Problems of Translations

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The object of translating seems simple enough: to transfer meaning from one language to another. For public notices, traffic signs and other everyday needs, this is not difficult. But for literature—even such pseudo-literature as political speeches—meaning lies in the interplay of what the author intended to say, what the text actually contains, how style and cultural setting are used and how the audience interprets all this.

When the President of the United States announces to the world that “It’s third down and 20 on arms control” or “Khomeini isn’t Marcus Welby,” how is this supposed to be translated so that it will have the same meaning to an audience in France or China, neither of which knows anything about football or American television?

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In attempting a translation of this presidential language from English to French or Chinese, should we be trying to transfer the text or the audience reaction from one language into another? In other words, where does meaning lie—in the words of the text or in the audience reaction to the text?

Take such biblical passages as “I am the bread of life” (John 6:35) or “Your sins shall be white as snow” (Isaiah 1:18). What does the former mean in a society where rice, rather than bread, is the diet staple, or the latter to a people who have never seen snow?

If we conclude that meaning lies in the text, then we will want a “text-oriented” or “overt” translation, even if it is alien to the audience. The translation will tend to be literal and word-for-word.

On the other hand, if meaning inheres in audience reaction to the text, we may prefer what has been called a “reader-oriented” or “covert” translation, even if it compromises the cultural integrity of the original.¹ Such translations are likely to include more interpretation than literalness.

Our Western tradition of literal translations of biblical texts goes back at least as far as the Septuagint, the widely influential translation of the Bible from Hebrew into Greek, produced by the Jews of Alexandria in the third century B.C. Because they were committed to the belief that every word in the Bible was God’s own, the Septuagint translators strove to retain the Hebrew flavor. They did not even hope to capture in Greek the full sense of the original Hebrew. Indeed, this was obviously impossible when even the order of the words was considered divine and should not be changed except on the rarest occasions.

Thus, word order appears in the Talmud’s list of a dozen places where the Septuagint introduced “changes.” For example, the opening phrase of Genesis consists of the three Hebrew words bere’sûit bara’ ’elohim, which literally mean “in-the-beginning created God.” The word order is adverb-verb-noun, normal for Hebrew; the Greek word order of the Septuagint differed from this, rendering instead noun-verb-adverb, “God created in the beginning.” According to talmudic commentaries, this deviation was acceptable, however, because it avoided the possibility of an unwary reader mistaking “in-the-beginning” as the name of God’s creator.²

The Septuagint translation was especially important to early Christian writers. New Testament quotations of Jewish Scriptures generally reflect the Septuagint version where it differs from the Hebrew. So it is not difficult to understand how the Septuagint’s underlying concept of literal translation entrenched itself and in effect established a translation tradition that still exists today.

This translation tradition has even given us English expressions that mirror biblical Hebrew not only in vocabulary but even in syntax. For example, the Hebrew word nefesû ranges semantically—depending on the context—from “soul” to “being” to “person.” But literal translators of the Bible—in their view, they were respecting the Hebrew base of the text—translated nefesû consistently as “soul.” Thus, we have “The man became a living soul” instead of “being” (Genesis 2:7), and “Jacob went down to Egypt with seventy souls” instead of “persons” (Genesis 46:27). This in turn led to an expansion of the semantic range of “soul” in English. As a result, we have such non-biblical coinages as “poor soul” and “not a soul was there.”

Another example of this phenomenon occurs in syntax. The model of the Hebrew superlative in “song of songs” and “king of kings”—which should more properly be translated “great song” and “great king”—has produced the English phrases “in my heart of hearts” and “horror of horrors.”³

At the end of the fourth century, Jerome produced the official Latin version of the Bible for the Church—called the Vulgate because it was the editio vulgata, “standard edition” for the Church, having been written in the language of the vulgus, “common people.” But Jerome did a lot of translating before he worked on the Bible, and to him is often traced the idea that the meaning can be divorced from the literal words themselves. Not unpredictably, his work was often attacked for this reason. The most famous defense he wrote concerning his translation method is the letter Ad Pammachium, conventionally subtitled de optimo genere interpretandi, “concerning the best way to 036translate.” He there dismisses the accusation that he does not render word for word with the argument that nobody has shown that he ever distorted the sense of the originals. He then goes on to declare that his practice is to translate non verbum e verbo, sed sensum de sensu, “not word for word, but sense for sense.”

