"Words are not coins, dead things whose value can be mathematically computed. You cannot quote an exact English equivalent for a French word, as you might quote an exact English equivalent for a French coin. Words are living things, full of shades of meaning, full of associations; and, what is more, they are apt to change their significance from one generation to the next. The translator who understands his job feels, constantly, like Alice in Wonderland trying to play croquet with flamingoes for mallets and hedgehogs for balls; words are forever eluding his grasp. Think of the delicate differences there are between the shades of meaning in a group of words like “mercy, pity, clemency, pardon,” or a group of words like “fear, terror, awe, reverence, respect,” or a group of words like “glory, honour, fame, praise, credit.” How is it to be expected, on the law of averages, that any such group of words in English has an exactly corresponding group of words in Latin, and another in Greek, so that you can say, for example, doxa always means gloria in Latin, always means “glory” in English? Tsedeq or dikaiosune can mean, when used of a man, innocence, or honesty, or uprightness, or charitableness, or dutifulness, or (very commonly) the fact of being in God’s good books. Used of God, it can mean the justice which punishes the sinner, or, quite as often, the faithfulness which protects the good; it can mean, also, the approval with which God looks upon those who are in his good books. Only a meaningless token-word, like righteousness, can pretend to cover all these meanings. To use such a token-word is to abrogate your duty as a translator. Your duty as a translator is to think up the right expression, though it may have to be a paraphrase, which will give the reader the exact shade of meaning here and here and here." -On Englishing the Bible 7
14 comments:
Extremely interesting reflections Timothy. And he is only discussing words here. If one discusses sentences, a complete new level of complexity is introduced. The late spanish Fr. Luis Alonso Schokel, who made at least two different translations of the Bible, said he wanted a bible in spanish, not in biblish (well, he said "not in patois"). He has a paper in which he discusses translation, and he argues that the translator must try to find the natural phrase in the target language which best conveys the original meaning. He gives a very good example using a sentence from english to spanish (I might have used the example in this blog already. But it is good). He takes the sentence "He swam across the river". A word for word translation (eliminating the third person singular which in spanish is implied) would read: "Nadó a través del río". An spanish reader would understand the meaning, but that is not spanish. The spanish sentence that conveys the meaning is: "cruzó el río a nado". It is worth pointing out that the only word of the original that survived the translation was "river" (río).
Translating seems to be a very difficult art.
Javier
Javier,
Thank you for your comment. I really enjoy the fact that we have access to these writings of Knox. It is somewhat rare that we are able to read the mind of a Catholic
bible translator.
Wow, Knox's words are very poignant. The text of Liturgiam Authenticam must surely be causing him to roll over in his grave. A pity that his insights and the insights of so many competent translators were completely ignored in the promulgation of that awful document.
Care to elaborate on that? Every religious organization on the planet has its own guidelines as to how sacred writings are to be translated, there is nothing wrong in any of the requirements of LA...it is just a re-iteration of the traditional Catholic principles of translation as they have existed since St Jerome
I must say, I am not usually a fan of the more dynamic equivalent translations. But, at your recommendation, I bought the new Knox offering and have really enjoyed it every day since. It's interesting how much Knox related posting you have done since late last year. I would love to see a Leonard's "redo" of the Baronius offering. That could be pretty cool. Thanks!
Peter Brennan
Peter,
Read my post tomorrow.
For me, the biggest counter-argument against Knox's position is that it seems to suggest that the translator must completely understand the text she is translating, so that she can choose the best possible word or phrase.
However, in terms of the classic "four senses of Scripture": complete understanding is likely impossible even for the literal meaning of scripture, and even more impossible for the allegorical, tropological, and anagogical.
In the Hebrew Bible, for example, there are many hapax legomena, words that only appear once in the Bible, for which we cannot definitively assign meaning. One of the more honest translations here is the NJPS ("Tanakh") translation which has on almost every page footnotes indicating "meaning of Hebrew uncertain" and similar issues.
One Biblical book that deserves special mention in this regard is the book of Job, where there is wide disagreement over the basic meaning of the text in many places (including the lengthy speech by God.)
Other features that show up prominently in the Hebrew but often fail to show up in translations are the distinctive rhythm of the Hebrew and the extensive wordplay in the original. Knox is to be congratulated for trying to capture some of the latter (e.g., acrostic poetry).
Knox's theory of translation requires "think[ing] up the right expression, though it may have to be a paraphrase, which will give the reader the exact shade of meaning here and here and here," but Knox does not explain how to do this with necessarily imperfect understanding of the source material.
