics specialist notes of Jerome:
In the Holy Scriptures, he says, the precise sequence of words as such has in certain cases a deeper meaning, and must be preserved. [Ep. 57.5] This again is one of the safeguards which Jerome laid down to protect his ecclesiastical impeccability. Fortunately, he did not in reality by any means always act accordingly in his translation of the Bible. [von Campenhausen, 162]
Yet this is a notion that has tended to dominate Bible translation until the middle of this century. Change has come through the breakthrough recognition that it is as important for clear communication of meaning (if not more important) to understand such things as the dynamics of sociosemiotics, and the discourse structure and language patterns inherent to the target languages themselves, than simply to understand the languages of the source texts. [Nida, 1964; Nida and Taber; Louw; Newman, 1977; Nida, 1989; Nida, 1996, 52-63; Omanson, 1990; Hoppe, 30-32; cf. further Snell-Hornby; Soukup; Reiss; Renkema]
The literal approach to Bible translation, which was dominant prior to the 1960s, considered that formal correspondence of syntax and/or “word for word substitutions” would in general serve to guarantee accuracy in the transfer of meaning from the ancient biblical language to a modern one. In the 1960s, when Eugene Nida and his UBS colleagues brought the wider sphere of (communications and audience oriented) translation theoretics to bear on Bible translation, a radically new direction was set in motion. For Bible translation, this was the beginning of the new theoretics and methodology of “functional equivalence” translation (initially termed “dynamic equivalence”). [Nida, 1964; Wonderly, 1968; Nida and Taber, esp.1-21] In this approach the translating is done in terms of larger thought units–clauses, whole sentences or even paragraphs rather than single words–involving “meaning for meaning” equivalence. And it also includes some amount of syntactic “restructuring” in order to meet the internal needs of the target language’s own discourse structure. [Glassman, 63f; Louw; Nida, 1996, 52-63; et al] The correspondences are thus functional rather than formal, and the emphasis in this approach is placed on achieving the clearest communication of the meaning of the Bible’s original language texts in the process of transferring the meaning from the ancient source text into the modern receptor language. [Nida and de Waard] It is now clear on a global level that ‘functional equivalence’ has become the dominant model in Bible translation, since it was pioneered in the 1960s by the Bible Society translation specialists. [Carson, 38-46] The first two complete Bibles produced with this method of translation were the Version Popular (1965-NT) in Spanish [Wonderly, 1987] and the Today’s English Version (1966-NT) in English. [Nida, 1977] Both of these are still widely used in English-speaking parts of the world today, and have become models for work in hundreds of United Bible Societies language projects around the world today. [Carson, 39]
In the thinking of the Bible Societies, the goal of Bible translation (as in other types of translation) is the clear transfer of the meaning of the original language texts into the languages spoken and read today. And, this must be done with accuracy and faithfulness in relation to the ancient textual deposit, yet in a way that ordinary people will be able to understand the message with the same naturalness in their modern language as the ancient hearers experienced in theirs. [Nida and Taber, 12ff; Nida, 1964; Duthie, 1st ed., 34; Sanders, 1-3; Minkoff, 1992, 68; Hoberman, 54f] The central emphasis is on communication for “understanding.” If people read or hear a Bible passage, but do not know what it means, or if they have not understood it rightly because the translation was unclear, they might as well have been given a Bible in ancient Greek or Hebrew. [Stine,2]
Luther: The First Modern Translator?
Martin Luther (though he would not have had any context for relating to the modern terminology) was in a real way the first functional equivalence translator. He claimed that he and his colleagues in translation had been
bold enough to reproduce the sense and let the words go, something for which many pedants will censure us. [Haile, 69]
In regard to what the translator does in translating Scripture, Luther said
that the translator must penetrate beyond the external linguistic peculiarities, that he must study the grammar carefully, attempt to grasp the exact meaning, and then forget all about the original language. [Schwiebert, 661]
In the “Tabletalk” he explained his approach to translating the Scriptures from Hebrew and Greek in more practical terms as follows:
Whoever would speak German should not use Hebrew style. Instead he must see to it–once he understands the Hebrew author–that he concentrates on the sense of the text, asking himself, ‘What do Germans say in such a situation?’ Once he has the German words that serve the purpose, let him drop the Hebrew words and express the meaning freely in the best German he knows. [WA, Tischreden, 2.648-649; ital. added]
Similarly, in a letter to Georg Spalatin, Luther contended that
translation must be free, retaining the sense, and conforming to the new wording while forgetting the old. [Haile, 336; cf. further Bainton]
The Audience Issue: Learning from Luther
The approach of the Bible Societies has developed out of the hands-on, Luther-like, practical field-experience in languages and cultures all over the world during the last 50 years–learning to translate the Scriptures in ways that serve the clearest possible communication of the message, confident with St. Paul, that in hearing will come believing. In this Luther-like approach–a faithful translation involves placing the priority on clear communication in the receptor language instead of on mirroring the style, structure or flavor of the ancient language texts. That is the most salient difference, it could argued, between the Bible Societies approach and the approach more typified by large academic translation committees, which often tends toward the formal equivalence end of the translation spectrum and tends to be targeted more toward an audience of academic peers rather than audiences of ordinary people.
