Gender Language

 PART 10 IN A SERIES ON TRANSLATION

Gender language is one of the most contentious issues in biblical translation. "Inclusive language" Bibles are welcomed by some and reviled by others. The Today's New International Version (2005) was scuttled by controversy concerning its inclusive language, while the masculinist English Standard Version (2001) has been warmly adopted by "complimentarian" churches.

Unlike English, biblical Greek and Hebrew are gendered languages. In Hebrew every noun and adjective is either masculine or feminine. Greek has three genders: masculine, feminine, and neuter. Grammatical gender does not necessarily correlate to any physical reality. For example, a city is not female, but the Greek word πόλις (polis = "city") is feminine.

The Greek word ἀδελφός (adelphos) means "brother," a male sibling. It's (nominative) plural is αδελφοι (adelphoi). The Greek word ἀδελφή (adelphe) means "sister," a female sibling, and has its own plural, αδελφαι (adelphai). When refering to a mixed group of male and female siblings the masculine plural αδελφοι (adelphoi) is used. How, then, should this word be translated?

Context is a key factor in translating αδελφοι (adelphoi). In some instances it clearly means "male siblings" as at Mark 12:20 ff, where the Sadducees tell Jesus a story about a woman who married seven brothers in succession. In other cases, it is not so clear. The Apostle Paul regularly refers to his fellow believers as αδελφοι (adelphoi). Are his words intended only for male believers? In some cases I think it is clear that Paul is addressing both men and woman. I've heard it suggested that the Christian community at Galatia was exclusively male, and I have a pet, though unproven, theory that the community addressed in 1 John was all male. Does that mean that αδελφοι (adelphoi) should be translated as "brothers" in Galatians and 1 John? Or does the message of these works apply also to female readers?

Don't even start me on the word ἄνθρωπος (anthropos), a masculine noun that refers to a  human being without reference to their physcial sex.

The bottom line is: modern English doesn't work the same way that biblical Hebrew and Greek work. Translation always involves compromise. Personally, I prefer to err on the side of inclusion. I recognize. however,  that this reflects my own theological biases, just as masculinist translations reflect someone else's theological biases. There is a lot of sloganeering and vituperation around issues of gender language. Perhaps it is wise simply to note that the issues exist and that they are by no means simple.

When choosing a Bible, be sure to read the translators' preface carefully. It will probably tell you a lot about the translators' approach to gender language. When reading a translation of the Bible, pay attention to footnotes.



Don't take any wooden nickels.

Individuals v. Committees

PART 9 IN A SERIES ON TRANSLATION

Most popular Bible translations are the work of committees, but there have been many versions made by individuals. Some of these have been influential, some popular, some just weird.

Late in the 4th century, St. Jerome produced the Vulgate, a translation of the Bible from its original Greek, Hebrew and Aramaic into the common language of the day, Latin.

In the 16th century, Martin Luther translated the Bible from its original languages into vernacular German, so that the common people could understand the Scriptures for themselves.

At about the same time, William Tyndale published a complete English New Testament, translated from the Greek. He also translated parts of the Old Testament.

In more recent times, Robert Young made Young's Literal Translation (1862) into English that scrupulously reproduced the verb tenses and other grammatical idiosyncrasies of the original languages. (English verb tenses do not correspond exactly to those of Hebrew and Greek).

R.F. Weymouth made a fussy, old-fashioned English translation of the New Testament in 1903.

In 1924, James Moffatt's New Translation rendered both Testaments into "effective, intelligible English."

Edgar Goodspeed translated the New Testament into very readable English in 1913. An Old Testament by 4 other scholars was added in 1924 and published as The Complete Bible: An American Translation.

Ronald Knox translated the Vulgate into lovely English. His version, with imprimatur, was published in 1948.

J.B. Philips published a fun, loose, popular, and highly readable translation of the New Testament in 1957.

In 1959 came the conservative Berkley Version, with New Testament by Gerrit Verkuyl and Old Testament by a team of U.S. translator.

Australian classicist Ann Nyland published her translation The Source New Testament with Extensive Notes on Greek Word Meaning in 2007. It was controversial for the translator's handling of passages regarding homosexual intercourse and the role of women in church, home, and society.