This phrase is widely quoted, but the qualification that follows it is often overlooked—and, for our purposes, it is a very important qualification indeed—“except for Holy Scripture where even the word order is sacred” (ubi et verborum ordo mysterium est).⁴

This commitment to the text of Scripture led Jerome to create “translation stock,” or mechanical equivalences; he matched specific Hebrew words with Latin equivalences, instead of choosing the best for each context from a range of synonyms and alternatives. For example, he rendered Hebrew bara’ as creavit, “created,” even when the result is meaningless, as in Genesis 2:3, which contains the Hebrew phrase bara’ la‘asot. Jerome translated this in Latin as creavit ut faceret, “created to do” instead of “proposed to do,” or “set himself to do” (as in the New English Bible). So in Jerome’s translation the verse reads “God rested from the work that he created to do”—essentially meaningless.⁵

It is therefore clear from both his defense and his practice that Jerome’s goal in biblical translation, as distinct from other types of translation, was to follow the word unless this thoroughly distorted the sense. This tradition can be traced from one translation to another in English, as well as in other European languages.

Occasionally, even before the modern era, we find a different approach. Take, for example, the Bay Psalm Book. Published in 1640, only ten years after the settlement of the Massachusetts Bay Colony, this translation is usually ridiculed for its harsh and unmusical verse, or is patronized as the sincere work of brave but overworked pioneers.⁶ Here is the beginning of the Twenty-Third Psalm from the Bay Psalm Book:

“The Lord to mee a shepheard is,

want therefore shall not I.

Hee in the folds of tender grasse,

doth cause mee downe to lie:

To waters calme me gently leads

Restore my soule doth hee:

he doth in paths of righteousnes

for his names sake leade mee.”

It is indeed difficult to defend this as poetry, yet it foreshadows a new theory of translation: the belief that the audience is paramount. As the translators of the Bay Psalm Book pointed out in the preface:

“The Psalms are penned in such verses as are suitable to the poetry of the Hebrew language … and if in our English tongue we are to sing them, then as all our English songs (according to the course of our English poetry) do run in metre, so ought David’s Psalms be translated into metre … [And] as the Lord hath hid from us the Hebrew tunes, lest we should think ourselves bound to imitate them … every nation without scruple might follow as the graver sort of tunes of their own country songs … ” [emphasis supplied].⁷

In other words, the original Hebrew psalms were meant to be sung in public worship; the purpose of their new English version was therefore similar. Moreover, the Puritan ministers wanted psalms that farmers in the fields and women at the spinning wheel could sing. They wanted verses that lent themselves to easy memorization and catchy tunes. While the regular rhythm of these translations has been justifiably compared to a hammer on an anvil, the poems themselves probably accomplished their purpose—they were sung! And for all we know, they may have replicated the effect the Hebrew had on the audience for which it was originally intended.

Of course, discovering the original intention of the text is usually impossible. But even assuming that we know it, it is questionable whether the same “intent” can be conveyed in a different language.

Two languages seldom if ever share similar cultures and histories. Where differences exist, the translator is likely to find himself in the predicament described by Michael Bullock:

“No amount of sympathy on the translator’s part will enable him to visualize how … the German novelist X would have written his stylistically highly original novel if he had been an English novelist writing in English. … The fact is, he would not have written it.”⁸

The translator who does not simply give up must weigh each element and decide what can be changed or omitted and what must be retained at all costs. As John Beekman, a major theorist for the Wycliffe Bible Translators, pointed out, sometimes a biblical author “chose words whose form and function are equally important. At other times … form was included only because it served as a natural vehicle carrying the functional meaning.”⁹ The translator’s job is to distinguish the two, because sometimes an image merely contributes to the meaning and at other times it is the meaning. Yet an image that makes perfect sense in one culture can be wrong, obscure or 037meaningless in another. This of course is at the heart of the debate over “desexing” the Bible: it is no simple matter to determine whether God is a Father or Parent, whether Jesus is a Son or Child.

And the problem does not stop there. What can a translator do with a text that assumes familiarity with persons, events and other texts that are common knowledge in the original culture but are alien to the audience of the translation? And what can be done with a text that alludes to its own language?

In Genesis 30:24, for example, Rachel calls her first son Joseph (Hebrew yoseph) because, competing with her husband’s three other wives, she prays, “May God add (yoseph) another.” Perhaps a translator could note the pun in a footnote, intrusive though it may be.

It would be more difficult, however, to handle the connection between the name Isaac (Hebrew yishak, “he laughs”) and the many occurrences of laughter in Genesis 18 and 21 built on the same root (S-H-K). The text tells us that “Sarah laughed” (tishak) upon hearing the angel’s prediction that at the advanced age of 90 she would bear a child (Genesis 18:12); and again in Genesis 21:6, immediately after the child’s naming, Sarah tells us: “All who hear will laugh” (yisehak).¹⁰ To preserve these connections in a translation is well-nigh impossible.