The recent “Chicago Bible Translation Project,” initiated with an invitation letter in 1996 to “professors teaching Bible courses,” is grounded in the belief that “a new translation of the Bible is needed specifically for use in educational settings, ….oriented to the world of the text rather than to the world of the reader.” [Chicago, 1] Clearly, Bible translations which serve the needs of the classroom for close understanding of the original language biblical text have a valuable purpose, but that must be alongside reader-oriented translations and not (as the rhetoric often has it) to the exclusion of audience-oriented translation aiming at clear communication of the biblical message to the widest range of readers/hearers. [cf. Omanson, 1996, 407-498; Williamson, 169; as well as the dialogue between Omanson, 1990, and Walsh]
An example from 1 Peter 1.13 illustrates the complexities here. The Greek in the first phrase here is, literally (as the AV has it), ‘gird up the loins of your mind,’ an imperative that is completely unintelligible to many readers/hearers in that literal form. A Bible Society translation, such as the CEV, translates the meaning of the Greek idiom: ‘Be alert and think straight.’ Admittedly, this is not a passage that has much theological heft, and yet it shows that there is a need for both these types of translation. If, in a classroom or in Bible study, one were exploring the range of military metaphors used in Scripture, or doing a word study on how the term ‘loins’ gets used in the ancient languages in various ways, you would not know from the CEV that you were dealing with these terms in Greek, whereas from the much more concordant AV, you would have a clearer sense of what the Greek was. On the other hand, for contexts involving ordinary daily life, where clear communication of the good news of what God has done in Jesus Christ is the key aim, a translation that is not clear and natural for the reader/hearer often gets set aside or tuned out because it is hard too understand.
Dr. Myles Bourke, who chaired the revision committee which prepared the second edition NAB NT (1986), has commented on that work thusly, in regard to the value of close correspondence with the Greek text:
One of the faults of the 1970 [NAB] translation was sometimes to preserve and sometimes to neglect such a correspondence. The problem with this approach is that you are supposed to be producing a text useful for the student. . . .Anyway, there was the intention to retain in the revision, as far as possible, a translation that corresponded more closely with the Greek. [Stahel, 5]
For Bourke, the primary audience for the NAB is the classroom, and that is an appropriate target, but it should then not be a matter of surprise to find that ordinary people in the parish or in the street may find the NAB’s language–however carefully it may correspond to the ancient Greek, and however “accurate” it may said to be in these “word correspondence” terms–to be often daunting and beyond reach. Those who do comparison, calculation and rating of the so-called “language level” of various translations (and their calculus is not without its own problems because it focuses overly on vocabulary and sentence length) have located a number of the more formal equivalent translations at relatively high levels of reading complexity (e.g., AV at 12th grade level, NASB at 11th, NRSV at 8.1, and NIV at 7.8 grade level, compared to CEV,e.g., at 5.4 [McAleer; Yeatts and Linden; cf. Duthie, 142-150]
When the TEV was first published by the American Bible Society in 1966 (NT), it received condemnation in some conservative circles. It was often mistaken for a paraphrase because its English form made it appear so freshly different from the traditional feel of the more concordant ‘word for word’ translations. That was because the sentence elements of the original language syntax were so regularly and freshly reconfigured in the English, precisely according to the “functional equivalence” aim of providing the clearest and most natural English structure, and thus the clearest transfer of the meaning, for the modern reader/hearer. It is important to understand (and early critics of the TEV generally did not appear to) that, for the world of Bible translating in general, paraphrase is a restatement of a text or phrase within the same language, often done by expanding the wording in order to clarify meaning. [Glassman, 26f; Hoberman, 54f; Newman, 1977, 206f.] In contrast to paraphrase, translation is the communication of a message from one language to another. In this view, whether a Bible translation is accomplished by formal or functional equivalence methods, or a combination of both, it is a translation because it works from the base of the Bible’s original language texts in Greek, Hebrew and Aramaic into a modern receptor language. [Nida and de Waard, 60-77, 182-187; Nida, 1977, 97ff;]
