Bible Translation : Frames of Reference 9781317640608, 9781900650564

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Bible Translation Frames of Reference Edited by Timothy Wilt

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First published 2002 by St. Jerome Publishing Published 2014 by Routledge 2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN 711 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10017, USA Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business © Timothy Wilt 2002 All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. Notices Knowledge and best practice in this field are constantly changing. As new research and experience broaden our understanding, changes in research methods, professional practices, or medical treatment may become necessary. Practitioners and researchers must always rely on their own experience and knowledge in evaluating and using any information, methods, compounds, or experiments described herein. In using such information or methods they should be mindful of their own safety and the safety of others, including parties for whom they have a professional responsibility.

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To the fullest extent of the law, neither the Publisher nor the authors, contributors, or editors, assume any liability for any injury and/or damage to persons or property as a matter of products liability, negligence or otherwise, or from any use or operation of any methods, products, instructions, or ideas contained in the material herein. ISBN 13: 978-1-900650-56-4 (pbk) Cover design by Steve Fieldhouse, Oldham, UK Typeset by Delta Typesetters, Cairo, Egypt British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A catalogue record of this book is available from the British Library Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Bible translation : frames of reference / edited by Timothy Wilt. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 1-900650-56-8 1. Bible--Translating. I. Wilt, Timothy. BS449 .B53 2002 220.5--dc21 2002151224 5

Contents Introduction 1. Scripture Translation in the Era of Translation Studies Aloo Osotsi Mojola and Ernst Wendland 1.1 The dynamic equivalent approach to translation and its institutionalization 1.2 Evaluation of the TAPOT approach to translation 1.3 The emergence of translation studies as an autonomous discipline 1.4 Some contemporary translation approaches 1.4.1 Functionalist 1.4.2 Descriptive 1.4.3 Text-linguistic 1.4.4 Relevance theory 1.4.5 Post-colonial 1.4.6 Literalist 1.4.7 Foreignization v. domestication

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1.5 Conclusion 2. Translation and Communication Timothy Wilt 2.1 Components of communication 2.1.1 Participants, text and medium 2.1.2 Text 2.1.2.1 Texts composed of signs 2.1.2.2 Selection and perception of a text’s signs 2.1.2.3 Social metaphors for the translated text 2.1.3 The medium 2.2 Frames 2.2.1 Cognitive frames 2.2.2 Sociocultural frames 2.2.3 Organizational frames 2.2.3.1 Multiple organizational frames 2.2.3.2 Frames of a particular organization 2.2.4 Communication-situation frame

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2.2.4.1 Some basic elements of any communication situation 2.2.4.2 Dramatic changes in the communication situations of Bible translation 2.2.5 Text frames 2.3 Goals 2.3.1 Some fundamental goals 2.3.1.1 Text goals 2.3.1.2 Organizational goals 2.3.2 Conflicting goals 2.3.3 Ritual communication 2.4 Exchange: focus on the Bible translation process 2.4.1 Assessing the communication situation 2.4.2 Facilitating cooperation 2.4.3 Goals and resources 2.4.4 Academic and technical training 2.4.5 Producing the text 2.4.6 Evaluation 2.4.7 Further product development 8

2.5 Graphic representation of the communication model 2.5.1 Easy communication 2.5.2 Differences from earlier models of communication 2.5.3 Difficult communication 2.6 Conclusion 3. The role of Culture in Translation Robert Bascom 3.1 Katan’s Translating Cultures 3.2 Women, Fire and Dangerous Things 3.3 Night, sun and wine 3.4 ‘Key’ 3.5 A map of some fundamental biblical notions 3.5.1 Reciprocity 3.5.1.1 Tsedeq/tsedeqah 3.5.1.2 ‘emet/’emunah/he’emin 3.5.1.3 Go’el 3.5.1.4 Hesed

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3.5.2 Frames and boundaries in ancient Israelite society: holiness and pollution in their social and religious contexts 3.5.2.1 Time 3.5.2.2 Space 3.5.2.3 Creation 3.5.2.4 Symbolic numbers 3.5.2.5 State 3.5.2.6 The human body 3.5.2.7 Dietary laws 3.5.2.8 Animal sacrifice 3.5.2.9 Summary 3.5.3 Sickness and healing in the New Testament 3.6 Conclusion 4. Advances in Linguistic Theory and their Relevance to Translation L. Ronald Ross 4.1 Universalism versus relativity 4.1.1 Metaphor

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4.1.2 Spatial orientation 4.2 Typology 4.2.1 Constituent order typology 4.2.2 Grammatical typology 4.2.3 Typological semantics 4.3 Cross-cultural semantics 4.4 Pragmatics 4.4.1 The cooperative principle 4.4.2 Speech acts 4.5 Sociolinguistics 4.6 Discourse analysis 4.7 Information structure 4.8 Conclusion 5. Biblical studies and Bible translation Graham Ogden 5.1 Long-standing concerns: new finds and tools 5.1.1 Lexical and grammatical studies

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5.1.2 Historical-critical studies 5.1.3 Textual criticism 5.1.4 Archaeology 5.1.5 Source criticism and redaction criticism 5.1.6 Canonical criticism 5.1.7 Intertestamental studies 5.1.8 Intertextuality 5.2 Some recent trends in interpreting the Bible 5.2.1 Reader-response criticism 5.2.2 Feminist approaches 5.2.3 Cross-cultural biblical interpretation 5.2.4 Post-colonial studies 5.2.5 Region-centric studies 5.2.6 Ideology and exegesis 5.2.7 Sociological approaches 5.3 Conclusion 6. A Literary Approach to Biblical Text Analysis and Translation 12

Ernst Wendland 6.1 Unity 6.1.1 Connectivity 6.1.2 Intertextuality 6.1.3 Archetypes 6.2 Diversity 6.3 Rhetoricity 6.4 Structure 6.4.1 Genres 6.4.2 Prose 6.4.3 Poetry 6.5 Patterning 6.6 Foregrounding 6.6.1 Prominence 6.6.2 Progression 6.7 Imagery 6.8 Phonicity

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6.9 Dramatics 6.10 Conclusion 7. Conclusion Timothy Wilt Appendices A Cognitive frames: some pedagogical suggestions B Courses for a 4-year Bible translation program C Course outlines for Bible Translation I and II D Seminar: Introduction to Bible translation E Translation and communication: course outline F Some communicational aspects of various translations References Index

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Introduction In 1999, during a seminar on the training of new Bible-translation consultants, it was observed that Nida and Taber’s (1969) The Theory and Practice of Translation (TAPOT) was still considered by a significant number of people to be indicative of an organizationally supported, contemporary approach to Bible translation. Over the decades since TAPOT’s appearance, many publications on translating the Bible and secular literature have indicated ways in which TAPOT is limited, dated or untenable, and have presented enlarged or alternative perspectives. But these more recent studies have often focused on a particular academic sub-field or on translations in a particular language. Those attending the seminar concluded that it would be helpful to have a book providing a general perspective on Bible translation at the turn of the twenty-first century, in part by indicating important developments since the appearance of TAPOT. Bible Translation: Frames of Reference attempts to offer this. The primary audience envisioned by the contributors are consultants-in-training whose specialty in one academic area needs to be complemented by studies in other areas particularly pertinent to Bible translation. Each chapter is intended not for the specialist in the area discussed, but for those who would benefit from an introduction to issues and tools for study in that area. This approach opens the book to a larger audience of students, publishers and users of Bible translations.

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In the first chapter, Aloo Mojola provides a brief historical orientation, suggesting that we may characterize the past 50 years of Bible translation in terms of two eras: the era of dynamic equivalence, in which Eugene Nida played an important role, and the present ‘era of translation studies’. Mojola gives due recognition to Nida’s genius and leadership in translation studies, but also points out limitations to his approach, especially with regard to the communication model assumed by him and many others in the 1950’s-80’s. Mojola indicates the broad scope of contemporary translation studies, then Ernst Wendland looks at some perspectives on literary translation, an area neglected by Bible translators in the previous era, but of increasing interest to them in the present one; Wendland will return to this topic in the sixth chapter of our book. Mojola concludes that the great diversity of communication situations in which Bible translators work calls for appreciation of a variety of translation approaches and tools, rather than for an exclusive theoretical perspective or a prescriptive approach. In the second chapter, Timothy Wilt provides a framework for viewing translation in terms of the communication situation within which it occurs. He proposes a model that represents basic aspects of communication and that may facilitate discussions of the translation process. Key concerns are: the communicative goals of the various participants in the translation process, the organizational as well as sociocultural setting of a translation, community values, and cognitive factors influencing the arrangement and interpretation of text signs. Wilt also indicates how communication situations of Bible translation throughout the world have changed dramatically since Nida and Taber wrote their work three decades ago. 16

Robert Bascom begins the third chapter by reporting on Katan’s (1999) Translating Cultures, which exploits the notions of frames and framing as do both Wilt and Bascom, and on Lakoff’s (1987) Women, Fire, and Dangerous Things, whose study of how humans categorize experience and of the pervasiveness of metaphor in every day language is highly pertinent to translators as cross-cultural communicators. Bascom then gives examples of how textual and cultural frames shape the understanding of lexical items and of relationships between lexical items. He gives special attention to how a general ‘boundedness’ frame contributes to the relatedness of a variety of key terms in the Hebrew Scriptures. Such relatedness is unlikely to be readily perceived by those of other cultures not sharing the frame. These examples point to the importance of training translators to recognize similarities and differences between target and source culture frames, and to consider options for communicating the Scriptures in view of these similarities and differences. Challenges to communicating cross-culturally, along with a wide variety of tools for dealing with these challenges, are also pointed out by Ronald Ross in his chapter ‘Advances in linguistic theory and their relevance to translation’. Ross focuses on those areas of linguistics in which language is studied in its social, discursive and cultural contexts. While it is widely agreed that an exclusively linguistic approach to translation is not sufficient for satisfactorily understanding and practicing translation, Ross’s chapter leaves little doubt that an in-depth study of linguistics is necessary. This is especially true of Bible translators. Unable to rely on intuitions to the degree that can, for example, an interpreter who is highly 17

fluent in the languages being used in a court-room, the Bible translator must analyze ancient texts in detail and weigh the various linguistic options available for portraying these texts in the target language. Tools for analyzing and understanding the ancient biblical texts, from a variety of perspectives directly relevant to the translator, are indicated by Graham Ogden. He first surveys advances in traditional areas of biblical studies, such as lexical and grammatical studies. He then indicates a variety of interpretative approaches to the Scriptures that correspond to important trends in secular translation theory. These have contributed to a sharpened awareness of how cultural and theological biases may influence perception of the source text as well as of the translation task. They also challenge us to greater sociocultural sensitivity and more true dialogue in our work. In the last major chapter of our book, Ernst Wendland explores an approach to translation that integrates insights from the various disciplines considered in the preceding chapters. The approach is informed by, for example, cross-cultural studies of similarities and differences in communicative styles and values, linguistic studies of the function of lower-level structures in terms of higher-level textual ones, and literary and rhetorical studies of biblical texts. Wendland’s chapter encourages translating the Scriptures in a way that represents their literary nature. This is an important corrective to discussions of Bible translation which have focused on the informational aspect of the Scriptures, have implied dichotomies of form versus content or literary versus ‘common’ language, or have lumped

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together literary, literal and liturgical approaches to translation. Wendland points out that the approach he outlines is only one of several possible approaches to Bible translation. Its viability depends to a large degree on the abilities and resources of the personnel involved, and its validity depends on the goals of the individuals, organizations and communities involved in the project. Appendix F lists a variety of approaches to print-translation that differ because of the different communication situations in which they have been produced. The list has its limitations but it at least indicates how an approach to translation might be evaluated in terms of basic communicative factors. Again, the primary goal of this book is to provide an introduction to basic aspects of Bible translation today. Pedagogical applications are not in focus. An editorial challenge was to weigh some reviewers’ requests for more demonstrations of practical applications to particular translation problems against other reviewers’ requests to weed out material that, they felt, would be more appropriate in a workbook type of presentation or in a separate monograph. We have tended to favor the latter perspective, although the number of footnotes and appendices indicate our pull towards the former one. From the beginning, it was agreed that this project should be viewed as a step towards the development of practical training materials to be used in university-level courses and in workshops for the ongoing training of Bible translators. All contributors to the book are extensively involved in training and view this book as part of a pedagogical process. We have already begun to develop 19

materials and courses in keeping with perspectives presented here. See, for example, the outline of a Bible translation training program in Appendix B, the outlines for courses on Bible translation in Appendices C-E, the mention of programs to help church leaders use translations in section 2.4.4, and Zogbo and Wend-land’s (2000) discussion of translating poetry. Much more work in this direction remains to be done. A key theme of this book is the importance of a holistic approach to translation: • viewing the translation project in terms of its community, organizational and sociocultural settings; • viewing the translation product as part of a larger communicative process; • viewing translation as an interdisciplinary subject; • viewing textual parts in terms of textual wholes; • viewing form and content, structure and function, as together contributing to the meaning of texts; • viewing informative and imperative functions of texts in relation to other functions, especially the aesthetic and ritual functions of scriptural texts.

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1. Scripture Translation in the Era of Translation studies ALOO OSOTSI MOJOLA AND ERNST WENDLAND The present era of translation is an era characterized by a wide variety of descriptive and explanatory studies of translation processes and products and, accordingly, by a wide variety of approaches to translation. This era contrasts considerably with the preceding one in which Eugene Nida played such a key role in promoting a particular approach to translation. In the first part of this chapter, we briefly indicate some of Nida’s insights concerning translation and problematic aspects of his presentation in one work of great influence on Bible translators. We then indicate the broad scope of contemporary studies in translation, and look at some of the discussions concerning the translation of literary texts, an area receiving relatively little attention in the era of dynamic equivalence, but of increasing interest to Bible translators.

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1.1 The dynamic equivalent approach to translation and its institutionalization Nida’s (1964) Toward a Science of Translating has been described as being, in its time, the “‘Bible’ not just for Bible translation but for translation theory in general” (Gentzler 1993:44). Five years later, he co-authored with Taber (1969) The Theory and Practice of Translation (TAPOT). This “logical outgrowth of the previous book” (1969:vii) would in turn become the key reference point for Bible translators. His later works would be viewed by many, including Nida himself (de Waard and Nida 1986:vii-vii), as basically confirming TAPOT’s translation approach and communication model. It is on this work that we concentrate because of its continuing influence on many involved in Bible translation and because of the prominence given to it in discussions of Bible translation. In their introductory chapter ‘A new concept of translating’, Nida and Taber (1969:3-9) identified ‘new attitudes’ concerning the receptor and source languages of Bible translations: • Each language has its own genius. • To communicate effectively one must respect the genius of each language. • Anything that can be said in one language can be said in another, unless the form is an essential element of the message.