And how can a translator hope to capture in English what is obvious in the Hebrew—that ’Adam was so named because he was taken from ’adamah, which is ’adom like dam? It simply does not “mean” the same thing to say he was called Man (’adam) because he was taken from earth (’adamah) which is red (’adom) like blood (dam).

Also, the Hebrew text of Genesis 2–4 moves seamlessly between “the man” (ha-’adam) and ’adam (the name) suggesting that the story is not about two people named Adam and Eve but, rather, is about “Everyman” and “Life-Mother.” There it is plain as day in the Hebrew, but how to translate it into English?

These problems only skim the surface, yet Eugene Nida, president of the American Bible Society and a linguist who knows as much about translating as anyone, denies “the impossibility of translation.” Says Nida, “Anyone who is involved in the realities … is impressed that effective interlingual communication is always possible, despite seemingly enormous differences in linguistic structures and cultural features.” An effective translation can be made through what he calls “dynamic equivalence”—that is, having the translation produce the same effect on its audience as the original text did on its audience.¹¹

In modern times, 038Christians have been far more concerned with translations that attempt to do this than have Jews. As Nida and William L. Wonderly have noted in “Linguistics and Christian Missions”:

“In contrast with Judaism and Hinduism, which were not primarily interested in extension by missionary effort … Christianity was from the beginning concerned with an effective communication of its message to all men everywhere, such as could be accomplished only through the native idioms … [T] his concern early led to an interest in translation.”¹²

For this reason, it seems to me, Christian Bible translations often highlight the “universal truth” and try to clothe it in native dress, while Jewish translations require readers to accept the text on its own terms. As extreme examples of this contrast, we can compare the zealously fundamentalist Living Bible, which Christianizes the Jewish Scriptures,¹³ with the Living Torah, which states in its introduction that interpretations consistently “reflect the final decision in Jewish law.”

At a less charged level, the contrast is evident in the way different translations handle imagery. In Latin America, the Christian experience with diverse Indian cultures has led to parables about “coyotes” instead of “foxes” (Matthew 8:20) in Mazahua, Mexico; “flying ants” instead of “locusts” (Mark 1:6) in Ayutla Mixteco, Mexico; “pulque” instead of “wine” (Matthew 9:17) in Mezquital Otomi, Mexico; to people “sticking out their chins” instead of “shaking their heads” (Mark 15:29) in Huitoto, Peru; and to “calling from the door” instead of “knocking” (Acts 12:17) in Chol, Mexico.¹⁴

Even in English, Adam and Eve’s fig-leaf clothing (Genesis 3:7) has appeared as “aprons” (King James Version), “breeches” (Genevan Bible) and “loincloths” (New English Bible).

Contrasting points of view regarding translation techniques may be found even in two of the best recent translations, the new Jewish Publication Society (JPS) translation and the New English Bible, a British Protestant project. The editor-in-chief of the new JPS translation, Harry M. Orlinsky, has stated quite explicitly that “the first and exclusive obligation of a translator is to the text,” and thus, for example, thou in address to God was eliminated, because “the Hebrew Bible itself never made any distinction between God or man or animal” in its use of pronouns.¹⁵ In contrast, though the NEB translators knew the arguments against “thou,” Geoffrey Hunt tells us that the NEB committee wanted this version to be “as intelligible to contemporary readers as the original was to its first readers,” and “the public in general for whom NEB was intended were not considered ready for the general use of ‘you’ in address to God.”¹⁶

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Of course, this does not imply that the new JPS version is not intelligible, or that the NEB does not respect the text. But in a simple matter like this, with no apparent theological overtones, we can still see the consequences of different translation orientations.

Let us conclude by comparing how these two translations handle Genesis 35:1–5, a passage I have chosen almost at random (see the sidebar to this article). The differences are without religious import, but they tend to highlight the contrast between an overriding loyalty to the text in the one case and concern for the audience in the other. Where the JPS has “change your clothes,” NEB reads your “see your clothes are mended.” The difference is striking, but is obviously the result of different interpretations of a Hebrew word and is unrelated to any concern for loyalty to the text as opposed to concern for audience understanding.