In a 1992 review and assessment of recent English Bible translations, Donald A. Carson acknowledged that there is now “widespread recognition of the primacy of [functional equivalence] as the best controlling model in Bible translation.” [Carson, 36] Used in hundreds of UBS (and other) indigenous language projects around the globe, the methodology and principles of functional equivalence now dominate the practice of Bible translation everywhere. Among English translations completed since the pioneering TEV, as well as revisions of major translations done in the 1980s, there are very few that have not been influenced by the guiding principles of the audience-oriented functional equivalence model ( cf. the NRSV’s guiding maxim: “As literal as possible, as free as necessary,”). [Metzger, 1990, iii] The turnaround to broad acceptance from initial resistance, once the theory and practice of the audience-oriented approach to Bible translation began to be understood, has been rather remarkable and has taken place within a comparatively short period of time:
Today most competent translators recognize that ‘literal translation’ and ‘free translation’ exist on the same spectrum, differentiable in the extremes but nevertheless unavoidably connected; that meaning and form, though intertwined, are not only differentiable, but that very frequently meaning in the donor language has to be packaged in a quite different form in the receptor language; that translation is never a mechanical exercise, but entails countless decisions as to the text’s meaning; that meaning is not only referential but may embrace subtle overtones, emotional loading, degrees of naturalness, pragmatic associations, implicit moral obligation, and much more. [Carson, 38)
The CEV: a Case Study in Contemporary Translation
With the NT published in 1991, the ABS’ Contemporary English Version (CEV) was able to incorporate significant new developments in the understanding of English discourse structure, [Nida, 1996, 52-63] to give very careful attention to aural features (i.e., how the text is heard, as well as how it is read), and to exemplify the functional equivalence model in its most contemporary refinement, as is set out in the CEV’s statement of Guiding Principles:
The translation technique to be followed will be that of ‘functional equivalence,’ which requires an analysis of words and grammatical constructions and a restructuring in a form that is clear, natural and unambiguous. . . .Every attempt will be made to represent accurately the meaning (not always the form!) of the biblical text at a level most appropriate to the audience. (CEV Guiding Principles, 2; Newman, et al, 72-79)
Similarly, the 1990 NRSV translators, to accomplish best their several aims in bringing the 1952 RSV up to date, found it necessary to be “as literal as possible, as free as necessary.” [Metzger, 1990, iii] The impact of the audience-oriented, functional equivalence model on this revision of the RSV, which stands in lineal descent from the KJV, is clearly signaled in its preface “To the Reader,” which maintains that the biblical message must not be disguised in phrases that are no longer clear, or hidden under words that have changed or lost their meaning; it must be presented in language that is direct and plain and meaningful to people today. [Metzger, 1990, iv]
Distinctive Features and Characteristics of the CEV:
A review of the CEV’s distinctive approach to Bible translation, vis-à-vis that of the traditional, formal equivalence approach, can be of great help in unpacking what is at issue between the word-for-word style (which locates fidelity by and large in relation to the words and syntax of the original language texts) and the meaning-for meaning style (which defines fidelity both in relation to the ancient texts and the modern-day audience realities of those to whom the Bible’s message is being communicated). What follows are some of the key features of the CEV approach, illustrated with comparative examples from Scripture.
Aural Considerations and Audience Sensitivity
Audience sensitivity is of critical importance in the communication of meaning. Thus it is the responsibility of the translators to be well versed in the particular needs of their target audience(s), and also to understand how audiences participate in the meaning-making of the texts they read or hear read. The CEV was translated primarily for:
1. persons who have no familiarity (or minimal familiarity) with church language or traditional Bible terminology;
2. persons who have limited Bible knowledge and limited reading skills;
3. persons whose primary contact with the biblical text may come from hearing it read aloud to them. [CEV Guiding Principles, 1]
Since the CEV’s target audience may lie to a large extent outside the churches (though it is clear that the CEV in its early years has already found an audience within the churches), it is central to the CEV’s “mission” that the English wording and phrasing used in it will be readily and clearly understood by the majority of the people in the general U.S. culture. In this way, the CEV aims to meet the communication needs of the widest range of English-speaking people in the U.S., whether or not they are part of church communities.