I have hard copies of most of these Bibles and electronic copies of the rest.  I have made use of them all from time to time.

I've heard it said that translations made by committee are more trustworthy than those made by individuals. A team effort is less likely to reflect the translator's biases. I observe, however, that translation committees are just as likely to have biases as individuals. The New English Translation (NET) was largely the work of scholars from Dallas Theological Seminary, a conservative school with a inerrantist view of Scripture. The popular English Standard Version (ESV) was made by a committee that was heavy on Calvinists and complimentarians (i.e. Christians who do not allow women roles of leadership in their churches). My own go-to Bible, the New Revised Standard Version  was produced by a team of scholars with what I would call an academic bias.

In short, committees can be just as biased as individuals.





I found Caravaggio's dramatic painting of St. Jerome at the website of the Ronald Knox Society.

Equivalence

PART 8 IN A SERIES ON TRANSLATION

A significant factor that distinguishes the many English versions of the Bible one from another is equivalence. Some versions of the Bible are translated according to a philosophy of formal equivalence while others are made according to a principle of dynamic equivalence.

Formal equivalence is sometimes called "literal" or "word-for-word" translation. A formally equivalent translation is relatively transparent to the source language reflecting, to the extent that it is possible, the grammatical structure and even word order of the original.

Strict formal equivalence is not really possible. Wtords in the source language may not have a precise equivalent in the target language. That is, words in different languages have different ranges of meaning. Some words are untranslatable. In Greek there are little words called "particles" that add emphasis, for example, or "iffy-ness" o a sentence but which cannot be reproduced in English. Greek also employs double negatives which, if rendered literally, result in ungrammatical English. Word order is also used very differently in Greek than in English.

As an example, here is a very literal rendering (it can't really be called a translation) of Romans 12:9-10 from the Greek:

The love unhypocritical. Loathing the evil, sticking-like-glue to the good, in brotherly-love to one-another persons-with-familial-affection; in honor one-another persons-who-go-before....

Dynamic equivalence is sometimes described as thought-for-thought translation. The idea of dynamic equivalence is to render the meaning of the source text into the target language with less concern for the actual words and grammar of the original. Dynamic equivalence translations tend to be freer, more idiomatic and more natural than formally equivalent translations. I think it is safe to say that they are also more interpretive. The success of a dynamic equivalence translation depends in large measure on the translator's understanding of the source text.

Here is Romans 12:9-10 from the New American Standard Bible, a high formal equivalence translation:

Let love be without hypocrisy. Abhor what is evil; cling to what is good. Be devoted to one another in brotherly love; give preference to one another in honor....

And for comparison, from the Common English Bible, a much more dynamically equivalent translation:

Love should be shown without pretending. Hate evil, and hold on to what is good. Love each other like the members of your family. Be the best at showing honor to each other....

The translation philosophies of formal and dynamic equivalence both have their strengths and weaknesses. English readers, with hundreds of versions available to them, are probably fortunate that they don't have to choose a single type of translation. When I teach my New Testament class in the Diakonia program, I require my students to write paper explaining a passage of Scripture. I always tell them to compare the passage in several versions.

Some of the more formally equivalent English translations of the Bible include the King James Version, the American Standard Version, the Revised Standard Version, the New American Standard Bible and the New King James Verson.

Dynamic equivalence translations include the Good News Translation, the Contemporary English Version, the New Living Translation and the Common English Bible.

The New Revised Standard Version and the New International Version steer a middle course, with the NRSV leaning toward formal equivalence and the NIV family favoring dynamic equivalence.





I don't usually illustrate my blog with my own photographs. Perhaps you can see why.

Critical Editions of the Greek New Testament

PART 7 IN A SERIES ON TRANSLATION

We do not have the original copies, the “autographs” as scholars call them, of any of the books of the Bible. They are lost to time and history, probably worn out and discarded long ago. If they exist at all anymore, it is most likely as scraps and fragments which, if they were found today, probably could not be identified as the originals.

What we do have is thousands of manuscripts of New Testament texts, some remarkably complete, many just torn bits of papyrus. They are copies of copies of copies of the originals. And therein lies the problem.

Copyists make errors. Try copying a paragraph or two out of a book sometime and see how you do. Now imagine someone copying your copy. They would probably duplicate your errors--or try to correct them--and add new errors of their own. With each fresh copy, discrepancies multiply and variant readings proliferate.