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• To preserve the content of the message the form must be changed. • The languages of the Bible are subject to the same limitations as any other natural language. • The writers of the biblical books expected to be understood. • The translator must attempt to reproduce the meaning of a passage as understood by the writer. These ‘new attitudes’ would, Nida and Taber assumed, lead to working towards a translation ‘dynamically equivalent’ to the original: a translation in which the message of the original text has been transported into the receptor language in such a way that the RESPONSE of the RECEPTOR is essentially that of the original receptors. Frequently, the form of the original text is changed; but as long as the change follows the rules of back transformation in the source language, of contextual consistency in the transfer, and of transformation in the receptor language, the message is preserved and the translation is faithful. (ibid:200; their emphasis) This was opposed to a formally correspondent translation in which: the features of the form of the source text have been mechanically reproduced in the receptor language. Typically, formal correspondence distorts the grammatical and stylistic patterns of the receptor language, and hence distorts the message, so as to cause the receptor to misunderstand or to labour unduly hard. (ibid:201)

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They depicted the process of producing a dynamically equivalent translation as involving three stages: • 1) analysis, in which the surface structure (i.e., the message as given in language A) is analysed in terms of (a) the grammatical relationships and (b) the meanings of the words and combinations of words, • 2) transfer, in which the analysed material is transferred in the mind of the translator from language A to language B, and • 3) restructuring, in which the transferred material is restructured in order to make the final message fully acceptable in the receptor language. (ibid:33, our italics) The analysis stage, they said, was composed of three major steps: • 1) determining the meaningful relationships between words and combinations of words, • 2) [determining] the referential meaning of the words and special combinations of words (the idioms), and • 3) [determining] the connotative meaning, i.e. how the users of the language react, whether positively or negatively, to the words and combinations of them. (ibid:34) TAPOT was considered to provide the theory behind popular translations of the New Testament into Spanish and English published in the 1960’s. The Versión Popular and Today’s English Version would be followed by the French New Testament en français courant and the German Die Gute Nachricht. These publications, eventually including the

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translation of the Hebrew Scriptures and the Apocryphal books, became increasingly viewed by many not only as incarnations of the theory of dynamic equivalence translation as expounded in TAPOT but as models for imitation everywhere. Fundamental support for this approach was provided through those whose scholarly contributions in their primary fields of research enhanced the academic respect for their work on translation and whose communicational skills facilitated practical application: anthropologists and linguists such as Wonderly, Smalley, Reyburn and Loewen; biblical scholars such as Bratcher, Margot, Newman and de Waard. The validity of the dynamic-equivalence approach was generally assumed or supported in the publications of the United Bible Societies (UBS) produced during that time period: The Bible Translator, a journal founded in 1949 to provide a forum for discussing Bible translation theory and practice; a series of monographs on Bible translation; and the Handbook series, which attempted to guide translators’ application of the dynamic-equivalence approach to the wide range of problems encountered in translating the Bible into languages throughout the world. The Summer Institute of Linguistics (SIL), with which Nida had worked before becoming translation secretary for the American Bible Society, would develop its own literature on translation highly similar in perspective to TAPOT but more developed at the pedagogical level: for example, Beekman and Callow (1974), Barnwell (1975) and Larson (1984). For both SIL and UBS, a missiological agenda was crucially linked to their translation approach, although there was also a keen concern that church people be able to understand biblical texts clearly: 25

The Scriptures must be intelligible to non-Christians, and if they are, they will also be intelligible to Christians. Not only is this principle important in making the translation of the Bible effective as an instrument of evangelism, but it is also necessary if the language of the church is to be kept from becoming an esoteric dialect … (Nida and Taber 1969:31-32) [Translating the Word of God] has been written out of the conviction that an accurate and intelligible version of the Scriptures is essential both to the evangelisation of the lost, and to the building up of strong communities of believers. (Beekman and Callow 1974:13)

1.2 Evaluation of the approach to translation

TAPOT

TAPOT was written with the goal behind all of Nida’s work: “the effective communication of the Good News about Jesus Christ across all kinds of cultural and linguistic barriers” (North 1974:xi). Robinson (1991) calls Nida’s work towards this goal ‘subversive’, in the sense that he set out to dethrone the popularity of Bible versions which made little sense to the ordinary person: One of the best-publicized recent subversions of the KJV/ RSV hegemony was Today’s English Version in the mid-sixties – best publicized because one of its prime movers was the prolific and persuasive Eugene Nida … the foremost theorist of sense-for-sense and response-for-response Bible translation in our day. It may seem strange to call ‘subversive’ a man who upholds the Bible translation principles of Jerome and Luther – but in fact he is as 26

subversive as Jerome and Luther, who similarly burst upon a scene dominated by rigidly fixed expectations and smashed them. (ibid:225) Robinson notes that these fixed expectations and the conviction of some that there is one and only one correct Bible translation or version which “they read, or were read to out of, in their childhood” (ibid) tend to become a “nostalgic locus of emotional stability and security”. Thus, according to Robinson, part of Nida’s subversion was waking up tranquillised audiences: Obviously if the translator wants to reach his or her … reader, to be the instrument not of anaesthesia but of conversion, a vehicle not of spiritual death but of awakening, rebirth, new life, there has to be something striking in the translation, something to catch the reader’s attention – which is to say, something subversive. To convert, one must subvert. This is obviously true if one is speaking to nonbelievers; but it is also true if one is speaking to believers who are staid in their ways. Wake up, you Pharisees! (ibid:226) Robinson concludes by correctly noting that Nida “directs the Bible Society’s subversion … at the average Bible reader, the ordinary reader, the fourth-grade reader for whom newspapers are written” (ibid). His subversive act consisted in opening the word to new audiences, as well as to some in the old and familiar audience, in empowering new groups to have direct access to the Scriptures without mediation from the religious elite, the clergy, theologians or the biblical scholar. Ironically, in the course of time fixed expectations and convictions were built up around the so-called common 27

language translations. These new translations exemplified by the TEV created a new orthodoxy and standard, to be imitated and reproduced everywhere. This was however counter to the subversive spirit set in motion by the Nida revolution, if we can call it that. An obvious limitation of the TAPOT presentation, reflective of the era in which it was produced, is its focus on sentence-level-and-below linguistics. Nida and Taber of course recognized this limitation and indicated the importance of the study of ‘discourse structure’ (1969:152ff), an area in which Grimes (for example, 1975) and Longacre (for example, 1983) would do ground-breaking studies, greatly influencing Bible translators and researchers. Chapters 4 and 6 in our book indicate other aspects of above-the-sentence concerns that would receive increasing attention in various academic fields and in a variety of related publications on Bible translation, in the years following the publication of TAPOT. But it was not just the scope of linguistics at the time that was problematic: even more so was the focus on the discipline of linguistics itself, which seemed to identify translation with – limit it to – the following of linguistic procedures. As pointed out by Holmes, among others, this was fairly typical of writings on translation in that era. Many contemporary translation theorists would agree with Holmes’ assessment that this was “in large part simplistic and naïve, at least when applied to highly complex entities of the kind that ‘literary texts’ tend to be” (1994:81), and that the focus “turned out to be a dead end” (ibid:94). Again, an overview of Nida’s work indicates that he was certainly not locked into a ‘linguistic approach’ to translation. His focus on linguistics in TAPOT 28

was complemented by many other writings espousing a multi-disciplinary approach to translation, a perspective fully embraced and vigorously defended and promoted within the emerging field of translation studies, discussed in the following section. Another limitation of TAPOT was its portrayal of translation in terms of the dichotomy of formal correspondence versus dynamic equivalence. This was in the tradition of what Robinson (1997:1) refers to as “the ancient division between ‘word-for-word’ and ‘sense-for-sense’ translation”; the approach advocated by Nida was in the tradition of Cicero, Horace, Augustine, Jerome and Luther, among many others. But this division “has grown enormously complicated”: Nowadays it covers radically different ground as Juliane House’s … distinctions between ‘overt’ and ‘covert’ translation, between drawing attention to the fact that a given text is a translation and pretending that it was originally written in the target language; and Lawrence Venuti’s … distinction, drawn from the German Romantics, between ‘foreignizing’ and ‘domesticating’ translation … Linguistic and literary approaches to translation have likewise grown complex, as linguists and literary critics both become interested in social power and belief systems … as linguists become psycholinguists, studying translation processes through ‘think-aloud protocols’, and literary critics become hermeneuticists, studying translation processes through the complex philosophical theories of, say, Walter Benjamin … Martin Heidegger … or Jacques Derrida … (ibid) Other distinctions could be noted, such as: literal/idiomatic (Beekman 29

and Callow 1974), semantic/communicative (Newmark 1981), form-based/meaning-based (as in Larson 1984), documentary/instrumental (Nord 1997), direct/indirect (Gutt 2000), observational/participative (Pym 1992), archaizing/ modernizing, and linguistic/literary. Such distinctions suggest that various Bible translation situations can be analysed in a wide variety of ways and be considerably more complex than the formal-dynamic dichotomy might suggest. The TAPOT approach to translation was based upon a communication model developed in Nida’s Message and Mission (1960), a sophisticated discussion of the complexities of cross-cultural communication. The model assumed, or at least could be understood to assume, what Reddy (1979:209) identified as the fallacy of the conduit metaphor: • 1) Language functions like a conduit, transferring thoughts bodily from one person to another; • 2) in writing and speaking, people insert their thoughts or feelings in the words; • 3) words accomplish the transfer by containing the thoughts or feelings and conveying them to others, and • 4) in listening and reading, people extract the thoughts and feelings once again from the words. Johnson (1987:59) expressed the notion this way: 1. Ideas or thoughts are objects. 2. Words and sentences are containers for these objects. 3. Communication consists in finding the right word-container for your idea-object, sending this filled container along a conduit or through space to 30

the hearer, who must then take the idea-object out of the word-container. Nida and Taber’s definition of translation, which, as Fawcett (1997: 56) observed, might be better described as a declaration or manifesto, encouraged viewing communication in terms of the conduit metaphor: “Translating consists in reproducing in the receptor language the closest natural equivalent of the source-language message, first in terms of meaning and secondly in terms of style” (Nida and Taber 1969:12). The definition assumes among other things that we have access to the pure, objective meaning of the source language text for which there is the closest natural equivalent in another language. What Frawley (1987:136) said of the conduit metaphor could be applied to this understanding of translation: The conduit metaphor creates the illusion of objectivity … It reifies meaning and gives it some kind of privileged, free-floating status, thereby allowing all linguistic exchanges to have equal participants. It equalizes exchange because the crux of the exchange is taken out of the participants and cast in terms of universal accessibility … The conduit metaphor reduces language to some sort of effortless gathering of objectified meaning by people who are ultimately all the same. As is generally recognized by translation theorists today, the reading, interpretation and translation of texts are influenced by presuppositions and assumptions, prejudices and biases, value systems and belief systems, textual traditions and practices, world views, ideology and interests. Readers have no access to the pure original, or to the pure thought of the 31

original author. They interpret texts through the lens of language, their experience, language, belief system, circumstances, interests, needs, and agendas. Thus, Translation is … a rewriting of an original text. All rewritings, whatever their intention, reflect a certain ideology and a poetics and as such manipulate literature to function in a given society in a given way. Rewriting is manipulation, undertaken in the service of power, and in its positive aspect can help in the evolution of a literature and a society. Rewritings can introduce new concepts, new genres, new devices, and the history of translation is the history also of literary innovation, of the shaping power of one culture upon another. But rewriting can also repress innovation, distort and contain … (Bassnett, in Gentzler 1993:ix). Similarly, Venuti (1995:17-18) writes: … a foreign text is the site of many different semantic possibilities that are fixed only provisionally in any one translation, on the basis of varying cultural assumptions and interpretive choices, in specific social situations, in different historical periods. Meaning is a plural and contingent relation, not an unchanging unified essence, and therefore a translation cannot be judged according to mathematics-based concepts of semantic equivalence or one-to-one correspondence … Canons of accuracy in translation, notions of ‘fidelity’ and ‘freedom’ are historically determined categories … The viability of a translation is established by its relationship to the cultural and social conditions under which it is produced and read.

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As Alvarez and Vidal (1996:6) point out, there are other constraints on the translator that affect not just how they interpret the text but how they represent it: Translators are constrained in many ways: by their own ideology; by their feelings of superiority or inferiority towards the language in which they are writing the text being translated; by the prevailing poetical rules at that time; by the very language in which the texts they are translating is written; by what the dominant institutions and ideology expect of them; by the public for whom the translation is intended. The translation itself will depend upon all these factors. The final problem of TAPOT to be mentioned here is its use of the term ‘dynamic equivalence’. A number of interpreters and readers understood it as emphasizing the psychological impact of a translation and diminishing the importance of fidelity to the source text. Clearly the notions of impact and fidelity need not be mutually exclusive and Nida clearly wanted both. De Waard and Nida (1986) replaced the label ‘dynamic equivalence’ with ‘functional equivalence’, saying that “the substitution … is not designed to suggest anything essentially different” (ibid:vii-viii). This claim, coupled with de Waard and Nida’s resistance to directly addressing the shortcomings of TAPOT,1 muddied the waters considerably. Even today one frequently sees the label ‘dynamic/functional equivalence’, although many contemporary writers supporting a functional equivalence approach to translation would accept neither the communication model, the understanding of linguistics, nor the prescriptivism of the TAPOT characterization of dynamic equivalence.

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Reflection on translation theory, approaches and practice did not of course come to a standstill among Bible translators after the publication of TAPOT. The work by de Waard and Nida, mentioned in the preceding paragraph, attempted to move discussion forward, giving particular attention to the importance of semiotics, an area to which, for example, Hodgson (1999) would return (for further discussion, see section 2.1.2.2). Bible translators would also apply insights from and contribute to the fields of: textlinguistics (e.g. Longacre 1983, Wendland 1994, de Regt 1999), sociolinguistics and cultural studies (e.g. Louw 1986, Wendland 1987, Stine and Wendland 1990; van der Jagt forthcoming), literary and rhetorical studies (e.g. de Regt et al. 1996, Zogbo and Wendland 2000), new media (e.g. Hodgson and Soukup 1997), and cognitive studies (e.g. Gutt 1991). We shall now consider the field of translation studies, flourishing in increasing numbers of universities, in contrast to the era in which Nida did most of his work – “the fifties, the sixties and the seventies, [when] academic studies in translation and interpreting had to struggle for legitimacy” (Neubert and Shreve 1992:vii). Nida may be considered a trail-blazer for this discipline, in view of his intellectual rigour, his work in a wide variety of cultures, and his multidisciplinary approach to translation. But the trail has become a highway, and Bible translators have much to learn from others travelling on it.