Some examples may serve to illustrate how carefully the translation must be prepared in order to meet the aural needs of the audience. Mt 17.25-26 illustrates how translators can unintentionally place potential obstacles in the way of hearers, if they do not pay attention to the aural needs of the receptors. Each of the following constructions present the hearer with different meanings if the comma is not “heard”:
“Of course,” Peter answered. . . .
The foreigners,” answered Peter. . . .
This brief excerpt from a recent translation (not CEV) shows how translators, even in a well-meant attempt to help the audience by the way they structured the English, can actually introduce confusion via multiple meaning options, especially for hearers.
At Jn 19.29-30, many translations reflect a more formal equivalent rendering of the Greek, for which the RSV is representative:
A bowl full of vinegar stood there; so they put a sponge full of the vinegar on hyssop and held it to his mouth. When Jesus had received the vinegar he said, “It is finished. . . .
“This rendering, and the others close to it, may well make for close correspondence to the Greek, and the traditional phrasing, “It is finished,” for the Greek tetelestai is compelling, but in terms of conveying the meaning to the hearer such translation could be a disaster for audiences which seek to make meaning of what they read or hear, but have no background in the Bible or traditional church language. For the hearer, and for some readers even, the most likely referent for “It” is the vinegar rather than the panta , ‘all,’ the actual referent, further back in verse 28. In the handling of Jn 19.29-30 in the New Living Translation the misdirection is even more pronounced for the hearer/reader:
A jar of sour wine was sitting there, so they soaked a sponge in it, put it on a hyssop branch, and held it up to his lips. When Jesus had tasted it, he said “It is finished!’
The CEV here, not allowing the reader or hearer to misconnect with any wrong referents, has Jesus saying (at the end of v. 30):
Everything is done!
Ps 105.23 illustrates how, for modern receptors, the lack of shared information [Nida, 1989, 4f.] with the ancient audiences and the lack of familiarity with the Hebrew poetic device of parallelism can create misunderstanding. A recent translation of this verse has these two lines in poetic parallelism, mirroring the Hebrew:
Then Israel entered Egypt;
Jacob lived as an alien in the land of Ham.
For the unprepared modern reader/hearer, however, the two parallel pairings–Israel and Jacob, Egypt and Ham–which actually refer in each case to the same entity, appear to the unprepared reader to be referring to completely different entities. The translators need to weigh for their translation whether the priority is to mirror the Hebrew structure and risk possible confusion by the receptors or to convey the meaning in a way that avoids possible confusion. The CEV renders this:
Jacob and his family
came and settled in Egypt
as foreigners.
The hearers of the CEV will not be confused about the number of entities involved here, but at the same time such a rendering will not serve classroom purposes for the study of Hebrew parallelism. The CEV, because of the nature of its target audience (which has little Bible background and tends to avoid footnotes), thus seeks to resolve translational problems in the translated text itself rather than in textual notes.
Restructuring
The older focus in translation gave high importance to the form of the message in the original, as per Jerome’s dictum regarding the order of the words in Scripture. It was considered paramount to be faithful to the structure of the source language, as well as the words, in the translation into the target language. Jerome himself appears, however, to have had a public and a private posture on this. [von Campenhausen, 162; Hoppe, 30] In one of his letters he says that good translation involves putting idiomatic expressions of one language into comparable expressions proper to the other language. Further, he says cogently:
From my youth up I have always aimed at rendering sense not words. . . .A literal translation from one language to another obscures the sense.” [Jerome, Epistle 57.6]
And yet, in reference particularly to Scripture, he adds, for public correctness:
In translating from the Greek I render sense for sense and not word for word– except in the case of the Holy Scriptures, where even the order of the words in a mystery. [Jerome, Epistle 57.5]
The more recent focus in translation, reflecting the impact of the study of linguistics, discourse structure, communications and semiotics, has led to a shift of attention to the form the message takes as the receptors respond within their socio-linguistic context. [Omanson, 1996; Nida, 1989, 13f., 15ff; Soukup] To make certain that the message of the ancient language texts of Scripture comes through clearly and comprehensibly to the reader/hearer in a modern language, its “form” thus needs to undergo some restructuring. This is both because of modern audience realities and because of the lack of shared information modern audiences have with the ancient receptors of these messages. [Nida and de Waard, 196ff; Nida and Taber, 5-8; Nida, 1989, 4f; Newman, 1977, 204; Williamson, 162; Snell-Hornby, 141; Omanson, 1996, 408]
A CEV example may be compared at Mark 1.4, where a complex Greek construction baptisma metanoias eis aphesin hamartion (RSV, “a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins”) has been restructured into two sentences in English. These two sentences express the meaning of this series of abstract nouns by means of the active verbs that are buried within those difficult abstractions. The CEV reads:
Turn back to God and be baptized!
