Just Give Me a Dictionary
June 28, 2019 2:23 pm 2 Comments
“Just write what it says,” a man at one of my speaking engagements said, regarding Bible translation. He didn’t understand why, when you do a Bible translation, you can’t translate literally word for word. Another woman wrote me and offered “If you give me a Nabak-English dictionary, I can help you with your translation work from the US.” She was wondering why our translation was taking so long. While it’s easy to see the wholesome desire to help in such statements, they are just putting on display the unfortunate ignorance many good, sincere people have about linguistics and translation.
If the language you are translating into – the receptor language – has the same words and ideas as the language you are translating from – the root or source language – then yes, you can translate one word directly to another. If you find yourself so lucky, and – spoiler alert! – this simply doesn’t happen, then ‘all’ you must worry about is the countless grammar, rules, exceptions, idioms and spellings you must master to become a good writer in the receptor language.
Do you remember all the spelling, grammar, English and English composition classes you took in elementary, middle and high school? The classes you took for 12 long years? That gives you an idea of what you must know or learn to begin a Bible translation, and you’ll probably end up learning much more before you’re done. Keep in mind that we’re talking about a hypothetical language which is so similar that you can do a word-for-word translation. That isn’t even possible between the most similar of languages, such as French and Italian or Spanish and Portuguese.
What happens, then, when the receptor language does not have that same word or idea, or when the most direct translation possible produces a very skewed or distorted concept? When this happens, the translator must – and should – grapple with how to rephrase the concept in the new language while being careful to keep the accurate, intended meaning from the source.
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His appearance was like lightning, and his clothes were white as snow.
The hair on his head was white like wool, as white as snow, and his eyes were like blazing fire.
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As Bible translators, this was a problem Edmund and I came up against frequently. The word “snow” is a clear and simple example of this, and it turned out to be an easy issue to solve because the passages in question, such as Matthew 28:3 and Revelation 1:14, were illustrations, not historical facts. It does not say, “Snow was falling.” Instead, Matthew and John are trying to find the words to adequately describe their own subjective experience. They illustrate these with the word “snow” because they, and their first-century readers, knew what snow was. The Nabak people, however, live on a jungle island, so their language does not have the word “snow.” How then could we illustrate it for them?
We talked to sever
al of our Nabak neighbors and asked them “What is the whitest thing you can think of?” Their immediate answer was “the cockatoo.” A close second to this answer was “the meat [inside] of a coconut,” but we went with the first answer as it was simpler to translate. Based on this specific cultural information we were able to change the word “snow” to “cockatoo.”
Several years ago, a controversy arose around a small number of Wycliffe Bible Translators in the field in majority Muslim communities. They were attempting to translate a difficult phrase, one that is not only vital to Christian theology, but which many Muslims already have a misconception of: Son of God. This is a complicated issue, a tricky tangle of Trinitarian theology, Muslim-Christian politics, common misconceptions held by many Muslims about Jesus, God and Mary, mother of Jesus, and more still. Many Muslims believe – and abhor – the idea that God had sexual relations in order to beget Jesus, but of course it is a complete misunderstanding.
To avoid this error, some of these groups translated the passage as: “the Beloved Son who comes (or originates) from God.” Their decision to do this meant they weren’t translating the Bible – at least in this passage – literally. They were taking the focus away from Jesus’s paternity while trying to maintain the connection between God and Jesus.
Some Christians objected to the way this issue was being handled by these WBT missionaries, and many people were upset. Many also defended the position. Let me be clear in saying that they were correct in raising objections, and many Bible translators, myself included, encourage this sort of critical peer-review. However, when word of this broke across the Christian world around 2011, many denounced WBT and demanded a more literal interpretation of the “Son of God” passages in question. A few organizations distanced themselves from WBT and the Wycliffe Global Alliance. Some even severed their ties altogether. I’m not interested in blogging about what followed. I am interested in the issue of translation itself. This is a serious matter and strikes right at the heart of what Bible translation actually means, about why we translators do what we do.
First John in Seri. This is what a back-to-English-translation looks like. An important part of the Bible Translation process.
After some initial confusion, Wycliffe Bible Translators leadership voluntarily submitted their organization to external scrutiny. They invited the World Evangelical Alliance, an independent and highly respected Christian organization, to appoint a panel to look into the matter and offer advice, and they agreed to follow all recommendations of the panel. When the WEA released their final report in 2013, which you can read here, WBT publicly thanked them, and has made all the recommendations into permanent changes to their procedures. This includes any future issues of this nature being referred for independent evaluation. This was a mature, reasonable and professional response. They had admitted what had happened, sought guidance outside their own organization, and changed their own procedures to avoid this sort of issue in the future.
The Nabak people had no questions and no misinterpretations with using the same form, “Son of God”. But in some areas of the world it spells gigantic problems. The Bible is so full of familial terms like “Son of God” – a clear indication of God’s emphasis on relationships – it is impossible to avoid them or substitute a different form. These relational terms are an important way the Bible talks about salvation, so we can’t change them.
In spite of the controversy generated by this complex issue, the dedicated and sincere women and men doing this hard work will deal with the “Son of God” issue in these Muslim countries. After all, Muslim’s often refer to Mecca as the “mother of all villages,” and I am confident they understand Mecca wasn’t having sexual relations to produce all the other villages.
I agree with the recommendation that the WEA made, and I think our Bible Translations are better for having been scrutinized and brought to accountability. Many organizations who had pulled away from WBT were also satisfied with the outcome. For example, the Assemblies of God had threatened to sever ties with WBT but, after the report was released and Wycliffe Bible Translators accepted all the proposed changes, they reaffirmed their partnership with WBT. The report had been released in April, 2013, and within a few months the issue had mostly blown over. Wycliffe Bible Translators, which has been doing Bible translation since 1942, had weathered a storm.
I’ll have another blog soon.
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The “x” factor
One of the sounds of Seri is a voiceless uvular fricative. I don’t know if any other language in Mexico has this sound. You can probably pronounce it if you can imagine yourself trying to gargle in secret. In fact Seri has two such sounds — a plain one and another one just like it except that you round your lips while making it. I think they are two of the favorite sounds in the language since lots of words have them. If you can’t make one, you can’t speak Seri.
The plain uvular fricative is written “x”. Now, as it turns out, there is actually a word that is composed of just this sound. It occurs at the end of super-many clauses where we now write a comma, and in fact a naive person might for a while think it is the Seri way to pronounce comma. But it’s not. It is what distinguishes “if Bill arrives” (with x) and “when Bill arrives (in the future)”; and “whenever Mary reads it” (with x) and “when Mary read it”. I really don’t understand exactly when it should be there (something to do with the time of the event), but I know that the guys I work with are very clear on when it is missing. Why was it missing in the translation sometimes? I’m not sure. Cathy’s father wrote down exactly what his Seri co-translator told him to write down. Maybe speakers differ on some detail. Maybe someone misunderstood. I also know (now) that sometimes the “x” word is really hard to hear because it is pronounced so lightly. Sometimes it can’t actually be heard, because it follows a verb that ends in “x”, or “sx”, or “fsx”, or some such combination. But careful readers and writers know that it should or should not be there (after thinking about it for 15 seconds or so), and they want it written, of course. So we are constantly looking to be sure we have them in the right places.
The next time you gargle, think about “x”. And pray that the meaning it conveys will be clear to those who read and hear the Seri scriptures.
2 Comments
A wonderful blog, Grace. Thank you.
I love your posts, thank you for sharing!