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1.3 The emergence of translation studies as an autonomous discipline The designation ‘translation studies’ is of recent origin. Hermans (1999:30) identifies the ‘declaration of independence’ for this field as being James Holmes’ paper ‘The Name and Nature of Translation Studies’, originally presented at a conference in Copenhagen in August 1972 (included in Holmes 1994:66-80). Holmes chose this label for the field over those such as ‘science of translating’ (e.g. Nida 1964), ‘science of translation’ (e.g. Wilss 1982), or ‘translatology’ (e.g. Goffin, cited in Holmes 1994:69) since he did not consider translation to be a science. He settled on ‘translation studies’ since the term ‘studies’ is commonly used in English for the naming of new disciplines: “One need only think of Russian studies, American studies, Commonwealth studies, population studies, communication studies” (ibid:70). Holmes quotes Koller to indicate the comprehensive scope of the field of inquiry: “Translation studies is to be understood as a collective and inclusive designation for all research activities taking the phenomena of translating and translation as their basis or focus” (ibid:71). Translation studies can refer to: the academic discipline concerned with the study of translation at large, including literary and non-literary translation, various forms of oral interpreting, as well as dubbing and subtitling. [It is] also understood to cover the whole spectrum of research and pedagogical activities, from developing theoretical frameworks to conducting individual 35

case studies to engaging in practical matters such as training translators and developing criteria for translation assessment. (Baker 1998:277) An obvious correlate of the “attempt to consolidate all of the various approaches to translation into the field of translation studies” is the “shrinking role of linguistics as the intellectual basis for translation studies” (Neubert and Shreve 1992:9). This ‘interdiscipline’, to use the term in Snell-Hornby et al.’s (1994) title, draws from a whole range of disciplines: In the 1970s, and particularly during the 1980s, translation scholars began to draw more heavily on theoretical frameworks and methodologies borrowed from other disciplines, including psychology, communication theory, literary theory, anthropology, philosophy, and more recently, cultural studies … The study of translation has gone far beyond the confines of any one discipline and it has become clear that research requirements in this area cannot be catered for by any existing field of study. (Baker 1998:279) Holmes (1994:71) identified the two main goals of translation studies as: • 1) to describe the phenomena of translating and translation(s) as they manifest themselves in the world of our experience, and • 2) to establish general principles by means of which these phenomena can be explained and predicted. Holmes provided a map of the discipline, which he understood to be an empirical one. Below, in outline form, is Holmes’s understanding of the scope of translation studies,

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with extensive quotes from his paper (ibid:71-77) to describe the various components. • 1) Pure translation studies • a) Descriptive translation studies: the branch of the discipline which constantly maintains the closest contact with the empirical phenomena under study. • i) Product-oriented: text focused and concerned with describing existing translations. • ii) Function-oriented: studying the function of translations in the recipient sociocultural situation. • iii)Process-oriented: systematic investigation of what takes place in the translator’s mind as he creates a new, more or less matching text in another language. • b) Theoretical translation studies (or Translation theory): uses the results of descriptive translation studies, in combination with the information available from related fields and disciplines, to evolve principles, theories, and models which will serve to explain and predict what translating and translations are and will be. • i) General: a full, inclusive theory accommodating so many elements that it can serve to explain and predict all phenomena falling within the terrain of translating and translation, to the exclusion of all 37

phenomena falling outside it. It is not clear whether this is achievable. • ii) Partial: • (1) Medium-restricted translation theories: based on whether they are machine or human, written or oral, etc… • (2) Area-restricted theories: based on the languages or language groups involved or the cultures involved. • (3) Rank-restricted theories: deal with discourses or texts as wholes, but concern themselves with lower linguistic ranks or levels. • (4) Text-type restricted theories: deal with specific types or genres of texts (e.g. literary or non-literary texts, Bible translation, etc.). • (5) Time-restricted theories: concerning translations done within a particular time period relative to the text being translated. • (6) Problem-restricted theories: concerning particular problems such as the limits of variance or invariance in translation, the nature of translation 38

matching, or the translation of metaphors or proper names. • 2 )Applied translation studies • a) Translator training: teaching methods, testing techniques and curriculum planning. For the time being, at least, the major area of research in applied translation studies. • b) Translation aids: e.g. dictionaries, grammars. • c) Translation policy: dealing with decisions on what works need to be translated in a given sociocultural situation, what the social and economic position of the translator should be, the place of translation in the teaching and learning of other languages, etc. • d) Translation criticism: includes questions of translation interpretation and evaluation. At the end of his proposals, Holmes notes that descriptive, theoretical and applied translation studies are inextricably linked, not in a unidirectional way but in a dialectical manner. He concludes that the discipline of translation studies itself as well as the various areas outlined within the discipline, including histories of developments in these areas, will need to be studied. Hatim (2001), Munday (2001) and Venuti (2000) are highly recommended for their provision of more detailed and comprehensive overviews of translation studies.

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1.4 Some contemporary translation approaches2 This section briefly indicates some of the contemporary approaches to translation with which students of Bible translation should be familiar. We focus on issues related to the translation of the Bible as literature. This area, often neglected in works written from a dynamic-equivalence perspective, is of increasing interest to Bible translators and it is the focus of chapter six in this book. We do not attempt to offer an in-depth, critical analysis of the various approaches mentioned, but, rather, to suggest a starting point for the exploration of how contemporary theorists, especially those dealing with secular literature, can help us better understand the age-old task of Bible translation.

1.4.1 Functionalist approach A ‘functional’ approach to translation has long been promoted as a prominent aspect of the Skopostheorie school of translation that was pioneered by Katharina Reiss and Hans Vermeer in the early 1980s and has been further developed in the writings of Nord (e.g. 1997). These writers stress the function (normally referred to only in the singular) that a particular translation is designed to perform for its primary target audience: Each text is produced for a given purpose and should serve this purpose. The Skopos rule thus reads as follows: translate/ interpret/speak/write

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in a way that enables your text/translation to function in the situation in which it is used and with the people who want to use it and precisely in the way they want it to function. (Vermeer, cited in translation by Nord 1997:29) There is a notable difference in focus between this perspective and that of functional equivalence. The goal of the latter has been stated as “to employ a functionally equivalent set of forms which in so far as possible will match the meaning of the original source-language text” (de Waard and Nida 1986:36); the communication functions of the source-language text are presumed to be pre-eminent and determinative. Skopostheorie, in contrast, underlines the importance of the translation’s function within the target-language setting for determining the manner and style of translation. The goals of a translation are determined within the governing framework for the translation project as a whole: the translation ‘brief’ explicitly sets forth “information about the intended target-text function(s), the target text addressee(s), the medium over which it will be transmitted, the prospective place and time and, if necessary, motive of production or reception of the text” (Nord 1997:137). With regard to literary translation, Nord recognizes the importance of stylistic aspects of literary works but focuses on the ‘fundamental importance’ of “the sender’s intention and the receiver’s expectations … for the function and effect of texts” and argues that these intentions and expectations are culture-bound (ibid:82-83). Nord indicates that equivalence, ‘a normative concept’, might be the ideal of translation but that there are four “requirements that must be fulfilled if the

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translator is to succeed in establishing equivalence between the source and the target text” (ibid:89-90): 1. The translator’s interpretation should be identical with the sender’s intention. 2. The translator should verbalize the sender’s intention in such a way that the target text is able to achieve the same function in the target culture as that which the source text achieved in the source culture. 3. The target receiver should understand the text world of the translation in the same way as the source receivers understood the text world of the original. 4. The effect the translation has on its readers should be the same as the one the source text has or had on its readers. These requirements, which sound like they could have been taken from a text on dynamic equivalence, are, Nord says, “rather like a request to square the circle” (ibid:91). Appreciation and understanding of literature depends on shared background knowledge, cultural assumptions and literary traditions; gulfs between source and target communities in these respects prohibit equivalent representations of intentions and expectations. Even where there is a large degree of overlap between source and target cultures and literary standards, ‘cultural false friends’ prohibit achieving equivalence, Nord says (ibid). She gives three possibilities for dealing with this translation problem (ibid): 1. … give up literary translation because it is impossible; 2. … carry on translating as we have done up to now, following our intuition and calling the result an

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equivalent text, leaving the effect of the target text to the goodwill of its readers and literary critics; 3. … allow translators to justify their decisions in order to make others (translators, readers, publishers) understand what was done and why. Nord believes that a functionalist approach encourages the third solution and makes four ‘skopos suggestions’, concerning interpretation, text function, cultural distance and text effect (ibid:92-93): 1. The translator interprets the source text not only with regard to the sender’s intention but also with regard to its compatibility with the target situation. 2. The target text should be composed in such a way that it fulfils functions in the target situation that are compatible with the sender’s intention. 3. The text world of the translation should be selected according to the intended target-text function. 4. The code elements should be selected in such a way that the target-text effect corresponds to the intended target-text function. De Vries (2001) uses the insights of skopos theory to discuss Bible translations in New Guinea and the Netherlands. He observes that the primary function of many initial translations in New Guinea is a missionary one, but that within a few generations the communities for which these initial translations were produced will have access to a variety of Bible translations in the three national languages of New Guinea. When this occurs, “some sort of functional specialization will take place. A new vernacular version will have to define its function in

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relation to the other versions used by the community” (ibid:306). The situation will thus become more like that in the Netherlands where there is a tendency to use different versions for different communicative functions. These observations lead to the following programmatic statement: A major challenge for [producers of Bible translations is] to develop a theoretical framework within which … functional profiles of Bible translations can be defined and compared both within one language community and across language communities, and within which methods are developed to link forms and functions of Bible translations in a systematic fashion. Appendix F of this book is a small step in this direction, suggesting some of the factors that would need to be considered within the framework proposed by de Vries. Nord tackles the troublesome issue of authorial intention (the so-called intentional fallacy) that often arises in criticism of a functionalist approach with regard to interpretation as well as translation. As a nice alternative to the term ‘fidelity’, generally used in discussions of Bible translation, Nord speaks of ‘loyalty’ to a text, which “means that the target-text purpose should be compatible with the original author’s intentions” (1997:125; our emphasis). This is a more defensible position than the non-demonstrable criterion of being the ‘same as’ what the original author intended. But how can even this less rigorous objective be accomplished when we have no direct access either to the author or his times? Nord identifies a variety of indicators, for example: the broad “conventional intentions linked with certain text types” and genres; an analysis of extratextual factors pertaining to 44

the original communicative setting that may be derived from intertextual and socio-historical studies, and “a thorough analysis of intratextual function markers…to find out about the communicative intentions that may have guided the author” (ibid:125-126). Included in this last group would be studies that explore the structural arrangement and rhetorical argumentation of the original text, such as indicated in chapter 6 of our book. A specification of the primary functions of the source-language text is important, but it is only part of the task that confronts translators. The other half is to determine which of these communicative intentions are to be conveyed in the target language – and how this is to be done, that is, by means of which literary devices and rhetorical strategies among those available in the language. This is probably an even greater challenge, first of all, because it is in fact impossible to convey the full semantic and pragmatic value of the original text via any translation, and secondly, because a choice must be made – that is, which aspects of the text the translators will at least attempt to convey in the target language and which elements they admit will probably be lost in translation. Issues such as these will have to be determined by the project prospectus (Brief) and purpose (Skopos) according to which the translation is to be monitored and ultimately evaluated.

1.4.2 Descriptive approach ‘Descriptive translation studies’ (DTS) developed in the early 1970s more or less in opposition to what its originators viewed as the prevailing ‘prescriptive’ approach to

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translation. They thus reject “the idea that the study of translation should be geared primarily to formulating rules, norms or guidelines for the practice or evaluation of translation or to developing didactic instruments for translator training” (Hermans 1999:7). DTS theorists attempt to be ‘diagnostic rather than hortatory’ in their treatment with respect to two major objectives, namely, “to describe the relevant phenomena [that are manifested during the translation of texts], and establish general principles to explain and predict their occurrence” (ibid:29). They are ‘product’, rather than ‘process’, oriented in their perspective (Gaddis-Rose 1997:9). Accordingly, the focus is upon ‘pure’ research, which has a threefold emphasis – description, explanation, and prediction of all sorts of translation-related phenomena, including the activity itself. A major aim is to describe how translations actually function in the wider context of society and more narrowly within a certain literary system. A programmatic summary of the general DTS approach is offered by T. Hermans (1999:32): What they [DTS theorists] have in common is, briefly, a view of literature as a complex and dynamic system; a conviction that there should be a continual interplay between theoretical models and practical case studies; an approach to literary translation which is descriptive, target-oriented, functional and systemic; and an interest in the norms and constraints that govern the production and reception of translations, in the relation between translation and other types of text processing, and in the place and role of translations both within a given literature and in the interaction between literatures. 46

One prominent representative statement of a DTS approach to literary translation is found in the work of Gideon Toury. Toury first notes the fundamental ambiguity that is presented by the term ‘literary translation’, namely, one of perspective: the translation of a text that is “regarded as literary in the source culture” as distinct from a target-language product that is “acceptable as literary to the recipient culture” (1995:168; original emphasis). In the case of the former scenario, the translated product may not be regarded as literary in the target-language culture; in the latter instance, any source-language text, literary or not, is transformed into a ‘literary’ product in the target language. The approach discussed in chapter 6 attempts to combine both perspectives: a literary, source-language text (Scripture) is rendered in a distinctively ‘literary’ manner in the target language. Toury stresses the importance of cultural perceptions with regard to literature and a literary translation: Literature is first and foremost a cultural institution. Thus, in every culture (including different phases in the evolution of one culture), certain features, models, techniques (including modes of translation!), and – by extension – texts utilizing them, are regarded as, rather than are literary, in any ‘essentialistic’ sense. (ibid:170, original emphasis) Thus, Toury claims, a literary translation will be expected to conform to “models and norms which are deemed literary at the target end”. This may result in more or less well-formed texts from the point of view of the literary requirements of the recipient culture, at various possible costs in terms of the reconstruction of features of the source text:

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Subjugation to target literary models and norms may thus involve the suppression of some of the source-text’s features, on occasion even those which marked it as ‘literary’, or as a proper representative of a specific literary model in the first place … It may also entail the reshuffling of certain features, not to mention the addition of new ones in an attempt to enhance the acceptability of the translation as a target literary text, or even as a target literary text of a particular type … The added features may occupy central positions within the translation (when looked upon as a text in its own right), even serving as markers of its own literariness, despite their having no basis in the original. (ibid:171, original emphasis) Descriptive Translation Studies literature has performed a valuable service by calling attention to the importance of explicit as well as implicit social conventions and norms in translation practice (e.g. Hermans 1999:ch.6; cf. Nord 1997:53-59). For example, ‘product norms’ embody “the expectations of readers of a translation (of a given type) concerning what a translation (of this type) should be like” (Chesterman 1997:64). ‘Process norms’, on the other hand, operate to regulate the actual work of translation, in terms of accountability to the original author’s intentions, a sufficient degree of intertextual similarity, and overall communication effectiveness, for example (ibid:67-70; Hermans 1999:78). Such popularly recognized ideals and standards serve to guide translators in their work as they interact with their own culture and community, not only with respect to informational clarity, but also in terms of excellence and acceptability. The latter concerns would be especially important of course where a literary-type translation is being either undertaken or evaluated. 48