There are literally more variant readings than there are words in the entire New Testament. How can we possibly know what the originals said?

The situation is not so hopeless as it may sound. For one thing, most of the variants are quite minor and do not affect the meaning of the text. For another, there are scholars called text critics who catalog, collate, and compare all the known New Testament manuscripts to determine the most likely original reading from among the variants.

Text critics base their judgments on several criteria. Among them:

In general, older texts are preferred because they are closer in time to the original and there would have been less opportunity for mistakes to be made and reproduced.

Certain texts are considered more reliable than others because they show signs of being produced by careful, trained scribes.

Difficult readings are more likely to be original as scribes have a tendency to smooth out difficulties.

Shorter readings are also preferred as scribes are more likely to add words deliberately than to omit them.

Text critics have also described all sorts of mistakes that copyists are liable to make, skipping or repeating words or lines, mistaking words that sound alike (think of how often the English words “there,” “they’re” and “their” are interposed), etc.

Using criteria like these, text critics have produced what they believe to be the best possible approximation of the original texts of the New Testament.

From the 16th through the 19th centuries, Erasmus' Textus Receptus was the standard text underlying most translations of the New Testament. In 1881, British scholars Brooke Foss Westcott and Fenton John Anthony Hort published The New Testament in the Original Greek, the first of the modern critical editions. Today the standard critical texts are the 4 th edition of the United Bible Societies' Greek New Testament(UBS4) and the Nestle Aland Novum Testamentum Graece. These two have identical texts (and are actually quite close to Westcott and Hort's work) but they each have a different critical apparatus (that is, a set of scholarly notes). The UBS and NA texts are the basis for most modern translations. Some translators will occasionally disagree with the critical editions and choose a variant reading. In such cases, you will usually find a footnote in the translation.

Although I think that the critical texts are the best basis for a translation, not everyone would agree. Orthodox Bibles (which base their Old Testament on the Septuagint) use a majority text—that is, a text that uses the most commonly occuring readings, rather than the most likely variants—that was authorized in 1912 by the Patriarchate of Constantinople. The Orthodox text is close, but by no means identical to the Textus Receptus. There are also King James Version Onlyists who, in defiance of reason, insist that the Textus Receptus is the only proper basis for a translation of the New Testament (and usually that the King James Version is the only proper translation).

Illustrating this post are an image of P52, the oldest currently known manuscript of a New Testament text, and a picture of Westcott and Hort. Both pictures were found at wikipedia.com.

 

Erasmus and Textus Receptus

PART 6 IN A SERIES ON TRANSLATION


When Martin Luther set out to reform the Church, Erasmus of Rotterdam (1466 or 7 - 1536), an influential Dutch priest and brilliant humanist scholar, was initially supportive of the Lutheran enterprise. Luther and Erasmus parted ways over the question of human free will. In a nutshell, Luther said that our human will is bound to sin. Erasmus had a much higher opinion of humankind. Justo Gonzalez, in The Story of Christianity, Volume 2 (pp. 42-43) suggests that the free will debate was a pretext on the part of Erasmus, an amicable way to part with the Lutherans.

Lovers of the New Testament, regardless of denomination, owe Erasmus a debt of gratitude. It was he who, in 1516, first published a Greek New Testament. His work went through many editions, which included numerous corrections. It was in the preface to the 1633 edition published by the Elzevirs of Leiden, that Erasmus’ work was called the “textus receptus” (Latin for “received text), a name that adheres to this day.

Erasmus’ Greek text was the basis for Martin Luther’s German New Testament, and for the 1611 King James Version.

Erasmus had only eight manuscripts to work with, and those were incomplete. For example, the manuscript that he used for Revelation was missing its last six verses. The resourceful scholar overcame this difficulty by back-translating the missing verses from the Latin of Jerome’s Vulgate (c.f. this post) into Greek. He did surprisingly well, all things considered, but at Revelation 22:19 he managed to turn a tree into a book. According to Bruce Metzger, this “reading occurs in no Greek manuscript.” Apparently the scribe who had made Erasmus’ copy of the Vulgate “accidently miscopied the correct [Latin] word ligno (‘tree’) as libro (‘book’).”**

So the King James Version reads:

And if any man shall take away from the words of the book of this prophecy, God shall take away his part out of the book of life, and out of the holy city, and from the things which are written in this book. (Rev. 22:19, bold emphasis added).