But this is not the case with other differences. In vocabulary, JPS has “terror from God,” taken directly from the Hebrew; it makes no concession to a modern audience, as does NEB’s, “panicstricken.” Likewise, JPS’s use of “fleeing” is less modern than NEB’s “running away.” While a Western reader may not know that JPS’s “terebinth” refers to a tree, NEB’s “terebinth-tree” contains a built-in explanation. (On the hand, NEB’s “in the day of my distress” is more literal than JPS’s “when I was in distress.”)

As for syntax, JPS has “Arise, go up” and “Come, let us go up,” while NEB uses more idiomatic English, “Go up” and “We are going.” The JPS translation reflects, even if it does not precisely preserve, one of Hebrew’s “inception,” or auxiliary verb, constructions. The NEB, on the other hand, is more concerned with preserving the effect of idiomatic language on the English reader.

Similarly, JPS tries to preserve the pervasive Hebrew particle wa-, usually translated “and,” thus giving us “and build an altar” and “and I will build an altar.” In contrast, NEB has simply “build an altar” and “so that I can set up an altar.”

So, too, JPS’s “that were in their ears” reflects a Hebrew relative clause; NEB reduces this to a prepositional phrase, “from their ears.” Similarly, JPS’s “they did not pursue” seems to have “cities” as an antecedent, just as in the Hebrew; NEB, in contrast; adds an explanatory subject “the inhabitants.”¹⁷

In the end, the NEB—which at Mark 6:37 has Jesus’ disciples spending 20 pounds instead of 200 denarii—seems too willing to resolve difficulties by emending, rearranging or otherwise tampering with the received Hebrew text, even to the extent of dividing the Song of Songs into different parts that it attributes to different “speakers”—all in the hope of making the text more accessible to the modern reader.

Of course, emphasis on concern for the reader has excellent precedent. Alexander Pope rendered the Iliad into rhymed iambic pentameter couplets even though the usual poetic form in classical Greek was long, multiline sentences in unrhymed dactylic hexameters. Pope used rhymed couplets because that was the usual poetic form in Augustan England. Moreover, in an English translation, dactylic hexameters would have 040produced an effect of strangeness that would not have been experienced by the original Greek audience for whom the text was written, so Pope used lines with only five feet (pentameter), instead of six feet (hexameter).

But once we accept accessibility as a goal, it is hard to know where to stop. In various English translations of classical Roman authors, the technical, culture-specific term patres et plebes (the titles of the two groups in the Roman senate) has appeared as “Lords and Commons”; praetor (a Roman magistrate) as “Lord Chief Justice”; and comitium (the place of assembly in Rome) as “Parliament”—all of which seem too free because they conjure up images of Englishmen in London.¹⁸

On the other hand, returning to two biblical phrases we mentioned earlier—“Your sins shall be white as snow” an “I am the bread of life”—John Beekman has convincingly defended translating these for certain cultural groups as “Your sins shall be white as cotton” and “I am the tortilla of life.”

As Beekman explains:

“Many groups in Mexico consider bread to be second best and inferior to tortillas, or look upon it as dessert or party food. This function does not correspond to the idea Jesus had in mind … To use a literal equivalent for bread in spite of its incompatible functional meaning, introduces a wrong equivalence.”¹⁹

Perhaps with what we now know about mental disorders, it may follow that we should translate “an evil spirit from the Lord came upon Saul” (1 Samuel 16.14) as “Saul was depressed” or “went into a royal depression.”

Where we will end up if we continue to pursue “accessibility” as a goal is anybody’s guess. Perhaps we will one day have a special Bible translation for government bureaucrats modeled on George Orwell’s well-known “translation” of Ecclesiastes 9:11 into bureaucratese. In the King James Version this passage reads as follows:

“I turned and saw under the sun, that the race is not to the swift, nor the battle to the strong, neither yet bread to the wise, nor yet riches to men of understanding, nor yet favor to men of skill; but time and chance happeneth to them all.”

Here is Orwell’s parody in bureaucratic language.

“Objective consideration of contemporary phenomena compels the conclusion that success or failure in competitive activities exhibits no tendency to be commensurate with innate capacity, but that a considerable element of the unpredictable must invariably be taken into account.”²⁰

The object of translating seems simple enough: to transfer meaning from one language to another. For public notices, traffic signs and other everyday needs, this is not difficult. But for literature—even such pseudo-literature as political speeches—meaning lies in the interplay of what the author intended to say, what the text actually contains, how style and cultural setting are used and how the audience interprets all this. When the President of the United States announces to the world that “It’s third down and 20 on arms control” or “Khomeini isn’t Marcus Welby,” how is this supposed to be translated so […]