1.4.3 Text-linguistic approach Two volumes by Hatim and Mason (1990, 1997) provide both a theoretical framework and a methodology for applying insights from text linguistics to translation. Although Hatim and Mason do not give as much attention to literary translation as one might wish, their discussion is frequently relevant to this concern. For example, they call attention to the difficulties that translators face when dealing with texts that are stylistically more ‘dynamic’ or ‘turbulent’ in nature, as is characteristic of many biblical texts. Dynamic discourse consists of a relatively high incidence of novel or unexpected and unpredictable, rhetorically ‘marked’ forms, of “the use of language that essentially involves a motivated deviation from some norm” (1997:216). The notion of ‘markedness’ in literature can be defined from two interrelated perspectives – that is, in terms of frequency or focus. The less frequently appearing phonological, lexical, syntactic, or textual forms are of more ‘marked’ significance to the message being conveyed; they are less predictable or normal, hence more ‘informative’ in their co-text of occurrence (cf. 1997:12). Such expressions may also manifest a less usual distribution within a given text, thereby often creating special discourse patterns or arrangements of elements. Hatim and Mason point out that marked linguistic structures are more often used in ‘argumentative’ or ‘evaluative’ texts – and, it could be added, literary texts – than they are in expository texts, which generally have an impersonal style that is more stable, usual, predictable. They offer this rule of

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thumb: “The less evaluative the text is, the less need there will be for its structure to be modified in translation. Conversely, the more evaluative the text is, the more scope there may be for modification” (1990:187). Similarly, literary translation may involve considerably more structural modifications as translators attempt to creatively exploit the stylistic and expressive resources of the target language. Hatim and Mason (ibid:188) also generalize about the degree to which structural modification may be necessary in terms of a basic cultural factor: “The less culture-bound a text is, the less need there will be for its structure to be modified. Conversely, the more culture-bound a text is, the more scope there may be for modification”. As Bible translators attempt to deal with the various ‘culture-bound’ genres and sub-types of ancient Hebrew and Greek Scriptures, a considerable amount of innovative ‘modification’ may be appropriate for communicating in another linguistic and ethnic setting their artistic beauty, depth of connotative feeling, and/or rhetorical impact. But at the same time translators are generally expected to represent as accurately as possible the content of the original texts and to preserve a verbal decorum in keeping with the primary setting foreseen for the translation’s use.

1.4.4 Relevance Theory approach Gutt’s (especially, 1991/2000) ground-breaking work has done much to show how the theory developed in Sperber and Wilson’s (1986) influential Relevance: Communication and Cognition can inform our understanding of Bible translation. The foundation of this cognitive approach to communication may be summarized as follows:

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The central claim of relevance theory is that human communication crucially creates an expectation of optimal relevance, that is, an expectation on the part of the hearer that his attempt at interpretation will yield adequate contextual effects at minimal processing cost. (Gutt 1991:20, original italics) Behind the technical expressions is a rather common-sense principle: speakers are generally expected to convey what they have to say in a way that is easiest for their hearers to understand (minimal processing effort), in order to achieve the desired communicative information, impact and appeal (adequate cognitive/emotive/volitional effects). A key question for translators, for which the response is more often assumed than researched, is: how much are most members of the target audience willing to pay, in terms of processing effort, in order to arrive at an interpretation of a translated text similar to what the translator would hope for? Two extremes are evident in Bible translation: the one is represented by a translation such as the Contemporary English Version which assumes that readers will want to pay the lowest possible price and a raise in cognitive costs will correlate with a drop of interest in the book. On the other extreme are the translators such as those referred to in a ‘literalist approach’ (see section 1.4.6): the potential audience is assumed to be wealthy, in terms of their time, study resources, etc., and ready to pay a high price to work through the texts. In his study of poetic effects in literature, Pilkington’s (2000:100-102) comment on metaphor may be extended to

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other aspects of literature – and of literary translations of literature: In the case of creative metaphors … the new concept is not derived from a subset of the properties of an existing concept, but it is constructed on the basis of an interaction between assumptions derived from two or more encyclopedic entries … the connection between which is neither well-established nor easy to achieve … A greater amount of processing effort is required: but the rewards in terms of contextual effects are correspondingly higher …. (our emphasis) Another key question in terms of relevance theory’s central claim is: how does motivation, and the ability to influence motivation, relate to ‘yielding adequate contextual effects’? Also, what are the measures for evaluating ‘adequacy’ in this respect? It seems that simply having an in-print representation of sacred text can yield adequate contextual effects for some, perhaps many: the ease of processing what’s within the covers of the publication is not nearly as important as knowing that those covers enclose sacred text, text that the preacher will adequately explain on Sundays. Others (audiences as well as translators) may view adequacy primarily in terms of basic information, with little concern for style. Others may be looking for aesthetic adequacy and intellectual challenge.

1.4.5 Post-colonial approaches Post-colonial approaches to translation are primarily concerned with the links between translation and empire or translation and power, as well as the role of translations in the processes of cultural domination and subordination, 52

colonization and decolonization, indoctrination and control, and hybridization and creolization of cultures and languages. Post-colonial translation theory disputes the proposition that translation has to do mainly with the questions of textual equivalences, or the faithfulness of a target text to an original source text. On the contrary, an axiom of post-colonial approaches is that translation has much more to do with the ‘macropolitics’ of empire, and the promotion of the interests and well-being of empire. The periphery necessarily serves the interests of the imperial centre. Bassnett and Trivedi (1999:6) remind us that: The act of translation always involves more than language. Translations are always embedded in cultural and political systems, and in history. For too long translation was seen as purely an aesthetic act, and ideological problems were disregarded. Yet the strategies employed by translators reflect the context [of power interests and values] in which texts are produced. From this perspective, translation is viewed as ultimately a tool of empire. According to Robinson (1997:10), [The study of translation and empire, or even of translation as empire] was born in the mid-to-late 1980s out of the realization that translation has always been an indispensable channel of imperial conquest and occupation. Not only must the imperial conquerors find some effective way of communicating with their new subjects; they must develop new ways of subjecting them, converting them into docile or ‘cooperative’ subjects.

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Maria Tymoczko’s Translation in a Postcolonial Context (1999) is a recent text that exemplifies the power and influence of this sort of imperialistic tendency even within the corpus of western literature itself. For indications of the relevance of post-coloial perspectives to Bible translation, and for biblical studies done from this vantage point, see section 5.2.4.

1.4.6 Literalist approach Literalist approaches are of course part of an ancient tradition of translation. A distinguishing mark of the contemporary approaches might be their accent on language as spoken, both in its assumed original setting of communication and also in the corresponding contemporary context. As Fox said of his work: This translation is guided by the principle that the Hebrew Bible, like much of the literature of antiquity, was meant to be read aloud, and that consequently it must be translated with careful attention to rhythm and sound. The translation therefore tries to mimic the particular rhetoric of the Hebrew whenever possible, preserving such devices as repetition, allusion, alliteration, and wordplay. It is intended to echo the Hebrew, and to lead the reader back to the sound structure and form of the original. (1995:ix-x)3 “Translating with an ear to the sound and [discourse] structure” of the Hebrew text (ibid:xiii), Fox tends to be very source language oriented, and this frequently results in a noticeably ‘foreignized’ (see section 1.4.7) rendering in English – in effect more an instance of ‘translated literature’ than a ‘literary translation’ (Lefevre 1981:55). 54

To support his emphasis upon the orality-aurality of the original, Fox gives particular attention to three major translation techniques: setting the text out lineally in cola (basic utterance units) in lines that resemble free verse, transliterating and explaining Hebrew names within the translation itself, and a strict reproduction of key thematic words, no matter how awkward this may sound in English. He also highlights another trio of minor devices that serve to accent ‘the Bible’s spokenness’, namely, word-play, allusion, and repetition that is more restricted in scope to certain passages (ibid:xviii-xix). In this manner he seeks “to preserve not only the message of the text but also its open-endedness” (ibid:xx). His literal methodology hampers realization of the first goal, but he has surely succeeded with regard to the second. A certain ‘open-endedness’ of ambiguity is created due to the unnaturalness of the English that results from this approach to translation. While his efforts might help the dedicated student to better appreciate Hebrew literary devices, the translation seems far from literary in terms of contemporary English standards; it has been foreignized at times to the point of unintelligibility for all but those who are already familiar with the Hebrew original.

1.4.7 Foreignization versus domestication We mention this continuum here in view of its helpfulness in dealing with a tension that was often inadequately addressed, if addressed at all, in much literature from a dynamic equivalence or ‘meaning based’ perspective. This assumed that the more a translation made biblical writers and characters sound like they were expressing themselves in a

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manner appropriate to target-culture norms, the more successful the translation. The frequently cited work of Venuti has offered an important challenge to this assumption. Venuti (for example, 1995) points out that fluency in translation can involve not just a domesticating of language but also a domesticating of ideas that goes well beyond the issues of fidelity to historical and geographical situations that are often discussed in biblical literature: Every step in the translation process – from the selection of foreign texts to the implementation of translation strategies to the editing, reviewing, and reading of translations – is mediated by the diverse cultural values that circulate in the target language, always in some hierarchical order. The translator … may submit to or resist dominant values in the target language, with either course of action susceptible to ongoing redirection. Submission assumes an ideology of assimilation at work in the translation process, locating the same in the cultural other, pursuing a cultural narcissism that is imperialistic abroad and conservative, even reactionary, in maintaining canons at home. Resistance assumes an ideology of autonomy, locating the alien in a cultural other, pursuing cultural diversity, foregrounding the linguistic and cultural differences of the source language text and transforming the hierarchy of cultural values in the target language. Resistance too can be imperialistic abroad, appropriating foreign texts to serve its own cultural political interests at home; but insofar as it resists values that exclude certain texts, it performs an act of cultural restoration which aims to question and possibly re-form, or simply smash the idea of, domestic canons. (ibid:308-309)

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Translators’ domesticating or taming of the biblical text through assumption of organizational norms, values and notions, including reliance on traditional models of translation – or their unwitting foreignization of texts through reliance on translation models produced in sociocultural and political settings quite different than that of the target language – is an area worthy of much more attention than it has yet received. See section 2.1.2.3 for further discussion in this regard.

1.5 Conclusion There is no doubt that the emergence of translation studies as an autonomous discipline has helped to move us far beyond the understanding of translation as conceived for example in TAPOT. This multi-disciplinary field has not produced its Newton or Einstein with a widely accepted, overarching, global translation theory, and perhaps never will. In the current interdisciplinary environment within which translation studies thrive, it seems wisest to listen to the wide variety of voices on translation rather than attempt to argue for a particular theoretical stance on, or an exclusive approach to, Bible translation. In view of the great diversity of translation projects with regard to factors such as culture, language, gender, ethnicity, social status, educational level, age group, and ideological orientation, a prescriptive approach to translation is likely to frequently prove unfruitful. A variety of perspectives and tools can contribute to assessing Scripture needs and desires of diverse audiences and to helping producers of translations respond to these. As Nida and others have long pointed out, different types of translation are valid in view of different primary functions, or skopoi. Differing from previous writers on Bible translation, however, we can 57

no longer assume that one type of translation, such as that referred to as a common-language translation, is most likely to best serve most audiences in most situations.

Notes 1

In addition to the shortcomings mentioned above, see sections 2.1.2.2, 2.2.2, the footnote in section 2.1.1.2, and the conclusion to chapter 6. 2

This section uses abridged and revised material taken from Wendland (forthcoming). Our thanks to SIL for permission to use this material. 3

In this section, Everett Fox is taken as the primary illustration of a literalist approach. Other relatively recent examples of this sort of a source-language-centred endeavour are: Alter (1996) and, in French, Chouraqui (1985).

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2. Translation Communication

and

TIMOTHY WILT1 The importance of viewing translation as communication has been long recognized in Bible translation literature. It is a theme reiterated in a variety of contemporary writings on the translation of secular, as well as biblical, literature. This chapter presents a general framework for understanding communication, a framework that can be used to consider problems of the translation process and to structure the training of translators. We give special attention to: • the translator’s relationship to others involved in the production and use of Scriptures; • the communicative goals involved in producing a translation, including those of ritual; • the relationship between text, community and meaning; • the notions of frames and framing; and • the translation process within its organizational framework. Communication involves the goal-directed exchange of texts. The texts may be verbal or non-verbal, oral or written. They are shaped, perceived and interpreted in terms of the speakers’ and the hearers’ frames of reference, which may be 59

quite similar or widely differing. Viewing translation as an act of communication entails considering, among other matters, who the participants in the translation process are, their relationship to each other, the goals involved in producing and paying attention to a text, the frames of reference for formulating and interpreting the text, and the medium through which the text is communicated. Each of these aspects of the communication process are considered in this chapter and then a model for representing basic components and dynamics of communication is suggested. (In this chapter, we will for the sake of brevity often refer to the participants as ‘speakers’ and ‘hearers’ without, unless otherwise noted, intending to restrict the relevance of the discussion to oral discourse.)

2.1 Participants, text and medium The most readily observable aspect of human communication is that it involves people with something in common.2 Just how much these participants have in common will influence how they communicate and the results. The minimal link between participants in a communicative event is a text, presented through a particular medium. We will consider some aspects of each of these elements and of their relevance to translation.