Theophrastus,
I don't see how not being able to completely understand the text would be an argument against Knox's view of translation. It would rather be an argument against the posibility of translating at all.
On the other hand, Knox translated mainly from the Vulgate, so he probably didn't face this problem at all. He transferred the burden of understanding the meaning of the hebrew text to St. Jerome (wisely or not), and he dealt only with the latin text.
Javier
Knox actually did not 'deal only with the Latin text'....like any responsible translator, he compared the Vulgate to the other ancient translations, as well as to the Greek and Hebrew.....as he explains in 'On Englishing the Bible'....
Anyway....the reason why inability to completely understand a text makes dynamic translation unfeasible, it is because a literal translation will attempt to reproduce any ambiguity in the original text, whereas the dynamic translator first tries to figure what the text means...and then attempts to translate his understanding....the principle employed should be 'where the original is ambiguous the translation should be ambiguous'...the dynamic translator doesn't follow that rule, because he is generally focused on making the text 'easy to understand', which means removing ambiguity.
Biblical Catholic,
1) I think Knox translated from the Vulgate (itself a translation from the original languages), comparing to other sources when the meaning was obscure. But if what was obscure was the hebrew, why would he bother when he already had the Vulgate. After all, St. Jerome was closer to the source -in terms of time, geography, language, and culture- than Knox himself.
2) Theo mentioned "hapax legomena". How can such a word be translated literally, if we do not know the exact meaning?. How can we find a word in the target language that matches it?. I don't see how a "literal translation" would have an advantage over a "dynamic translation" in this case.
Making the text "easy to understand" does not logically imply "removing ambiguity". The goal of the dynamic translator is, I think, to convey the meaning of the original on a version in the target language that sounds natural. Not an english or spanish that one hears and knows immediately it has to be the Bible, because nobody speaks or writes like that.
Javier
Hi Javier --
We do not have Jerome's Vulgate, unfortunately. It has been lost to time, although there have been scholarly attempts to try to reconstruct it.
The usual approach with Biblical words that are unknown is to try to reconstruct them from other witnesses, or from cognate words in other Ancient Near Eastern languages. Even doing this, it must be admitted that there are an exceptionally large number of passages -- especially in the Hebrew part of the Bible -- that are unclear. Many translations note these problems; and you'll find hundreds of these notes in translations such as the NRSV.
Even when the meaning of the words is completely clear, there is a danger in translation in re-assigning stress or meaning. You can see this in the various way that, for example, Paul has been translated and interpreted. One hope of a more formal translation is that it will be more neutral in understanding the verses, and allow the reader to get closer to the underlying text. (While all Catholic translations may claim to try to interpret in line with tradition, I have noticed that various translators and commentators are often selective in how they understand "tradition" -- rather than trying to systematically understand all the ways that Biblical passages have been understood.) How well various translations actually accomplish the goal of getting close to the original text is, of course, a matter we can debate.
Finally, while Knox's translation may sound different than some other translations, I do not think we can say that it sounds "natural." Knox has his own idiosyncrasies.
Hi Theophrastus,
thanks for a very informative reply. I'd like to add some precissions.
1) you accurately point out that the Vulgate has been lost. But isn't that the case for all of ancient literature?. We have no originals at all. In no instance. It is always a matter of how many manuscripts, of what quality, how close to the source they are, etc.. I don't know how the Vulgate compares in that respect to other works. But we have Codex Amiatinus from the 8th century. Maybe the Vulgate would not be a good starting point today. But Knox did his job before Qumran.
2) I might be getting the difference between literal (or "formal") and dynamic translations wrong. My view -which could perfectly be wrong- is that both strive for the same level of accuracy in translating a text. The literal translator views each word as a unit worth keeping as such, and so the translation sometimes reads a bit awkward in the target language, whereas the dynamic translator considers the whole sentence, or paragraph, in an attempt to get accuracy while sounding natural in the target language. This being the case, I still can't see how being awkward in the target language could make the translation of an obscure passage more honest.
Any translator could, of course, add or detract from the original meaning, as there are no two languages that perfectly match each other. But in aiming for the most accurate result, while still rendering it naturally in the target language, lies the art of the translator.
3) Regarding Knox's version itself, and its language, I have nothing to say, because I'm vastly unqualified to judge on the subject, on the following grounds:
a-. English is not my native tongue -spanish is-. And I live in a spanish speaking country. So I don't really know what “natural english” sounds like.
b-. I haven't read Knox's Bible. In fact, I haven't read any Bible in english. And I don't plan to do so in the near future, as dealing with the spanish versions is proving toilsome enough.