Then your sins will be forgiven.
Readability
Most readability formulae focus on sentence length and vocabulary in fairly rigid and mechanical ways, but other factors such as grammatical relationships and sentence structure also need to be considered. The importance of these latter factors (in terms of matching the usage patterns and audience needs of the modern language receptors) in the CEV approach cannot be overemphasized. A short sentence, in some cases, can be more difficult to understand than a long one, if the word order of the short one is unnatural and the longer one flows smoothly as a sentence. In addition, too many short choppy sentences in sequence can be dulling and off-putting for the reader/hearer. When translators are careful to craft a translated text for reading aloud, word order is a more important feature than sentence length.
Because the CEV approach takes the paragraph as the basic discourse unit, it is able to give very careful attention to the relationship between style and readability. This means that within each paragraph, great care is given to such matters as backgrounding and foregrounding, old and new information, focus, sequence and logical flow, implicit and explicit information, and transitional markers. [Newman, et al., 38-46] In regard to these features, it is very instructive to compare a recent translation with CEV (B, below) at 2 Samuel 4.4:
A. Jonathan son of Saul had a son who was lame in both feet. He was five years old when the news about Saul and Jonathan came from Jezreel. His nurse picked him up and fled, but as she hurried to leave, he fell and became crippled. His name was Mephibosheth.
B. Saul’s son Jonathan had a son named Mephibosheth, who had not been able to walk since he was five years old. It happened when someone from Jezreel told his nurse that Saul and Jonathan had died. She hurried off with the boy in her arms, but he fell and injured his legs.
Gender-faithful or Non-excluding Language Use
In biblical Hebrew and Greek, masculine forms of pronouns are used when the reference is to people in general. This is, in part, required by the nature of these languages (which are gender-specific even in the plural forms of pronouns). Moreover, when a group of mixed gender is addressed or referred to, it is common to use “men” or “brothers” (especially in the NT), which is not normative for contemporary English. Masculine forms and pronouns were once customarily used in English as well, when referring to people in general, but this began to change dramatically in the spoken language in the 1980s. It is now standard in the U.S. to hear people say, for example, such locutions as: “If anyone wants to see me, they should be here before 8:00 PM.” And it is now standard to find such distributive usages recognized in the usage guides for contemporary American English. [cf., e.g., Copperud]
In order to be sensitive to contemporary English usage and the audience requirements for language use that is not gender-excluding, the CEV aim is:
a. In all passages involving gender-generic language use, it is a primary concern in the CEV to have crafted an English style that is natural and appropriate for the intended audience. In Mt 16.24, where the Greek text uses a third person style in conveying Jesus’ famous invitation, RSV has:
If any man would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow me.
Using the mechanism of a shift from singular to plural to avoid gender-excluding language (though there is always some risk in this of loss of the element of personal address), NRSV handles it thusly:
If any want to become my followers, let them deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me.
Understanding that, for contemporary American English, the more natural functional equivalent for the kind of address Jesus is making to the disciples is the more conversational second person style, CEV has:
If any of you want to be my followers, you must forget about yourself. You must take up your cross and follow me.
b. In all passages where the source language uses masculine nouns or pronouns in a generic sense, the CEV will reflect this intent by using gender-generic equivalents in contemporary English. By the same token, the CEV will not attempt to disguise the gender of specific individuals. In other words, where both men and women are intended by the original language text, the CEV position is that to translate as though this applied only to men would be to misrepresent the intent of the original language text. An example is Luke 5.10, where CEV translates:
From now on you will bring in people instead of fish.