2.1.1 Participants The participants in a communication process differ in their relationships to each other and in their relationships to the text. Social, cultural, linguistic, organizational and political differences between participants in communication are discussed throughout this book. Here we focus on 60

participants’ different relationships to a text in mediated communication situations. Unmediated communication occurs in face-to-face interaction. Participation in the communicative event may range from fairly balanced dialogue, in which the participants jointly construct a text,3 to monologue, in which the speaker is the originator of the text and delivers it to the intended audience. In mediated communications, someone apart from the originator of the text is involved in enabling an audience to attend to it. Mediators may be acting primarily on behalf of the originator of the text, on behalf of the intended audience or on behalf of a third party. The mediators may be viewed as having varying degrees of rights and obligations with regard to their handling of the text. The audience that benefits from the mediation may be the one that the originator of the text primarily had in view, a secondary one more or less envisioned by the originator, or an audience unforeseen by the originator of the text. We list some of these mediating relationships with examples from biblical literature. • a messenger with no rights concerning the text and having the sole obligation of assuring that it is delivered to its intended audience; • The messengers appointed by the elders of Jabesh to carry news of a proposed treaty “throughout all the territory of Israel” (1 Sam 11.3ff); Uriah, carrying a letter from David to Joab, (2 Sam 11.14-15) …

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• a spokesperson, delegated by the source of a text to communicate it to others, but also able to explain the text to the intended audience; • Appointed by God: Moses, prophets, angels … In prophetic literature, it is often unclear where an oracle of YHWH ends and where the prophets, as God’s spokespersons, begin to elaborate. Similarly, in John 3.12ff, it is not clear where Jesus’ speech breaks off and John’s elaboration on it begins. • Appointed by Christ: disciples, apostles … • Appointed by human authorities: the Assyrian King Sennacherib’s Rabshakeh (Isaiah 36); Judas and Silas (Acts 15.22ff) … • a representative of the addressee; • “Eliakim son of Hilkiah, who was in charge of the palace, and Shebna the secretary, and Joah son of Asaph, the recorder”, sent out on behalf of King Hezekiah to receive the message of the King of Assyria (Isaiah 36) … • one who overhears a text not intended for them; • Eavesdroppers: Rebekah, overhearing Isaac concerning the blessing of Esau (Gen 27.5ff); Paul’s nephew, hearing about the plot to kill Paul (Act 23.16) …

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• Spies: Hushai, on behalf of David, against Absalom (2 Samuel 15.31ff) … • a reporter commissioned by someone other than the source of the text to communicate it to an audience not in focus or unforeseen by the original source. • Luke portrays himself in this role in the prologue to his Gospel (1.1-4). The editors of biblical books could also be viewed as having this role. This would be most evident in books such as Psalms and Proverbs, where texts from a wide variety of speakers and eras are collected. Bible translators are often viewed by their intended audience as messengers with no rights concerning the text and obligated to say no more and no less than what the source text does. As indicated in section1.2, the conduit or transport model of communication tended to support this conception of the translator. However, translation studies are making it increasingly clear that translators are spokespersons, or at least reporters whose representation of the source text is accompanied by implicit sociocultural, political and theological commentary. For example, the one-to-one correspondence between personal masculine forms in the source text and translation is an implicit commentary that biblical notions of power-relationships between the sexes should continue to be respected in contemporary societies. Translating masculine forms as gender-inclusive forms is an implicit commentary that sociolinguistic norms of the source text are not universally applicable. The translated text is somewhat like the prophetic texts in this respect: it is difficult 63

to determine where ‘the word of the Lord’ ends and elaboration on this word begins.4 For whom is the Bible translator a spokesperson? Ultimately, let us hope, for God. But as God-breathed texts for humanity were mediated through a rich diversity of messengers and spokespersons, so too of course are the translations of those texts. A starting point for discussing Bible translation has often been in terms of a source text, the translator, and the translator’s audience. But the translation process does not start in the translator’s office. It starts in community. The community may be rather narrowly defined in terms of those supporting a contemporary translation project and those for whom the translation is intended, or it may be broadly defined in terms of the long history of those involved in communicating the Scriptures through translation since before the time of Christ.5 The translator, as well as the translator’s audience, hears the source text’s voices via and amidst the voices of a host of intermediaries. Many of these intermediary voices belong to the faith community: scribes, rabbis, priests, pastors, theologians, laity, family members, among others. But voices from outside the faith community also influence how the text is heard.6 Representatives of the faith community commission translators to speak the biblical text to a certain audience, of which the commissioners are often a part, giving guidelines as to how the text should be spoken, or reported. Figure 1 sketches this process. Representatives of an early faith community – composed of numerous and widely 64

differing sub-communities – have produced and maintained, in one form or another, a sacred text. Translators belonging to later faith sub-communities, in different life-situation contexts, perceive the text in one or more languages (Languagea) and interpret the text in terms of various resources available from various faith and academic communities. The arrow directed from the translators to the sacred text represents this active, interpretative process. In view of their interpretations – and their goals (section 2.3) – the translators decide how to represent the sacred text, using a different language (Language-a, a language, dialect, or style that differs from Languagea).

Figure 1: Some speakers and hearers of sacred texts

Figure 2: Speakers and hearers in the publication process 65

Figure 2 suggests how participants in a contemporary translation project might be portrayed. The arrows indicate lines of communication between the various participants and their relative thickness indicate the frequency of the interactions. The lines of communication of successful projects could be compared with those of less successful ones. This representation of a hypothetical project’s communication lines is certainly not to be taken as a proposed ideal.7 In the situation depicted by Figure 2, the translator is hearing more from representatives of the community than from the publisher’s representatives concerning translation approach. What the translator hears from community representatives can conflict considerably with what they hear from representatives of the publisher such as the translation consultant. It may be that the consultant could help the community better understand alternative approaches to translation, but their interactions would need to be greater than suggested by Figure 2. Other situations could be equally or more problematic. Translators might communicate about the translation more with the consultant than with members of the community. Colleagues have informed me that their diagram for some projects would have a very thin line, or none at all, between the translators and the community, with regard to the translation. Or the translators might often communicate with both the community and the consultant, but consistently reject community wishes in deference to those of the consultant. This deference might be due to the consultant’s academic status and to her or his representing the publisher and/or source of financial support.8

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Communication between the participants in the translation-publication process and with potential users of the product can be as crucial to the success of a project as translators’ understanding and representation of the texts to be translated: in a translation project, the voices of the contemporary community must be heard as well as those of the ancient texts.

2.1.2 Text In our discussion of communication, ‘text’ is preferred to ‘message’. ‘Message’ has been used in a variety of ways even in technical discussions of communication. It is used to refer to only the formal aspects of what is transmitted through a channel, to the form and the content of what is transmitted, the basic idea or theme intended by the senders of the text, or even the ‘total meaning or content of a discourse’.9 In Bible translation literature, ‘message’ is strongly associated with the limited conduit/transport model of communication discussed in section 1.2. ‘Text’ is the term preferred by, for example, Hatim and Mason (1997) in their discussion of simultaneous interpreting as well as of written literature and Katan (1999) in his study of culture and translation. Wendland (chapter six) outlines important aspects of text structure in his discussion of translating the Bible as literature. In the following, we simply note a few aspects of texts as represented in the communication model discussed in this chapter. 2.1.2.1 Texts composed of signs A text is an array of signs, intended and/or perceived as a unity. A sign is an item that points to an entity or concept.10

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Although the focus of this book is on verbal signs, the communication model should allow for other sign systems, especially in view of the ever increasing importance of communicating the Scriptures through media in which non-linguistic visual and aural signs play an important, sometimes dominant, role. Also, it is important to realize how the nonverbal signs of print translations contribute to their interpretation. For example, in many areas, the colour of a Bible’s cover can indicate whether it is for Catholics or for Protestants. Small print filling page after page may indicate that the publication is for intellectuals with glasses; larger print, more white space and illustrations may indicate that the publication is for less experienced readers. The rather uniform formatting of texts, distinguishing only between poetry and prose formats, may suggest that all Psalms are of the same basic form and that Leviticus is composed of narratives like Samuel. The explicit reference to signs in the model is intended to encourage looking to semiotics for understanding meaning in the translation process, but certainly not only to semiotics.11 The interpretation of verbal signs is the primary focus of Bible translators and Ross (chapter 4) indicates several subdisciplines of linguistics upon which one must draw in training translators, especially with regard to the inferential process involved in interpreting linguistic signs. Semiotics seeks to understand the commonality of all systems of communication, while of course recognizing that different media entail different constraints on and possibilities for the communication process. An understanding of how signs work at a general level can facilitate discussion of the translation and communication of Scriptures in a wide variety of media: 68

print, new media, sign language, Braille, audio presentations for the nonliterate or newly literate, drama and song. It can also encourage looking for links between a culture’s verbal systems of communication and other sign systems and the resultant clues to perceptions and values that can influence the formation and reception of a translation.12 Some semiotic fundamentals that contribute to understanding the translation task are: • Three basic kinds of signs may be identified:13 • 1) Icons: the sign resembles what it is referring to in some way. For example, a picture of a figure in a dress and another of one in a suit indicate through which door should pass those who may wear dresses and those who do not. In many situations, the iconic relationship between a new translation and previous, highly respected ones is very important. This can be true of the colour of the covers and the kinds of illustrations as well as of lexical choices, style and layout. • 2) Indices: there is a ‘real relation’ between the sign and what it refers to. Dark clouds replacing blue skies are indices of a coming storm. There is a ‘real relation’ between the direction a finger or lip, depending on the culture, is pointed and the direction in which one should look or go. Metonyms are literary 69

indices (there is a ‘real relation’ between ‘blood’ and ‘death’, the former being a metonym of the latter). Of course, an individual’s perception or community’s consensus that a ‘real relation’ exists between a sign and an entity does not mean that others will perceive this relation. In a translation handbook still in circulation (Bratcher and Nida 1977:29), it was claimed that ‘the principles of a dynamic equivalent translation … require’ translating ‘blood’ as ‘death’ in Colossian 1.20’s reference to Jesus on the cross (my emphasis). It was apparently assumed that people would not perceive the indexical relationship between ‘blood’ and death; the prescribed practice (‘require’) was somewhat like that of translating ‘storm clouds’ as ‘rain’ in a weather report. Fortunately, the same authors later gave due recognition to this sign’s pointing not only to death but also to “the sacrificial system of the Old Testament to which Christ’s death is constantly related in New Testament passages” and suggested more options for handling this indexical sign (1982:16). • 3) Symbols: the relationship between the sign and that to which it refers is logically and perceptually arbitrary: “it depends either upon a convention, a habit, or a natural disposition”. The great majority

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of verbal signs are of this kind: whether one uses mbwa, kuon, or dog is an accident of upbringing, but for those of the same upbringing, it is agreed that one of these verbal signs should be used to refer to the domestic animal that barks. • Signs are interpreted in terms of other signs While this has been frequently pointed out with regard to lexical col-locations and linguistic context, the relationship between print and non-print signs, such as those mentioned in the opening paragraph of this section, has received less attention. • Signs are pointers, not containers Expressions do not contain meaning. Rather they point to, refer to, evoke aspects of experience. As community constellations change in response to new experiences, especially to contacts with others who use different signs or use the same or similar signs in different ways, so too will the significance of the signs change. This may be the case with regard to a term such as ‘grace’. In the past, this sign may have evoked concepts and images similar to what the Greek work charis is thought to have evoked. But its common contemporary use to refer to personal style, or even to a mantra, led to its being replaced by ‘favor’ and ‘kindness’ in the Contemporary English Version. (Newman 1996)

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• What a speaker views as a sign may not be perceived as such by others and what others perceive as signs in a text may not have been intended as such (at least not consciously) by the one to whom the text is attributed. For example, while printing errors may be viewed by the producer of a text as an oversight or a consequence of limited resources for dealing with such problems, they may be viewed by the audience as signs of incompetence on the part of the translators or lack of concern on the part of the publishers. • All may agree that a sign is a sign, but differ in their interpretation of it. Much of the following two chapters concern this point. 2.1.2.2 Selection and perception of a text’s signs The translation process has been depicted by diagrams such as: The unidirectional arrows and the term ‘receptor’ (‘R’ in Figure 3) represent the ‘powerful messages/powerful effects’ approach to communication which: [conceptualizes] the audience as relatively passive consumers of messages that influence their behavior and understanding in predictable ways. In this scenario, originators of messages need to take care with message construction and with message saturation. Audience understanding will follow more or less automatically. (Soukup 1997:95)

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Figure 3: Translation process as depicted in Nida and Taber. 14

M=Message, R=Receptor, S=Source text, RS=translator as receptor of the source text and source of the translation However, as Soukup has pointed out, this approach must be balanced by considerations of the ‘powerful audience’: The uses and gratifications approach [to communication] … allowed researchers to explain both why media messages did not always work and how audiences resisted categorization as an undifferentiated mass. The approach indicates that audience understanding hinges on audience members’ needs and decisions to fulfill those needs … The last 15 years have seen communication researchers move away from a concentration on the presented meaning of a text … to a concern with the ‘constructed meaning.’ Constructed meaning arises from the interaction between audience members and texts and presumes that audiences hold the balance of power … (ibid:98-99)

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The sending and the perceiving of a text always involve a selection process. One participant selects and sends signs in terms of her communication goals; another perceives, or is at least exposed to, more signs than he can or wishes to attend to and selects, with varying degrees of consciousness, those to be interpreted. The selection process will depend on one’s experience, education, aptitudes, values and goals, and will vary on a continuum of activity versus passivity. One may attend to signs in a way that is different from what the sender of those signs would have wished. A recent sermon by an American pastor illustrates the point. Printed on the cover of the church bulletin was the sermon’s key passage: Let justice roll down like waters, and righteousness like an ever-flowing stream. (Amos 5.24) After his first reading of the verse, the pastor quoted it in abridged form as “Let righteousness roll down like waters” or “… like an ever-flowing stream”. The verbal sign ‘justice’ was clearly present in the text but the pastor, regardless of the translator’s intentions, perceived it as an insignificant sign in comparison with ‘righteousness’. The pastor defined ‘righteousness’ as “the ability to stand before God without shame”, constructing the meaning of the Amos text in terms of his sociocultural and organizational background and communicative goals, in a way that most biblical scholars would agree has little to do with Amos’ intended meaning.15 A person never sends a meaning, let alone the meaning, to another person; rather she sends an arrangement of signs that 74

she intends to be understood in certain ways. Meaning depends on the hearer’s interpretation as well as the speaker’s intentions, and the hearer’s interpretations are shaped in terms of others’ interpretations. Thus, our model will not have unidirectional arrows as in Figure 3. Rather, ‘Hearer’s’ arrow points towards the text, in keeping with his role in perceiving, selecting and interpreting text signs. (Figure 4. As indicated earlier, ‘participant’ is a better label than ‘hearer’, the latter suggesting not only oral communication but also passive participation in the communication process.) Some would prefer that each of the arrows point in both directions, as in Figure 5: On the left-hand side, this would represent the process involved in constructing a text: choosing certain options at one point in the production of a text can control, or at least strongly influence, shaping other parts of the text. On the right-hand side, the bi-directional arrow would reflect the text’s anchoring and shaping the interpretive process. At this point, I keep the arrows as in Figure 4, to discourage personification of the text and the fallacy of the conduit metaphor (see section 1.2). However, bi-directional arrows would not prohibit addressing these problems and could support helpful discussion of other aspects of text production and interpretation.16

Figure 4: Arrows pointing towards the text

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Figure 5: Bi-directional arrows between participants and text 2.1.2.3 Social metaphors for the translated text The degree of social distance between the participants in a communication situation is one basic factor influencing politeness strategies. The distance may be vertical, as between a ruler and slave, or horizontal, as between strangers of different cultures. This distance metaphor is often used in the discussion of translation approaches. Perhaps the best known metaphor in this respect is Martin Luther’s reference to the source text as king and the translation as a humble and faithful servant (vertical dimension). Some reverse the directionality of this metaphor to emphasize the importance of the translated text. They speak of ‘dethroning’ the source text. The source text becomes the servant, employed by the producers of a translated text to communicate with a new audience. The theorists arguing for this dethronement usually do so in view of the translation of secular materials. However, underlying the use of this metaphor there can be a focus on the communicative goals for the publication of a text – for the text intended to serve the audience – that is certainly pertinent to Bible translation, as indicated in section 1.4.1.17 The horizontal dimension of social distance provides a metaphor for discussing translation in terms of ‘foreignizing’ 76

versus ‘domesticating’ the source text (see section 1.4.7). A foreignizing translation favors portraying the otherness of a text, reminding the audience that this text was produced in a situation quite different from theirs with regard to matters such as cultural practices, values, understanding of the world, and literary styles. The audience is not to forget that the text was produced by ‘foreign strangers’. The domesticating approach encourages assimilating the source text to the cultural and sociolinguistic frames of reference of the audience; the ‘strangers’ of the source text are to speak without accents. For example, if extensive parallelism characterizes the stranger’s (in our case, biblical writers’) poetry but not the target culture’s, the foreignizing approach may keep this thick accent in the translation whereas a domesticating approach may reduce the parallelisms in favor of target audience speech patterns. A foreignizing approach might render ‘snow’ as ‘snou’ in tropical climates or the Greek word baptizo as ‘baptais’. A domesticating approach might use ‘hail’ or, if color is in focus, ‘cotton’ to translate ‘snow’ and ‘plunge in the water’ to translate baptizo.