Most modern translations, based on modern, critical Greek texts read like the Common English Bible:

If anyone takes away from the words of this scroll of prophecy, God will take away that person’s share in the tree of life and the holy city, which are described in this scroll. (Rev. 22:19, bold emphasis added).

I found Holbein's painting of Erasums at Wiki, of course. Among modern translations only those, like the New King James Version, deliberately based on the texts underlying the KJV have “book of life” in Rev. 22:19. Next in this series, I will take up the matter of modern, critical Greek New Testaments.

Footnotes:

*Gonzalez, Justo, L., The Story of Christianity. Volume 2: The Reformation to the Present Day. HarperCollins, New York, 1985, pp. 42-43.


**Metzger, Bruce M., A Textual Commentary on the Greek New Testament, Second Edition. A Companion Volume to the United Bible Societies' Greek New Testament (Fourth Revised Edition), United Bible Societies, USA, 1994, p. 690.

The Texts Underlying the Old Testament

PART 5 IN A SERIES ON TRANSLATION

The various books of the Bible were originally written in Hebrew (a few Old Testament passages in Aramaic) and Greek. Unless you read those languages, you will rely on a translation. I've mentioned before that my friend Matt claims there are more than 500 translations of the Bible into English. I'm not sure where he got that number. It doesn't seem too far-fetched, though.

The preface to the Lexham English Bible, a recent version based on an interlinear Bible, says that there are "approximately one hundred different English translations of the Bible already published." Even this more modest number represents an embarrassment of riches.

One of the things that sets the various versions of the Bible apart from one another is their textual basis: the different original language texts that underlie the translations.

The Jewish Bible is called the Tanakh. Tanakh is an acronym for the Hebrew words Torah (Law), Nevi'im (Prophets), and Kethuvim (Writings), the three major divisions of the Jewish Bible. The content of the Tanakh is identical to the Protestant Old Testament, though the books occur in a different order and are sometimes counted differently.

Hebrew is written from right to left. In ancient times (and to some extent today) Hebrew was written without vowels. Which gives rise to this bit of doggerel by Jessica Shaver:

Th lphbt s hrd t mstr;
Rdng bck t frnt's dsstr.
Nlss h's rd th clssfds,
whr trth, bbrvtd, hds,
th w1d-b rdr f th Bbl,
prsntd wth th txt, s lbl
t trn nd rn wth shrks nd hwls-
th hbrw Scrptrs hv n vwls!

If you made it through that poem, you know vowels are helpful, but not necessary. While the letters PRS might represent "purse," "parse," or "praise," context will usually make the meaning clear. Still, the Hebrew Scriptures printed without vowels present some interpretive difficulties. So in the 7th through the 11th centuries CE, groups of Jewish scholars called the Masoretes devised a system of "points," written above and below the consonantal text to indicate vowels and "cantillation" (chant tones). The resulting Masoretic Text (MT) is the fixed and authoritative form of the Tanakh. The Biblia Hebraica Stuttgartensia (BHS) is the standard scholarly edition of the MT.

In the 4th through 2nd centuries BCE, long before the Masoretes did their work, a Greek translation of the Hebrew Scriptures called the Septuagint was made to meet the needs of Diaspora Jews--Jews who lived away from the Judean homeland. Septuagint means "Seventy" and the title refers to a legend about the making of the translation.

King Ptolemy II of Egypt wanted a translation of the Torah for his great library at Alexandria. He sent to Israel for 72 scholars to prepare the translation. Each of them worked separately from the others, isolated in 72 rooms, for a period of 72 days. At the end of that time, when they compared their manuscripts, miraculously they had all produced identical translations.

The legend is nonsense, of course, but it reflects the esteem with which the Septuagint was regarded. Septuagint is often abbreviated "LXX" ("seventy" in Roman numerals).

When the Septuagint was being compiled, the canon of the Jewish Bible was not set. So the LXX came to include several books, and additions to books, that are not in the Tanakh. Some of these additions were originally written in Hebrew, others in Greek.