c. While being sensitive to modern audience needs, the CEV seeks always to reflect accurately the historical, social and cultural setting of the biblical text in the translation (even when this may conflict with modern sensitivities). In Mt 13.31, for example, where RSV has
a mustard seed which a man took and sowed in his field,
CEV has
when a farmer plants a mustard seed in a field. [Newman, et al., 56-62]
Cross-cultural Transfer of Meaning:
Addressing the Issue of Jewish Sensitivity
In Luke 13.32 Jesus uses the illustration of a “fox” to characterize the petty king, Herod Antipas. When the Greek term, alopex, “fox,” is simply translated into English as “fox”, the intended meaning it had for Jesus’ hearers in the first century is missed, because the socio-cultural connotations do not necessarily travel when a word is translated into another cultural setting. Countless commentators have for years blithely assumed that a fox is a fox is a fox, and that the meaning of “fox” in all cultures is that of cunning and craftiness. The notion, “sly as a fox,” is assumed to be applicable universally. And yet, as many ancient rabbinic illustrations reveal, in the ancient Judean setting, and within the Hebraic socio-linguistic culture, the term “fox” (Hebrew shu’al) does not signify “sly” or “crafty” at all. Rather, it signifies “small fry,” “weak,” or “insignificant.” Significantly, the fox is the animal that is consistently used for contrast with “lion” (as strong/significant). In actuality, Jesus was characterizing Herod Antipas as a “pipsqueak” rather than as “sly.” [Buth] In translating for meaning, something of this sort might be appropriate, yet the notion that an animal image is involved in the source text would get lost. But, without some sort of explanatory footnote it is probably impossible to translate “fox” and still convey to the modern reader what Jesus meant by calling Herod that. It will be widely misunderstood as “sly” by modern audiences as they participate in making meaning from a translation.
This is because the socio-linguistic and cultural dimensions of such a term do not travel well in translation across cultures. There is a body of information that was common knowledge for Jesus’ hearers and as such was taken for granted by them. But such knowledge is not knowledge that is shared by modern day hearers/readers who are receiving the message of the Scriptures through the medium of modern languages, each with their own socio-cultural givens and assumed knowledge. [Nida, 1989, 4f; et al.]
It is similar with regard to the use of the expression hoi Ioudaioi, “the Jews,” which appears frequently in the NT books of John and Acts. This expression also does not travel well cross-culturally; there is once again a huge knowledge gap between what the first century hearers took for granted and what modern hearers and readers know about that age. There is a great deal of information involved with this Greek expression (so frequently rendered, literally, as “the Jews”) that is not shared knowledge for modern hearers/readers. What can it mean for modern readers, in relation to Jesus and the disciples (who are themselves all Jews), when a Scripture text indicates that “the Jews” (hoi Ioudaioi) are causing problems?
Of course, a major factor in all this is the reality that the Gospel records were compiled at a time decades after the Jesus events themselves, a time closer toward the end of the first century when the split was becoming intensely heated between one group of Jews who followed Jesus as Messiah and other Jews who did not. And by that time also the rapid growth of Gentile followers through the missions of Paul and others was leading to a kind of bipolar view of reality. In this view, Jesus and his disciples appear to be early Christians who always seem to be contending with Jewish opponents (and for modern readers with little background, making this kind of meaning from the texts is almost irresistible). Yet, in reality, the whole experience of Jesus’ 30+ years on earth was fully a Jewish one, [cf. Vermes,1981; Dunn, 11ff; Meier; and the recent literature] and, indeed, the rest of the first century, for the world centered around the eastern end of the Mediterranean Sea, was deeply marked by the intense, internal Jewish debate over which group was authentically speaking for God–those Jews who followed Jesus as Messiah or those Jews who did not. Dunn, esp. 230ff.]
For the enterprise of Bible translation, the problem is not simply how well does the English locution “the Jews” reflect the Greek text, hoi Ioudaioi, or the escalating polemical realities of the first century situation. Rather, it is the problem of the meaning that (often poorly informed) modern readers of the Scriptures place on this locution. There are relatively few moderns who are equipped to be able to sort out (because of the gap of shared information) that “the Jews” who are often found opposing Jesus and the early Jesus movement are in many cases simply other Jews who happen not to have accepted Jesus as Messiah–whether these may be individuals, groups, local leaders, or religious or political authorities. In many instances such Jews have been acting with all due sincerity on behalf of the religious tradition as they knew it (not unlike the way the younger Paul the Apostle opposed the early Jesus movement; cf. Gal 1.13ff.).
Another facet of the problem is that “the Jews,” particularly as expressed in this form with the definite article in English, carries with it for the modern reader/hearer a sweeping, all-inclusive connotation that (somehow) all Jews were acting in concert in these events (or worse, that all Jews of all time are somehow implicated in these events). An illustrative example may be compared at Mt 28.15, where the chief priests and elders are reported to have planted a story about the empty tomb–that some disciples stole the body of Jesus. The narrative ends at verse 15 with the words:
. . .ho logos houtos para Ioudaiois mechri tes semeron [hemeras].