Javier
Hi Javier --
I want to focus on the word "accurate" in your description. I've heard people use this word in different ways in Bible translation, to the point where I wonder if people mean the same thing by "accurate."
A dictionary definition of "accurate" is "free from error"; so an "accurate translation" would seem to be one that is "free from error in translation." Now, we can argue over which translation philosophy avoids errors, but (this is my main point!) any evaluation of accuracy seems to imply that the evaluator can completely understand the original. I do not believe that any person alive completely understands the Biblical source text -- as evidence, I point to the many arguments among Biblical scholars. So, I do not think it makes sense to talk in the abstract about translation accuracy of the Bible.
One hope of a more formal or literal translation is that it gives us information that allows us to at least follow the scholarly arguments over the meaning of the Bible. But, when a reader reads a translation that paraphrases the original, she is more restricted by the understanding of the translator.
Let me give you an non-Biblical example to explain what I mean. One of the great works of Spanish literature is Don Quijote and there are many ingenious English translations of that book. But, as you know, the way that Cervantes writes is even more interesting than the plot of that book -- Cervantes uses word-play, humor, clever parallels, dialects, etc.
When I read Don Quixote (as the book is called in English), I like to read a formal translation with notes, so I can understand as much of Cervantes's witty writing as possible. When the English translator tries to substitute word-play and humor from English into the translation, I have to wonder if the result is more from Cervantes or the translator. Even though my Spanish is mediocre, I like to follow along with a Spanish edition so I can try to understand what the translator did -- or did not do. (I like this edition because it is cheap and has lots of notes.)
In reading translations of Don Quijote, I find lots of English translators made mistakes, misunderstood passages in the original, or failed to translate some important nuance. If translators can make such big mistakes with Don Quijote, imagine how many mistakes they can make with the Bible!
Now, frankly, this is a lot of work, and maybe for most people, a movie or TV version of Don Quijote would be perfectly adequate. But if one is willing to put work into reading the text, a formal translation offers big rewards.
(I'll skip over the complicated issues of establishing early Vulgate texts; except to say that there is a scholarly dispute over how closely Codex Amiatinus reflects the Vulgate of Jerome's time.)
"Dynamic" or "paraphrase" translations can be very entertaining. For example, I think that Knox's translation is lots of fun to read. Knox was a successful writer of both religious books and mystery novels. My problem is that Knox is too good a writer -- when I read something that is well-put in Knox, I don't if that is from the Hebrew and Greek or from Knox.
Hi Theophrastus,
very interesting reply. You've certainly got a point here.
Still I'm not convinced that a literal translation would be the best option. Take your example of Don Quijote: if the translator tries to formally translate almost word for word, the result in english will be unreadable. I accept that for an english speaker who is fluent in spanish, that text might provide an insight into the original spanish text that a dynamic translation would not. But I don't think that would be a successful translation. Furthermore, the problem you point out is not one that only haunts translations. I'm an argentinian of the 21st century. When I pick the Don Quijote (and I haven't since high school), there are meanings in a spanish text from the 17th century that I will obviously miss. There are even words in the spanish I speak that have changed meaning in the course of my lifetime. (I have trouble understanding some expressions from Spain, or from Mexico, and here we are not even talking translation).
Still, I think the translator must strive to translate. In the case of Don Quijote, he must try -very hard- to render in natural english the words of a 17th century castilian hidalgo (what is the english word for “hidalgo”? Lower nobility?). Nobody said it was easy. After all, we do Shakespeare in spanish. Heretical?, maybe. But still worth doing it.
The problem of the original meaning is, as you correctly point out, exponentially more complicated when dealing with the Bible. Still I think it must be translated in a way that conveys in our language as much as the biblical science in its present state can gather of the original meaning.
The problem of the original meaning of the biblical texts is of course hugely complicated. On that particular matter I'm rather alone in thinking that the Vulgate and the Septuagint might help. The Vulgate certainly might with the New Testament. St. Jerome wrote in a geographical area that still spoke koiné greek. So, if he wished to know what, let's say, “porneia” meant, he had only to go to the town square and ask anyone. With the Old Testament it could get more tricky, but there were still more speakers of hebrew in the 4th that by the Middle Ages. Of course there is the problem you point out of the correlation between the manuscripts we have, and the original Vulgate.
Pretty much the same happens with the Septuagint. The jews who translated it were hebrew speakers. So when they rendered the hebrew into greek, the knew what they were doing. But we don' have an original of the Septuagint, so one has to guess how much the manuscripts correlate to the lost original.
(I know the issue of the Vulgate and the Septuagint are very controversial. I was just giving my view).
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