The Septuagint was the Bible of the early Church. When the New Testament quotes the Old Testament, the quotes are almost always from some form of the Septuagint text. When Christianity and Judaism went their separate ways, sometime around the 2nd century CE, Jews abandoned the use of the LXX in favor of the Hebrew Bible.

In the 4th century, Pope Damasus I commissioned a brilliant, troubled scholar named Jerome to produce a Latin translation the Bible. Jerome's Bible was called the Vulgate because Latin was the "vulgar"--that is--common language of Western Christendom. Greek was still the lingua franca of the Orthodox East. Jerome designated the books that were found in the LXX but not the Hebrew Bible as "deuterocanonical," that is, belonging to a "second canon." The Vulgate became the standard Bible of the Western church and remained so until the Reformation era. In the East, the LXX has always been the standard text for the Old Testament.

In the 16th century, when the Reformer Martin Luther made his vernacular German translation of the Bible, he put the deuterocanonical books in a separate section of the Bible and commented that they were "good to read" but did not have the same authority as the other Scriptures. The deuterocanonical books are also sometimes called "Apocrypha" which means "doubtful." Following Luther's lead, most modern Protestant Bibles omit the Apocrypha altogether.

Today the content of the Protestant Old Testament conforms to the Hebrew Masoretic Text and is usually translated from the BHS, with emendations from the LXX and other ancient witnesses. Catholic and Anglican editions of the Bible include the deuterocanonical books, giving preference to the MT for the "protocanonical books" and translating the deuterocanonical books from the LXX. Orthodox editions of the Bible include an Old Testament translated from the Septuagint.

The difference in the content between the MT and the LXX accounts for the fact that Protestant Bibles are 66 books long, while Catholic and Anglican Bibles have 73 books. Some Orthodox churches have even longer lists of canonical Scriptures.





This post has been necessarily very brief. I trust that the facts presented are accurate, though they can hardly be considered the "whole story." In my next post in this series, I plan to take up the question of the texts underlying the New Testament. I found Domenico Ghirlandio's painting of St. Jerome in His Study at wiki.

Style

PART 4 IN A SERIES ON TRANSLATION

There is an Italian proverb that says “Tradutorre, traditore.” That is, “Translator, traitor.” There is no such thing as a perfect translation. Something always gets lost. Sometimes, for instance, the demand for clarity forces a translator to become an interpreter. Translators cannot help but betray the original text.

“Style” is hard to define and even harder to translate. Reading an English version of the Bible, you might not even realize that each of the writers of Scripture has their own unique style.

Luke and Acts, for example, are written in a fussy, florid and deliberately old-fashioned style of Greek. The Lukan author had literary aspirations.

Revelation, on the other hand, was written by a GSL (Greek as Second Language) student. John of Patmos’ grammar is often awkward.

The Gospel of John is written in simple grammar and with a limited vocabulary, yet it frequently achieves poetic effect. I have often said that John wrote Greek the way that Hemingway wrote English.

The writer of Ephesians, on the other hand, wrote Greek the way Faulkner wrote English. Sentences in Ephesians are long, convoluted, and rife with subordinate clauses. In Greek, Ephesians 1:3-6 is a single sentence, 66 words in length. The Greeks of old apparently liked this sort of thing. Most English translations break these verses into several sentences just to make them comprehensible. In the New Century Version, which is rendered into very simple English, I counted 6 sentences.

Translators usually have to subordinate the style of their source text to other concerns. 

So we have a New Century Version style, and a New International Version style, and a New Revised Standard Version style, and a New American Standard Bible style, and a Common English Bible style, and so on and on. It is easier to discern the differences among Bible versions than to discern the differences in the styles of the biblical writers within a version.

Robert Frost said “Poetry is what gets lost in translation.” A writer’s style is often lost in translation, too.

I found Hieronymus Bosch's painting of St. John on Patmos on Wiki.

Translation Time

PART 3 IN A SERIES ON TRANSLATION

I studied Spanish in high school. I remember just enough of it to order lunch from the tolerant wait staff at a local Mexican restaurant. Should I ever find myself lost in Guadalajara, I could  ask a helpful native for directions to the library. I would not, however, be able to understand the answer.