The RSV rendering is:
. . .and this story has been spread among the Jews to this day.
The CEV translates the Greek here in a way that helps the modern reader/hearer distinguish between first and twentieth century realities:
. . .and the people of Judea still tell each other this story.
The CEV targets an audience in which there is assumed very little or no grounding in biblical knowledge or language. For this reason, problems such as the above passage presents need to be addressed and handled within the translated text as much as possible, rather than in frequent textual notes. Such notes are typically ignored by the audiences the CEV aims most to serve. The problem that Mt 28.15 surfaces is that the propensity of Jews to continue telling this story “to this day” is a reality that does not go beyond the first century when this was written. And yet, the modern reader, who has no shared information, sees or hears “the Jews” and all too easily leaps to relate that to twentieth century circumstances. The CEV here helps the modern reader/hearer to keep this first century incident within historical and cultural perspective–precisely with the way it handles it in the text–and helps to reduce the problem of the information gap for the modern reader.
The CEV often nuances hoi Ioudaioi as “some Jews,” “Jewish leaders,” “some leaders,” or the like, where such is clear from the context. It thereby helps modern readers/hearers to gain this perspective and helps them to resist the temptation to leapfrog history to Jews today. In most of the NT passages in which it occurs, hoi Ioudaioi is best understood to reference “some Jews,” “other Jews,” “a Jewish group,” “some leaders,” “a few of the leaders,” and the like. Never does it refer to the entire Jewish people as a whole, or even the entire population of first-century Judea as a whole. Indeed, it is very revealing that this term “the Jews,” as frequently as it occurs in John’s Gospel (68x), occurs only 16 times in the three synoptic Gospels, all but four of which are found in the title over the cross, “King of the Jews.” [Burke, 2]
If accuracy and faithfulness in translation is measured solely by word for word substitutions or literalisms, then questions will be raised about the CEV, and the other modern translations that follow similar theoretics and principles. But if, as translation experts increasingly agree, accuracy and fidelity in translation has to do with clear transfer of the meaning of the source texts into a receptor language, and with an understanding of how audiences participate in meaning-making, then the CEV in these instances is doubly on target. In the first instance it is on target because it enables the modern reader/hearer to understand the message clearly, and secondly because it understands how audiences participate in the making of meaning from texts and is able to provide safeguards against misapplications readers/hearers may be tempted to make due to a lack of shared information with first century hearers.
Another way in which the CEV is distinctive in its audience sensitivity is the way in which it helps the reader/hearer by giving attention to “narrative flow” by means of a restructuring of the translated English text. In Gal 2.13, for the Greek, hoi loipoi Ioudaioi, RSV has “the rest of the Jews,” and CEV has “the others.” The context is Paul’s narrative that tells his version of the famous Jerusalem Council at which the main leaders of the nascent Jesus movement (all of them Jews) argued out the issue of resolving to what extent followers of Jesus (especially the Gentiles Paul was reaching) were obligated to observe Torah. In the CEV, because the contexting paragraph is clear that all these decision-makers are Jewish followers of Jesus, this can be handled within the translated text in a way–“the others”–that does not allow the modern reader/hearer to assume that the problem with those on the opposite side of this issue from Paul is (somehow) their jewishness, rather than the difficulty they were having with reconciling traditional piety with their now radically reoriented faith.
A last example may be compared in Acts 23.12-13, where the Greek in verse 12 makes the blanket statement that “the Jews,” hoi Ioudaioi, made a plot against Paul, and yet, in verse 13, notes that it was really only a little over 40 men who were involved in this plot. By handling these two verses together as a thought unit, CEV is able to characterize the group of plotters more precisely as a group of more than forty:
The next morning more than forty Jewish men got together and vowed. . .
Conclusion
In a paper presented at the 1995 AAR-SBL Annual Meeting, James A. Sanders observed that
A tradent was/is one who brings the past into the present, specifically a biblical text. . . .Another word sometimes used instead of tradent is traditionist, that is, one who engages in his or her time in the traditioning process of a community text, such as the Bible. A traditionist is not a traditionalist; the two should not be confused. Whereas a traditionalist wants to make the present look like the past, a traditionist, or tradent, tries to bring the past into the present.