2.1.3 Medium The selection and arrangement of signs for presenting a text depend in part on the medium to be used. Most Bible translators are involved in preparing a print translation. But the translated text is frequently read through an oral-written medium, as in public readings at church. The importance of translating in view of the oral use of the written text is pointed out in sections 6.8 and 6.9. Many contemporary translations, from literal to liturgical to simplified language, often try to keep this medium in view.18

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Further adaptations of the printed text must be made for audio and other media. Adapting print translations for other media or translating for other media has received considerable attention over the past couple decades and materials continue to be developed to help in this work. There is special concern for the large numbers of nonliterate people, for those with physical impairments and for those who are literate but prefer multimedia presentations of electronic media.19 Søgaard (1993) provides an introduction to the influence of media on the shaping, perception and use of texts, pointing out that “Each individual media channel has its own possibilities and limitations and such possibilities change if it functions alone or in conjunction with other media.” He discusses various media according to their ‘advantages’ and ‘disadvantages’, especially with regard to production cost, potential audience, audience interaction with the text and each other, and cultural relevance. While he gives little attention to the problem of translating for the various media, his study is informative for translators likely to be asked to contribute to Scripture-related productions and to organizations sponsoring translations in various media.

2.2 Frames The ability to efficiently and effectively translate is influenced to a large degree by the translators’ understanding of the source text, their understanding of the target audience, their resources and conditions for working independently and as a team (especially training, salaries, reference materials, manuscript tools and clear understanding of their roles and tasks), and their understanding of and ongoing support from

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the organizations sponsoring the publication of their work. These aspects of the translation process may be viewed as frames: cognitive, textual, situational, organizational and sociocultural frames. The metaphor of a frame has been exploited to facilitate discussion of a wide variety of phenomena related to translation, including: sentence structure, social interactions, the structure of literary texts, the literary context within which a portion of text is to be interpreted, the cognitive processing of information and multimedia presentations. It is useful for explaining and discussing both out-there and in-the-head phenomena which provide the background to and shape, if not govern, our communicative interactions: formation of goals, choice of strategies to meet these goals, and perception and interpretation of what we observe. Common uses of the noun ‘frame’ (such as the frame of a house or a picture frame) or the verb ‘to frame’ are pedagogically useful for explaining more technical senses of the term. In the graphic presentation of our model of communication we make explicit four sets of frames influencing communicative exchanges: socio-cultural frames, organizational frames, the communication-situation frame and textual frames. To study interpretive processes, we may also use the notion of cognitive frames. We briefly discuss each of these kinds of frames below. The notion of frames is further discussed in terms of cross-cultural communication in chapter 3.

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2.2.1 Cognitive frames Cognitive frames are structured mental associations developed through experience and reflection which enable us to “understand, integrate, and contextualize the information currently under consideration” (Barsalou 1992:276). Communicative signs, such as gestures, words, expressions, and pictures, represent and evoke these frames. Closely related terms are ‘schemata’, ‘scripts’ and ‘mental models’. The notion of frames cannot of course account for all the complexities of cognitive organization and processing. But, as various translation theorists have recognized, it offers a useful starting point for discussing and representing these complexities.20 Cognitive frames may be viewed as a means of representing the organization of the ‘cognitive environment’, to use an expression from relevance theory.21 Appendix A indicates how the notion of cognitive frames may be used in the discussion of translation problems and in training translators.

2.2.2 Sociocultural frames We may refer to both external sociocultural practices and relationships and our internalized conceptions of them in terms of frames. The way we are cared for as children, for example, both frames our early experience of family and contributes to our initial development of a ‘family’ cognitive frame. Our cognitive frames for sociocultural matters develop as we observe, are instructed about and participate in practices such as rites of passage, religious rituals, classroom behaviour, and sports. If we are entering a church service late, our ‘church’ frame(s) enable(s) us to know in a second

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whether we should stop and bow our head or continue on to get a seat; it lets us know what we have missed and what will come next. The interplay of biblical and contemporary social and, especially, cultural frames has received much attention in Bible translation literature and is a key concern in chapter 3 of this book. Less studied are questions such as the disposition of various audiences to recognize the Bible as stranger, to come back to the metaphor used in section 2.1.2.3, and to respect that stranger’s differences in ways of thinking and speaking. Would the audience prefer that the stranger completely adopt their formulaic expressions or maintain aspects of foreign expression? How ready, willing and/or able are the audience to accommodate to the other’s foreignness – to learn about the distinctiveness of the other’s frames? Over the past few decades, there has been increasing encouragement to use footnotes and other supplements to help the audience bridge the gap between their frames of reference and those of the biblical writers. How do these supplements influence the audience’s interpretation of the text? Do they accentuate the informative nature of communication to the detriment of the expressive function? How does the audience’s evaluation of these frame-expanding devices compare with that of the translator or of those representing the publishing organization? Are some gap-bridging devices more culturally appropriate than others? The supplementary materials packaged with the translation of the biblical text will continue to play an important role, but those most commonly used throughout the world may seem more for the benefit of an intellectual elite. Fortunately, 81

attractive means of helping readers appreciate biblical texts as stranger are being increasingly incorporated into Bible translations, as well as presented in published supplements to Bible translations. Our cultural studies need to be supplemented by intercultural and cocultural communication studies. Much of the Bible translation literature produced in the 1950’s through the 1980’s treated cultures as independent entities, with the working assumption that the influence of neighbouring, national or global languages, attitudes, practices, resources, etc. was minimal. The tremendous differences between that era and the present one, especially with regard to communicational resources and cross-cultural interaction,22 necessitate quite different working assumptions. Finally, it is important that a basic irony be recognized: while there is much Bible translation literature concerning sociocultural influences on audiences’ interpretation of texts, there is relatively little with regard to sociocultural influences on those formulating the translation theory and practice, as well as providing model interpretations and translations of biblical texts.23

2.2.3 Organizational frames ‘Organizational frames’ can refer to both: • The external influences (e.g. financial resources, social pressure and prestige, policy statements) that an organization or organizations have on the

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perceptions, attitudes and behaviour of individuals and communities associated with them. • The translators’ (among others’) perception and understanding of the organizational aspects of their task. The organizations involved in a translation project often include the church communities who are sponsoring it or who at least are viewed as providing an important part of the potential audience, educational and governmental 24 organizations, and the publisher. 2.2.3.1 Multiple organizational frames It is increasingly common for Bible translation projects to involve several different organizations (Figure 6). Each of these organizations, including the local translation team, has a set of goals, policies, politics, and resources that distinguish it from the others involved; and each has its set of expectations for the translation project and for how other organizations will contribute to its support. Such a complex situation offers considerable challenges to maintaining satisfactory communication between the various parties involved, in order to assure adequate material and technical support for the team, ongoing or increasing community interest, and satisfactory decisions concerning translation options.

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Figure 6: Organizations framing the translation event. The numerical superscripts indicate that one national translation organization is an offshoot of the international organization with the same superscript. One factor that is frequently a source of misunderstanding, affecting the morale and daily performance of translation teams and the quality of their product, is the perception of which organization has the most resources to support a translation project and of who should give most material support for the project. On the one hand, members of a community, or even national organizations associated with international ones, wonder why they should give financial support to a translation project when the associated international organizations seemingly have so much wealth and the community and national organizations struggle financially. On the other hand, the international organizations’ involvement in hundreds of projects throughout the world can stretch their resources, and there is usually a belief that the more a local community is involved in the support of a project, the more likely the success of the project will be. Often, initial agreements concerning the material and technical support of a project are made between a translation organization and local churches, but, for various reasons, some aspects of the agreements are eventually not upheld and inadequate communication concerning the problems impedes or even prevents coordinated efforts to solve them.

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2.2.3.2 Frames of a particular organization In this section, we briefly consider five fundamentals of organizations that will influence the translation process: structure, culture, gatekeeping, power, and training. The goal is to illustrate ways in which the study of organizational communication and management can contribute to understanding of the translation process and to encourage further study in this area. Organizations involve structure or, more accurately, structuring. McQuail (1994:169) says of mass media structures that they are “temporary arrangements, with only the appearance of solidity”. He attributes the appearance of solidity to four general forces “continuously at work in a given society or a particular market”: 1. The pursuit of profit in a situation of supply and demand 2. The dominance of certain technologies for a period of time 3. Social and economic changes in society 4. The various political and policy goals which often shape the working environment of media Non-profit organizations as well as corporations pursue profit, but the profit is viewed in humanitarian and spiritual terms. Donors subsidize or completely cover costs of producing goods so that these goods may be supplied to others. Some Bible translation organizations are especially ready to work where there is no evident demand. Their goal is to create a demand, for evangelistic purposes in communities where

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there are few if any Christians and/or for enabling greater access to the Scriptures where churches have a Bible in a language other than their mother tongue or a translation in their mother tongue that is difficult to understand. In such situations, there is usually also a great emphasis on paving the way for use of the final product via literacy programs. Other translation organizations work primarily with established churches and bear a high percentage of the publication costs of a translation. They may favour giving material support for translation projects only when demand for the finished product is fairly certain. In such a situation, sales figures, or at least distribution figures, are viewed as an indicator of success and translation projects are evaluated in terms of time lines and financial outlays. A key notion is stewardship: limited resources should be allocated in view of the likelihood of their being efficiently used in keeping with the organization’s goals. But sales are certainly not a sufficient indicator of success, as recognized, for example, in the United Bible Societies’ Identity and Ethos statement: Traditionally the work of the Bible Societies has concentrated on making the Bible accessible and affordable. This involves both publishing programs – translation, production and distribution – and fundraising programs to help this happen. The Bible Societies have come to see that provision of the printed text, however well presented, is only one part of their task. To achieve the most effective and meaningful distribution, the Bible Societies also recognize the need to develop programs using all forms of media to stimulate and facilitate encounter with the biblical text in churches and in public arenas. 86

The tools used to ‘stimulate and facilitate encounter with the biblical text’ range from Scripture texts presented in a format suitable for use in literacy programs to videos encouraging reflection on the relevance of the Scriptures to contemporary concerns. This leads to consideration of the second force mentioned by McQuail – the dominance of certain technologies for a period of time. McQuail observed that “The rise of new technology does not usually eclipse old media entirely but causes them to adapt to the new market conditions” (1994:168). This was noted in the preface to a book concerning Bible translation and new media: I remember the concern of a Bible Society Auxiliary Secretary in one of the states of India at the havoc that TV and video were wreaking on the tradition of midweek evening Bible study and prayer groups … Numbers dwindled and then groups became defunct … The faithful had gathered around the new icon – TV and video … Even in the mass print medium, visual images seem to entice … In magazines one struggles to find where articles begin and run on in the labyrinth of glossy visual images that commandeer the attention of the peruser or browser. (Rebera 1999:ix) ‘Glossy visual images’ are increasingly becoming a part of Scripture products in print media: the comics format of Bible stories is extremely popular throughout the world and increasingly easy to produce; ‘children’s Bibles’ have pictures that are as attractive to adults as they are to the primary audience; study Bibles incorporate high-quality photographs of Biblical settings. Further, the means of signalling important background information and of 87

suggesting the relevance of certain passages to contemporary readers are becoming more attractive than the traditional footnote format: devices such as sidenotes, box insets and black-and-white illustrations can be economically exploited. With regard to the third and fourth forces listed by McQuail, a key concern of the two largest Bible translation organizations has been to foster economically independent national entities for translation, in contrast to trends toward conglomeration in the business world. For Bible Societies, one way to achieve this independence is to minimize ‘first copy costs’: that is, the costs of getting a product to the point where it can be mass-produced (1994:162). A simple solution is to concentrate on selling Bibles in international languages, where the first copy costs have already been covered by a sister organization which will also sell its additional copies at a subsidized rate, and to minimize the amount of translation projects whose products will bring in far less income than products produced in international languages. That this means of meeting an organization’s structural and financial goals conflicts with its foundational goal of effective communication of Scriptures through translation is more obvious than how to resolve the conflict. Organizations have distinctive cultures, describable in terms of myths, rituals, recurrent narrative themes, behavioural norms, language, relational patterns, perception of insiders and outsiders, attitudes toward work, and values.25 But, also “Subcultures tend to develop in large organizations … likely to be defined by department designations and geographical separation …” (S. Robbins 2000:237, his emphasis). These organizational subcultures are “a result of well-defined communication networks in which individuals communicate 88

with a restricted group of people within the organization”, resulting in “differences in who knows what and shared understandings about what others are likely to know” (Barnett 1988:105). There may also be differences in power and in access to resources; the perception of these differences can affect communication dynamics and job performance. The organizational culture’s values and norms, as established historically and reaffirmed by top-level managers, may conflict with national cultural values and norms shaping a national branch of an international organization. “Research indicates that national culture has a greater impact on employees than does their organization’s culture” (S. Robbins 2000:248), yet “Regardless of the external environment or their national culture, managers and employees must understand and follow their organization’s culture to be successful” (Hodgetts and Luthans 2000:168). One area in which this tension is especially evident is that of the administration and evaluation of translation projects, which directly affects the material well-being of the translators, and thus their performance. Gatekeeping is a term used in media studies to refer to the basic organizational need to control the content and quality of a product. It is exercised at various stages of the production in which “The general aim … is to produce something which meets professional or craft standards of quality and has a good chance of success with the audience. The organizational processes involved are typically very hierarchical …” (McQuail 1994: 225-6). In translation projects, the gatekeepers range from the level of the nuclear team to heads of publishing departments:

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• Translators do a general review of each other’s work; • The team’s exegete(s) checks for faithfulness to the source text; • Reviewers from the community check dialect use, style, and translation approach; • A translation consultant checks the exegesis, translation approach, content and presentation of supplements (introductions, footnotes, maps, etc.), and manuscript presentation; • A manuscript examiner checks for quality of manuscript presentation (spelling consistency, punctuation, accuracy of chapter and verse numbering, etc.); • Translators check the camera-ready copy before it is sent to a printer. There are other gatekeeping hierarchies as well. In the United Bible Societies, for example, translation consultants in training are supervised by senior consultants, all consultants are supervised by a regional translations coordinator and the regional translations coordinators are responsible to a ‘Translation Services Coordinator’ at the global level. The work of this hierarchy must be coordinated with that of other hierarchies within the organization and, increasingly, with that of other organizations who have their own hierarchies, although not necessarily completely parallel ones. Again, this ‘very hierarchical’ arrangement is intended to assure satisfactory content and quality of products developed in view of organizational goals. The efficiency with which products make it through the quality controls depends on a variety of matters, such as:

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• The clarity of the responsibilities and procedures involved for the various parties concerned; • The availability of resources to carry out the gatekeeping activities; • The availability of resources – and the knowledge and willingness to use them – for tracking the movement of a product through the gatekeeping process and for dealing with blockage; • The motivation and capabilities of the various gatekeepers. Ideally, gatekeeping will not conflict with creativity or flexibility in developing products in keeping with an organization’s mission. However, the dynamic of judging the unknown in terms of the known is as present in this area of activity as in others. Suggestions for modifying gatekeeping standards or procedures should be welcome from any level of the organizational hierarchy, especially if participative decision making (see section 2.3.1.2) is valued. The receptivity of gatekeepers to suggestions from those at lower levels will depend on their sense of job security and on their commitment to the organization’s mission (which do not necessarily go together) as well as on factors such as those listed in the preceding paragraph. In his study of organizational behaviour, S. Robbins cites a saying about power: “People who have it deny it; people who want it try not to appear to be seeking it; and those who are good at getting it are secretive about how they got it.”26 The relevance of this statement to translation is indicated by the following observation of Bassnett and Lefevere (1998:136-137):

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Translation … is a primary method of imposing meaning while concealing the power relations that lie behind the production of that meaning … Translation is … always enmeshed in a set of power relations that exist in both the source and target contexts.27 As pointed out in section 5.2.6 of this book, the identification of power dynamics in the interpretation of biblical texts is a concern of ideological criticism. Yorke (2000) suggests ways in which Bible translations in European languages may reflect the biases ‘of the privileged and the powerful’ and how these power biases can be unwittingly perpetuated by translators imitating European models. On the other hand, as pointed out in section 1.2, Nida has been praised for subversively empowering people by facilitating their access to Scriptures, in the spirit of Martin Luther. S. Robbins (2000:154) observes that “Probably the most important aspect of power is that it is a function of dependence”: the more dependent A is on B, the more power B has to influence A’s behaviour. Increased independence, however, does not necessarily imply greater power with regard to meeting original mission goals, especially if the resources for meeting them become increasingly reduced. As noted above, national organizations concerned with the distribution of Bibles in relatively poor countries might increase their independence by decreasing support for Bible translation, which involves producing costly ‘first-copies’ (section 2.2.3.2). This would be in keeping with many organizational ventures in which traditional areas of business have been closed down or sold off and/or the number of employees greatly reduced. If such is the case, should the international organization take more responsibility for the 92

costly projects? Or might the increasing independence of national organizations concerned with the distribution of Bibles result in churches contributing more to translation projects, and in finding other ways to locally support translation projects?28 Or might one organization’s reduced goals with regard to Scripture production and use result in its working more efficiently in a more limited area, leaving pursuit of the other goals to partner organizations better equipped to meet them? Translation organizations are increasingly realizing the importance of high-level training for translators. This corresponds with a business trend: Over the last decade a growing number of multinationals have tried to become a ‘learning organization’ … which is typified by a continual focus on activities such as training and development. In the new millenium this learning focus applied to human resource development may go beyond learning organizations to ‘teaching organizations’. For example, Tichy and Cohen, after conducting an analysis of world-class companies … found that teaching organizations are even more relevant than learning organizations because they go beyond the belief that everyone must continually acquire new knowledge and skills and focus on ensuring that everyone in the organization, especially the top management personnel, pass their learning on to others. (Hodgetts and Luthans 2000:465) The primary goal of translation-training programs is to provide the informational and technical frames necessary for independent production of a high-quality translation in one’s mother tongue. This training will also equip the translators for 93

teaching ministries in churches, after they have finished the translation project, as well as for communicating with their communities about the nature of their task and the problems they face during the project. Throughout the world, there is increasing cooperation between Bible translation organizations and national institutions of higher learning to develop undergraduate and graduate-level training programs. Appendix B lists the courses of a four-year program in Abidjan which probably has the highest amount of translation courses of any Bible translation program in the world. There is also increasing cooperation between various translation organizations and academic institutions to provide in-depth, ongoing local training for translators. For example, a post-secondary institution in Latin America is developing correspondence courses that can be taken for credit by Bible translators. Some schools in Africa are developing programs that are more flexible than the usual on-campus ones, to minimize training-time away from a translator’s home. Further training is provided by a consultant’s work with individual teams and through translation journals and manuals.

2.2.4 Communication-situation frame The prototypical ‘communication situation’ is the ‘speech situation’, the focus of much sociolinguistic literature. The communication situation is identifiable in terms of the physical and temporal setting, the medium and codes employed for communication, and the roles and goals of the participants. 94

2.2.4.1 Some basic elements of any communication situation Hymes’ acronym for representing elements of the communication situation continues to be a useful pedagogical tool:29 • Situation: setting (time, place, physical circumstances) and scene (psychological setting; cultural definition of a particular occasion) • Participants: speaker, or sender; addresser; hearer, or receiver, or audience; addressee • End: conventionally recognized and expected outcomes; particular goals of participants • Act sequence: ordering of communicative actions (verbal and nonverbal) • Key: the tone, manner, or spirit in which an act is done • Instrumentality: channels (medium) and forms of speech (language and dialect), code (mutual intelligibility is in question due to manipulation of a common set of resources), variety (use), register (situation-specific; speech style – selection of alternatives with reference to a common frame or purpose) • Norms of interaction and of interpretation • Genre: categories such as poem, myth, tale, proverb, riddle … The basic communication situation may change, or at least seem to change, during the course of interaction: a secondary school history lesson may suddenly give way to a sermon on

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classroom etiquette; a buyer-and-seller situation in the temple may suddenly give way to a prophetic action. Or the communication situation may be composed of scenes that vary considerably with regard to atmosphere, rules of interaction, and roles of the participants but are perceived by the participants as being part of one communication event: the church service composed of singing, Scripture readings, sermon, Eucharist/communion and announcements; a Psalm starting out as a cry for help, giving way to a complaint, and ending in praise. Identification of the communication situations underlying biblical texts is a basic exegetical concern. But often unrepresented or misrepresented in translation are basic elements of those situations that exegetes agree would have contributed to early audiences’ understanding of the source texts. For example, while several versions indicate through subtitles that there are various speakers in Song of Songs, few if any represent the different speakers within particular Psalms. Examples of the many translations whose use of pronouns sharply contrast with contemporary use, in terms of social relationships, are given in section 4.5. The prophets’ marked use of ne’um YHWH ‘oracle of YHWH’ to underscore the source and authority of the prophet’s message is unrepresented or mis-represented in many contemporary versions (Wilt 1999). The perception of the communication situation and rules of interaction will depend on the frames of reference of the participants. As has been shown in a wide variety of sociolinguistic and cross-cultural studies, the relationships and rules of interaction can be negotiated, as participants weigh the costs and rewards of their various communicative 96

decisions as well as of the goals that they pursue. This of course applies to discussions between members of a translation team and between translators and organizational representatives, as well as to communication situations represented in the text to be translated. 2.2.4.2 Dramatic changes in the communication situations of Bible translation Over the past three decades, academic developments pertinent to Bible translation have been accompanied by, and often were in response to, dramatic changes in communication situations. Table 1 indicates some of the changes by comparing aspects of Bible translation work in Africa when The Theory and Practice of Translation was published (see ‘Introduction’ and sections 1.1 and 1.2) and today. Table 1 : Some basic changes in the UBS communication situations of Bible translation 30

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As the table indicates, there are fundamental differences with regard to: the leadership of churches involved in translation, the cultural and academic background of the consultants and translators, available technology, and perspectives on the Bible translation enterprise. These differences are of course reflective of more general sociocultural, political, economic and intellectual trends that have influenced our understanding of communication and translation.

2.2.5 Text frames Text frames can be discussed in terms of an array of physical, semiotic and cognitive frames. Discourse studies often consider texts in terms of a linguistic, hierarchical array of frames (from case to sentence to section to text) and of the framing of texts in terms of sociocultural conventions. Genre expectations are one sort of cognitive, textual frame. We do

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not go into this matter any further here since so much attention is given to what could be presented as text frames and framing in chapters 3, 4 and 6 of this book.

2.3 Goals ‘Any verbal behavior is goal-directed.’31 The skopos theory of translation stresses the fundamental importance of the purpose of a translation for determining translation strategies (see section 1.4.1). A functional equivalence approach to translation can be characterized in part as an attempt to represent in the translated text the communicational goals of the source text. Recognition of the goals of the text to be translated is one crucial aspect of the translator’s task; determining how to represent them to satisfactorily meet the goals of the potential audience and the supporting organizations is another. In this section, we first note some basic goals of communication with regard to elements explicitly represented in our model of communication (2.5). We then briefly consider the problem of conflicting goals in a translation project. Finally, we point out the importance of translation goals shaped by the ritualistic aspect of communication, an aspect that has often been inadequately treated in Bible translation literature.

2.3.1 Some fundamental goals As indicated in section 2.1.2, our model of communication focuses on four basic frames or contexts of a communicative event: sociocultural, organizational, situational, and cognitive. 100

Each of these frames influences translators’ goals for producing a text, audiences’ goals for paying attention to the text, and the perception of both groups of the degree to which the translation should and does represent the goals of those who produced the source text. 2.3.1.1 Text goals The goals of text producers may be usefully classified at a variety of text levels: from phrases and sentences to paragraphs and sections to the complete text itself and even to the collection of which that text is part, such as the biblical canon. Hymes’ (1974:23) list of communication goals is still useful for analyzing and discussing various levels of text:32

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In earlier decades, when linguistic studies focused on the sentence level and lower, translation studies focused on representing text goals at those levels. Since the 1970’s, there has been increasing interest in applying insights from discourse and textlinguistic studies so that higher level goals might be better reflected in Bible translation.34 Goals of various communication situations are shaped by basic sociocultural goals. In some (sub-)cultures, predominant goals might be, for example, achieving individual success quickly (whether with regard to information, material goods or self-satisfaction), being amused, honouring youth and increasing socioeconomic status; in other (sub-)cultures, predominant goals might be maintenance of the status quo, or reestablishment of past values and practices, solidifying social relationships, and maintenance of socioeconomic status. These goals might be reflected in preferences for one or another approach to Bible translation: one group might want a new version to closely resemble an earlier, well-esteemed model; another might wish for a version with an innovative format or one that is accompanied by study helps or applications to contemporary situations. 2.3.1.2 Organizational goals As a text has a hierarchical system of goals, identifiable in terms of the whole down to each of the sentences of which that whole is composed, so too do organizations. A mission statement represents the goal(s) of an organization as a whole; increasingly limited and specific goals are assigned to the divisions, departments and individuals within the organization, to enable effective, coordinated work towards

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meeting its overall objectives. For members of the United Bible Societies, the goals at these different levels may be represented as follows:

The above goals are stated in very general terms; to efficiently meet them, more particular goals, or objectives, must be set in view of the particular work situations. Thus, for example, a qualified team of three full-time translators may have the goal of translating the New Testament in four years, the Old Testament in eight years. This time-explicit objective may be further broken down into daily rates of translation, according to the draft and to the book being translated. The teams may be expected to give to the sponsoring organization monthly reports on how they are progressing towards their 103

objectives. One of the duties of the consultant is to supervise the progress and, if the team is not meeting its objectives, to discuss with them and the supporting organizations why this is so and to find mutually satisfying solutions. Participative decision making is an extremely important part of this process. 35

2.3.2 Conflicting goals A basic challenge for the translator and for the translation consultant is dealing with conflicting goals: recognizing them, determining how the conflict might be resolved, and evaluating the consequences of particular solutions, especially if meeting one goal seems to exclude meeting another. Conflicting translation goals have perhaps been most often discussed in terms of a form-meaning dichotomy. The goal of representing the meaning of a text has often been considered to conflict with the goal of representing its form; in reaction to literal translations that are difficult to understand, translators have been advised to translate the meaning, not the form.36 As indicated in chapters 1, 4 and 6, a greater appreciation of form’s contribution to meaning, especially in literary texts, has led to more nuanced considerations of how formal aspects of the source text may be represented in translation. Receiving increasing attention is the conflict between the goal of clearly representing meaning at the sentence or section level and the goal of representing the thematic interests throughout parts of or the whole of a book, or even throughout several books. For example, the Greek word menô (often translated by expressions such as ‘stay’, ‘dwell’, 104

‘abide’) occurs forty times in the Gospel of John, as opposed to only twelve times in the three other gospels combined. Commentators point out its thematic significance. One team, influenced by Newman and Nida’s (1980) handbook on translating the Gospel of John and by some European translations, used nine different expressions to represent the nuances of the term that were believed to be in focus in different passages within the Gospel. However, in all but a few instances, they could have used one expression that would have well represented the sentence-level sense and whose repetition would have better reflected menô’s book-level thematic value.37 Publishers, consultants, translators, and potential audiences may have conflicting goals concerning translation approach. The conflict frequently concerns where the translation should be on the continuums of foreignization-versus-domestication and of traditional-versus-innovative. The first concerns the tension between representing the otherness (cultural, social, linguistic, etc.) of a text and catering to the target audience’s tastes and expectations; the second concerns the tension between reflecting previous models of translation and presenting new ones. There may also be conflicts between the goal of producing a translation that is ‘clear, natural and faithful’ and that of reflecting communicative principles of markedness38 in the original and well representing common literary tactics such as ambiguity, repetition, thematic underlining, and allusion. Important aspects of these conflicts are dealt with in other chapters of this book, as well as in Bible translation literature written over the past decade. Another area of conflicting goals repeatedly proves to greatly influence the efficiency and quality of a translation team’s 105

production, not to mention their morale: the conflict between an organization’s goal of supporting a particular translation project and its goals of supporting other projects (whether in translation or in some other area such as distribution) and/or of organizational self-maintenance, when resources are insufficient to satisfactorily support all of these goals. Another, and sometimes related, conflict is one between organizational goals and personal goals, to which differences in organizational subcultures may contribute (section 2.2.3.2).