Back in those high school classes, we used to recite little practice dialogues, like this one related to time.

¿Qué hora es?

Son las ocho menos cuarto.

A very literal translation of that dialogue would be:

What hour is [it]?

They are the eight minus [a] quarter.

While the Spanish is perfectly acceptable, the English is not so great. This is because Spanish has different idioms for time-telling than English. Put on your translator’s hat and think for a moment about how you would render that dialogue into good English.

While I think that the question “¿Qué hora es?” would almost universally be translated as “What time is it?” several options present themselves for the reply “Son las ocho menos cuarto.”

It is seven forty-five.

It’s a quarter of eight.

It’s quarter to eight.

Or, where I grew up:

Quarter ‘til.

In each case, the basic meaning of the reply is unchanged. How is a translator to choose among these possibilities?  Context might be a guide. Formal writing has different requirements than informal speech. If the dialogue is spoken, who is the speaker? Would a BBC broadcaster reply in the same way as a Jersey Shore cast member?

One reason that we have so many English versions of the Bible is that there are so many ways a given word or phrase can be translated. Here, for comparison, is 2 Corinthians 5:16 in four translations. Each has something to commend it:

New King James Version

Therefore, from now on, we regard no one according to the flesh. Even though we have known Christ according to the flesh, yet now we know Him thus no longer.

New International Version

So from now on we regard no one from a worldly point of view. Though we once regarded Christ in this way, we do so no longer.

New Revised Standard Version

From now on, therefore, we regard no one from a human point of view; even though we once knew Christ from a human point of view, we know him no longer in that way.

Common English Bible

So then, from this point on we won’t recognize people by human standards. Even though we used to know Christ by human standards, that isn’t how we know him now.

Does one of these translations speak to you more clearly than the others? Is there another translation that you like better? If so, why?

I am going to try to blog more regularly during Lent. We’ll see how that goes. I’m still trying to give away a copy of the Common English Bible through this post. Doesn’t anyone want to play?

The illustration is Salvador Dali's 1954 painting Soft Watch at the Moment of First Explosion. I chose it because Dali is Spanish and it's about time and...well...I just think it's cool, that's all.

An Idiot Looks At Idioms (With Footnotes)

PART 2 IN A SERIES ON TRANSLATION

An idiom is a figure of speech which is readily understood by the native speakers of a language, but which, if taken literally, may not make sense to a non-native. Every language has them. They pose particular difficulties for translators.

The following is a true story.

I was out for a bicycle ride with friends on a fine late-summer day. We were riding our mountain bikes on country back roads through northern Illinois farmland. As we rounded a particular corner, we saw a 5 gallon plastic pail in the middle of the road about fifty yards ahead of us. It was lying on its side, rolling back and forth in the breeze, creating a small hazard. I could see that the bucket was empty, so I sprinted ahead of my companions, and as I came alongside the pail, I booted it off into the ditch.

When the others caught up to me, my friend Tim said, “Now I can tell everyone that I saw you kick the bucket.”

To “kick the bucket” is, of course, an English idiom meaning “to die.” If there is any humor in that anecdote it resides in the disjuncture between the literal and figurative meanings of the expression.

Think for a moment about how you might translate that story meaningfully into another language, one that doesn’t have the same idiom.

One possibility might be to find an equivalent idiom in the target language and change the situation to fit it. According to the cartoon above, “kick the calendar” is a Polish idiom for dying. As a translator, you could change the bucket in my story into a calendar. That would preserve the idiom, but it is probably, in this instance, the least satisfactory solution. It's hard to picture a calendar in the road causing a hazard for bicyclists.

A second possibility would be to translate the meaning of the idiom and footnote* its literal sense. Like this:

When the others caught up to me, my friend Tim said, “Now I can tell everyone that I saw you die.” (1)

(1) lit. “kick the bucket.”

A third possibility would be to translate the idiom literally and footnote its figurative meaning. Thus:

When the others caught up to me, my friend Tim said, “Now I can tell everyone that I saw you kick the bucket.” (2)

(2) “Kick the bucket” is an English idiom meaning “to die.”

In the case of this particular story, the third possibility commends itself, but in other instances, one of the other strategies might serve better.