In doing so, the tradent of necessity has two responsibilities. The one. . . is to the past, or the biblical text, and the other is to the present, or the community being served. Put another way, a tradent, specifically a translator, has to pay as much attention to the needs of his or her community as to the needs of the biblical text inherited from the community’s past. [Sanders, 2-3]
As the broad world of translation theoretics and practice has developed over the past fifty years toward communications-based, audience-understanding, meaning-centered approaches, the world of biblical scholarship has been very slow to keep pace (as Sanders acknowledged orally in an aside) with such areas as translation studies, discourse analysis, linguistics, and sociosemiotics. It has been a given in the world of biblical scholarship that the most important (if not sole) qualification for translating the Bible is that of understanding the world of the ancient texts. To the contrary, William Danker has tucked a significant warning on this into a footnote In his book on resource tools for working with the Bible:
Nida’s attention to linguistic developments and their importance for biblical study have been too little noted in the exegetical craft. No one should attempt biblical translation or critique of such without having read his Toward a Science of Translating . . .or [his collaboration with C.Taber] The Theory and Practice of Translation. [Danker, 23; cf. J. Lindenberger, who has endeavored to apply the meaning-centered approach to the translation of ancient Aramaic and Hebrew letters]
The debate will continue. The meaning-centered, audience-understanding approach modeled increasingly by recent Bible translations, such as those of the Bible Societies, will continue to be resisted by some scholars as inaccurate because it is not concordant, and does not work well as a “pony” for classroom use in theological schools. They will continue to be misunderstood by others as paraphrase, because the priority for clarity in the modern audience language makes the English (or other) language structure look so different from the traditional model(s) of the past. But what is most needed today is what Danker and Sanders, for example, are calling for–serious attention on the part of biblical scholars to the world of translation theoretics and practice, which since the 1950s already has been articulating the critical importance of communications, sociosemiotics, audience understanding, etc. to translations that aim to effect the clear transfer of meaning from ancient text (and its contexting cultural realities) to modern languages. [Omanson, 1996]
What is needed in the present (too often acrimonious) climate is a broader recognition of audience realities. All too frequently, miscommunication or non-communication occurs in Bible translations that use wordings which may be nicely concordant, but completely devoid of meaning for modern receptors. On the other hand, translators who know their audiences and who are fully aware that audiences participate in meaning-making with the translations they are given are able to avoid these sorts of communication problems.
What is needed also is the recognition that there are in fact different audiences, that no single English translation today will work for all audiences, and that it can be very beneficial in studying the Bible to consult both types of translations [Williamson, 169]. What is needed is the understanding that both basic types of translation are valid, because, again, there are different audiences, but all audiences participate in meaning-making as they use a translation. And the aim of any translation should be: the clear and understandable transfer of meaning across the language/culture gap.
It is time for the world of biblical scholarship to move further onto the bridge (between biblical and translation studies) that Nida and his colleagues have been building over the past four decades. Modern Translation Studies makes the point that in any translation work, whether involving the Bible or other kinds of literature, language competence, though absolutely a prerequisite, is not the same as translation competence. A review of recent efforts to translate Homer into modern English has characterized these endeavors as “heroic” and aptly observes:
The more a translation inclines towards the pole of high fidelity, the narrower its margins for success and the more it must rely on finding, and then accumulating, momentary felicities against the odds. [Silk]
Finally, as scholarship now is already moving to explore, in the context of the present groundshift from print to electronic media (as the increasingly preferred forms for receiving information and communications), what is involved in translating Holy Scripture “beyond print” into new media forms, [Hodgson and Soukup; Boomershine; Mullins] Danker’s call for biblical scholars to come to terms with the realities of audiences, of their multiple dimensions, and of their participation in the transfer of meaning across language and culture, is increasingly urgent and mandatory.
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–David G. Burke [Draft 4.0 15 Feb. 1998]
PRECIS
This article will attempt to limit the dimensions of Bible translation, historically and practically, from the time of the Greek Septuagint to the present day, with particular attention given to the history of the translation of the Bible into English. It will also review the ways in which the theoretics and practice of Bible translation have evolved, characterizing and comparing the two major approaches is use today. It will then use a recent modern translation prepared by translation specialists of the American Bible Society (ABS) as a case study for illustrating and comparing what is at issue between these approaches. Lastly, it will illustrate how audience-centered, meaning-based translation principles and methodologies are transforming the practice of Bible translation today, and helping modern audiences read and hear the Scriptures with ease and understanding.