A curious idiom in New Testament Greek is the use of the word σπλάγχνον (splanchnon) which literally means “bowels” but figuratively means “loving concern or sympathy, commonly rendered heart”**

The venerable King James Version of the Bible tended to render the meaning of σπλάγχνον literally, with sometimes amusing results. For instance, Philippians 1:8:

For God is my record, how greatly I long after you all in the bowels of Jesus Christ.

For comparison, here is the same verse from the more idiomatic Common English Bible***:

God is my witness that I feel affection for all of you with the compassion of Christ Jesus.

Sometimes translating an idiom literally makes the meaning incomprehensible. Here's 2  Corinthians 6:12 from the KJV.

Ye are not straitened in us, but ye are straitened in your own bowels.

And again from the CEB:

There are no limits to the affection that we feel for you. You are the ones who placed boundaries on your affection for us.

One thing that sets English versions of the Bible apart from one another is the way that they deal with idioms.**** I'll have more to say on the subject of translations in future posts. The cartoon at the top of this blogpost came from this website.


FOOTNOTES

*I like footnotes.

**Danker, Frederick William, The Concise Greek-English Lexicon of the New Testament, University of Chicago Press, 2009, p. 326.

***To win a free copy of the Common English Bible, see this post.

****Did I mention that I like footnotes?

Babelfish and Bible Translation

PART ONE OF A SERIES (PLUS A BIBLE GIVEAWAY!)

If you’ve never played with the internet translation engine called babelfish, it is kind of fun and occasionally useful. You plug in a block of text in the source language, choose the language filter you desire, and it gives you a crude translation in your chosen target language. For an example, here’s Psalm 23:4 from the Common English Bible:

Even when I walk

through the darkest valley,

I fear no danger

because you are with me.

Your rod and your staff—

they protect me.

And here is how babelfish translated that verse into French:

Même lorsque je marche par la vallée la plus foncée, je ne crains aucun danger parce que vous êtes avec moi. Votre tige et votre — de personnel ils me protègent.

I don’t happen to speak French. Nor do I think I’ll ever try. (I was traumatized by a Parisian waiter once). Still, I think I see a little problem in babelfish’s result. Let’s translate it back into English and see what happens:

Even when I walk by the most sunk valley, I do not fear any danger because you are with me. Your stem and your — of personnel they protect me.

Translation is as much an art as a science. If translation were a science, babelfish would work better. Maybe one day, with advances in Artificial Intelligence, a translation engine will give better results.

One difficulty in translation, whether done by a computer or a human being, is that words have a range of meaning. The English noun staff can mean a shepherd’s crook or it can mean personnel. In this case, babelfish chose the wrong meaning.

Consider the verb “to spike.” (Never mind the noun)! You can spike a fever. You can spike a volleyball. You can spike the punchbowl at Senior Prom. Arguably these three meanings are related, but they are far from the same thing. Now, imagine the difficulties of translating the wordplay in the following English sentence into another language--any other language.

After she drank the spiked punch, she began to spike a fever and could not spike the volleyball.

Let’s see how babelfish does. In French:

Après que elle a bu du punch enrichi, elle a commencé à une fièvre et ne pouvait pas spike le volley-ball

And back into English:

After she drank the enriched punch, she began a fever and could not spike volleyball.

Not bad. The meaning is mostly preserved, but the repeated use of “spike” is lost.

There are perhaps as many as 500 translations of the Bible into English. This is the first of a series of blogposts dealing with translation, and what distinguishes all those Bible versions one from another.

The Common English Bible is sponsoring a second Blog Tour beginning this Wednesday, February 22. As a participant, I’ll be able to give away a free paperback copy of the CEB each week for the duration of the tour. If you would like to win this week’s free copy, cut and paste your favorite Bible verse (any English version) into the babelfish engine. Translate it into the language of your choice and then back into English. Post the results in the comments to this thread, and the one that amuses me most gets the Bible. This contest ends at 11:59 p.m. Central Time, Saturday February 25. You'll need to check back next week to see if you've won. Decision of the judge (me) is final and completely arbitrary, but play along. It’ll be fun!


Babelfish takes its name from a creature described in Douglas Adams' The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. The illustration of the babel fish was taken from this website. A good description of the fish, and how it proves, or disproves the existence of God can be found here.