2.3.3 Ritual communication James Carey’s presentation of a ritual model of communication has been influential in communication studies, but has received little attention in Bible translation literature.39 In an article first published a few years after Nida and Taber’s work, Carey (1988/1975:18) said: In a ritual definition, communication is linked to terms such as ‘sharing’, ‘participation’, ‘association’, ‘fellowship’, and ‘the possession of a common faith’. This definition exploits the ancient identity and common roots of the terms ‘commonness’, ‘communion’, ‘community’, and ‘communication’. A ritual view of communication is directed not toward the extension of messages in space but toward the maintenance of society in time; not the act of imparting information but the representation of shared beliefs. As Philipsen (1992:11) observed in his study of an American social group: “much of speech behavior functions, not primarily to report or to describe, but to link – that is, to link interlocutors in a social relationship, to affirm and signify the interlocutors’ sameness and unity”. In other words, the 106

communicative goal of social linkage may be as important as, or more important than, the goal of imparting information. For many communities, a Bible translation is both an affirmation of the ‘link’ between its users and a ‘representation of shared beliefs’. This linkage of shared beliefs is often viewed in terms of diachronic as well as synchronic continuity. The diachronic linkage may be reflected in the preferred version’s use of lexical items and linguistic patterns that are not commonly found in daily speech, in keeping with “the remarkable disjunction between sacred and profane language … [that] exists as a general fact” (Tambiah 1985:27) in cultures throughout the world, in both world and local religions. The degree of this disjunction will vary, just as rituals vary in degree of formality.40 Church communities which consciously value and preserve rituals developed over the centuries (for example, Catholic and Orthodox churches) are likely to use translations where this disjunction is clearly evident.41 In other translations, the disjunction may be less extreme but still, often purposefully, evident. Contributing to the New International Version’s great success was its maintenance of linkage with widely used earlier versions.42 The newest translation sponsored by the Netherlands Bible Society has as one of its translation principles “Honor the language tradition, but avoid archaisms” (De Blois 1997:27). Similar concerns are evident in translation situations throughout the world, whether the Bible is being translated for the first time in a particular language or a new version is being produced, whether with regard to the treatment of 107

particular lexical items or with regard to general translation approach. For example, an interconfessional project in central Africa had the general goal of translating with a functional equivalence approach. The translators decided, however, to use an expression for ‘holy’ that was used in all churches of the area, even though the team’s exegete had concluded that this expression did not represent the biblical notion as well as other options. When asked why he kept the usual expression for ‘holy’, he replied “I was afraid of the pastors.” The translator had a good understanding of the biblical notion, and the ability to communicate it in respect of the informative function of language. Yet his solidarity with the community who would receive the translation was the key factor for this particular translation choice. The communal solidarity represented by this term’s use was not just between the translator and pastors, but between them and the Christian community in general, all churches of their area using the same term. Further, the term reflected linkage with religious communities in neighbouring ethnolinguistic groups using a similar translation, and historical linkage going beyond national borders.43 Translation approaches are shaped in terms of community values and communicative goals. If training programs insufficiently take into account this dynamic, they risk producing “unfortunate graduates … [who] often have to undergo a painful process of forgetting much of what they have been taught, and adjusting, at least in part, to prevalent norms of socio-cultural appropriateness which their teacher tried to change rather than endorse” (Toury 1995:255).

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2.4 Exchange: focus on the Bible translation process Ongoing communication involves an ongoing exchange of texts in pursuit of a variety of goals. While communicative exchanges may be considered from many different perspectives, we will sketch here basic aspects of the Bible translation process, underlining the importance of ongoing exchange between different sets of participants and of the role of translators as mediators. The more clearly translators and their (potential) supporters understand the translation process, the better they will be able to deal with the complexity of the communication situations within which they work and to produce appropriate and satisfying products. This work at mutual understanding of and support for the translation process will involve numerous exchanges at a variety of different levels, sometimes with the primarily informative goal of clarifying expectations, purposes, procedures and evaluations of a project, sometimes with the primarily ritualistic goal of reinforcing relationships – establishing, assuring and confirming relationships and mutual respect for values, concerns and desires of the various participants. The Bible translation process involves: 1. Assessing a current communication situation with regard to actual and potential use of Scripture products;

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2. Facilitating the cooperation of communities and organizations interested in contributing to the translation of Scriptures in this situation; 3. Articulating and evaluating the goals for a translation project; 4. Determining what will be needed for these goals to be realized; 5. Assuring the availability of these resources; 6. Providing academic and technical training; 7. Producing the text that will represent the source text for the intended audience; 8. Evaluating the progress of the desired product’s development, its quality, and responses to it; 9. Further developing the product, or complementary products, in view of the organizational goal of ‘helping people interact’ with it. The bulk of Bible translation literature and training has focused on aspects 6 and 7. Treating the other aspects as secondary issues of Bible translation rather than as equally crucial aspects of the translation process can result in under-qualified and/or disenchanted translators, slow progress rates, inefficient use of resources, and mediocre, inappropriate, unsold and/or unused products. We will briefly consider each of the aspects listed above.

2.4.1 Assessing the communication situation Assessing a communication situation with regard to actual and potential use of Scripture products will involve exchange between representatives of the publishers and of a possible audience. At the outset, this exchange may occur on an

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informal, fairly intuitive basis, but the quality of the assessment can often be greatly enhanced through the use of systematic research. Various questionnaires and survey methods are available for studying the communication situations of potential Bible translation projects. These tools can of course be further refined, but perhaps more important at this point is the training of potential supporters of a translation project with regard to the effective use of these tools and the assessment of their results, as a prelude to making decisions concerning a project’s goals, translation approach(es) and administration. There is also a need to make the results of the research more widely available.

2.4.2 Facilitating cooperation If a translation project is heavily or exclusively subsidized by a certain group, the attempt to facilitate cooperation with other communities and organizations interested in Bible translation can be minimal. A translation can be produced quickly and in accordance with the one group’s goals, without being involved in inter-group exchanges (negotiations) demanding time, energy and resources. However, the fewer or the narrower the groups involved in the production process, the higher the risk that the product will not interest or be accepted by broader segments of the potential audience. There is also the greater risk of the project coming to a stand-still due to a key supporter or technician leaving the project. Contributing to the great success of the New International Version was its involvement of hundreds of translators and reviewers from a wide variety of denominations. This not only contributed to the quality of the product, it also enabled

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widespread pre-publication publicity, including assurances that even though this new translation was going to be rather different from the King James Version, to which many of the potential audience were attached, it would be acceptable because well known and respected denominational representatives were working on it. Numerous translation projects throughout the world, in languages with relatively small numbers of speakers, have realized this dynamic to an even greater degree through the cooperation of Catholic and Protestant churches. At the same time, it must be noted that there are situations in which limited sponsorship can have fruitful results. One Bible Society wished to do a translation in the national language that would attract people with little or no involvement in churches. The Bible Society wished to work with church leaders, but the initial reactions from this group were so negative that it decided to work without them. The resulting translation sold very well and continues to be popular, although it is seldom used in church services. Further, the most creative and compelling works are likely to come from individuals who have initiated the translation on their own, envisaging narrower audiences at first, then finding that others are attracted to their alternative perspectives. Examples in English from the last century are Phillips’ (1972) translation of the New Testament, Jordan’s Cotton Patch translations (e.g. 1970), and Peterson’s (1993) The Message.

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2.4.3 Goals and resources The goals of a translation project must not only be clear but also realistic in view of the goals of the intended audience and of the organizations supporting the project and in view of the necessary and available resources. The goals will concern time-lines as well as translation approach and audience use.44 The available and necessary resources for meeting these goals will include: • Clear, usable communication lines between translation personnel and organizational and community representatives; • competent personnel; • finances: salary, health care, job options after the project is finished; • materials: reference books, computers, office space, electricity, etc.; • preparatory and ongoing training programs, for church and community members in general, as well as for the translators and for reviewers; • a statement of principles concerning the basic translation approach and how various translation problems will be handled; • technical support. Differing goals among actual or potential partners in the translation project must be dealt with through negotiation, information and education. But agreeing upon goals is of course insufficient: the resources necessary for meeting these goals must be realistically assessed and provided. If the resources

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are inadequate, either the goals must be reformulated or else the parties must find ways to procure the necessary resources. There should be a written contract between sponsoring organizations and salaried personnel to assure the ongoing provision of resources and translators’ fulfillment of their obligations. Often, churches, translation organizations, and translators have agreed to produce a translation with a functional equivalence approach, but the final product is actually a literal translation of an international language’s attempt at functional equivalence. The basic resource of qualified translators has not been provided, the supporting organizations have been unable or unwilling to provide the necessary training, and/or the quality of the work has been insufficiently monitored.

2.4.4 Academic and technical training An exciting aspect of Bible translation today is the development of in-depth, ongoing and flexible training programs for translators, through the cooperation of various translation organizations, academic institutions and churches. The basic goals of this training are to increase mother-tongue translators’ understanding of biblical texts and their ability to independently assess how best to represent these texts for their intended audience. The effectiveness of the translated product will be enhanced by the training of other groups with regard to issues related to translation. In the early stages of the translation process, church representatives should be trained with regard to intercultural communication, various approaches to translation, and support of the translation project. 114

Representatives of the potential audience need to be trained to review the translators’ work before its publication. After the publication of a translation, further training can be done to enhance the audience’s appreciation for the product and their ability to interact with it. In Central and South America, for example, translation personnel help lead ‘Bible seminars’ of several days’ length for pastors, lay leaders and others who are interested: These seminars are a crucial part of one of the very few instances in which our Latin American pastors can attend continuing theological education. We find that there are an increasing number of pastors who have entered the ministry with no formal theological or biblical education. When they attend our seminars, they are so grateful to have the Bible Societies help them understand Scripture, its history, its formation, canon, text, exegesis, and so on. So, in these events, we are instructing, promoting the Bible cause, and informing about our work at the local, continental and world levels. The books that we publish, especially the handbook for the Seminars (Descubre la Biblia) have also become text books for our theological institutions. People have asked for more materials, so we are working on the second volume of that handbook. We are also preparing videocassettes of the lectures and workshops, because the demand for the seminars is so great that we are not able to have our consultants participate in a good number of programmed seminars (Edesio Sanchez, personal communication). Most training materials being developed concern print translation but there are an increasing number of materials and programs for communicating the Scriptures in other 115

media (see section 2.1.3) and for producing materials for audiences in different parts of the world with common needs, interests and/or backgrounds (e.g. low levels of literacy, adherents of other world religions, refugees)45.

2.4.5 Producing the text Representing the source text for the intended audience – analyzing the ancient text and the frames within which it was produced, and selecting and arranging signs to represent that text for a contemporary audience – is the heart (but not the whole body) of the translation process, and it is the focus of most literature on Bible translation, including this book.

2.4.6 Evaluation Evaluation of a product’s development is given by members of the nuclear translation team, by representatives of the intended audience and by representatives of the sponsoring organizations, including the translation consultant. A variety of procedures and techniques have been developed for this evaluation. The evaluation of an intended audience’s response to translations has received considerably less attention. There are plenty of anecdotal reports but few sophisticated studies of the hows and whys of audience responses to particular translations of Scriptures, not to mention comparative studies, addressing questions such as: • Was the product used and perceived as intended? • Why or why not?

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• • • •

By whom? Use and perceptions among various sub-groups? Wish lists? Do negative or indifferent reactions stem from the translation, the presentation of the translation, and/or general lack of interest? • How do the use and perception of products containing portions of Scriptures and/or addressing particular issues compare to the use and perception of the whole product? • How do the use and perception of translations in a minority language compare with the use of a version in a majority, national, and/or official language? • How has the translation contributed to (not) meeting the goals of those who supported the translation project? More available are statements and studies of how translations were produced and the goals of their production. These can help those who are considering a first or new translation to evaluate what the most appropriate translation approach would be for them; such statements on major versions are also useful for the training of translators who may use these versions and will want to understand their differences. Appendix G compares a variety of versions along these lines, listing: some salient sociocultural and organizational frames of the producers and intended audiences, primary goals of the translation, some key aspects of the selection and presentation of text signs, and lines of communication during the translation process.

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2.4.7 Further product development The translation process is part of the ongoing exchange involved in making the Scriptures available to audiences and in encouraging their interaction with the Scriptures. Viewing the translation process as finished when the Bible has been sent to the printers would be like considering automotive engineers’ task to be finished once a company’s full array of models for one year has been sent to sales distributors. It could be finished at that point, if the company is going out of business, but otherwise the company must be attentive to the reaction to these models from buyers and others (e.g. a governmental agency concerned with fuel efficiency and pollution standards), characterize these reactions for the engineers and ask them to shape future models accordingly. With increased attention to presenting portions of Scriptures in various media for the sake of specific audiences, the work of translation-communication specialists becomes all the more crucial. All too often, this work has proceeded like those who see potential customers in need of doing extensive travel on rocky, unpaved roads, and who then take a popular economy-car made for smooth highways and replace its axles and wheels by those made for a pick-up truck. The customers might use these products if nothing else is available, but they will be looking for – or give up looking for – others that better meet the needs of their particular situation. A basic theme of this book is that texts are shaped and interpreted in terms of the situations and goals of the participants in communication. As well as contributing to the publication of a text, translation personnel can contribute to the important task of helping to understand the text. They can

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help producers and users of Bible translations to understand communicative dynamics reflected in the Scriptures and to appreciate the intercultural challenges of communicating these Scriptures to contemporary audiences. Bible translators are not solely concerned with mediating between ancient and contemporary cultures. They have always been mediators between contemporary (sub-)cultures as well. This is most evident in their dealing with versions produced in international languages for audiences with relatively high degrees of literacy, formal education and, often, use of and instruction in the Scriptures. This role of mediating between contemporary cultures expands and becomes increasingly complex as other Scripture products, such as videos, computer programs, or portions on specific topics, are presented globally as models for communicating the Scriptures, although they were initially shaped for particular audiences, often affluent Western ones. Bible distributors unable to afford the first-copy costs46 of such productions are tempted to distribute subsidized copies originally produced for audiences from different sociocultural situations than their own audiences. Well-trained translators could help adapt these products for the various communication situations particular to their own countries or to develop alternative, creative, excellent, affordable and appropriate products.

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2.5 Graphic representation of the communication model We here consider a graphic representation of the model of communication suggested in the above discussion, which was organized in view of the model’s components. The extremes of ‘easy’ and ‘difficult’ communication situations are represented in separate diagrams, although in terms of the same model. An electronic representation of the model would show shifting constellations of the various components, representing changes occurring within or in response to acts of communication.

2.5.1 Easy communication We first represent an ‘Easy communication’ situation (Figure 7).

Figure 7: (Extremely) Easy Communication

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In this easy communication situation, a speaker, with certain goals formed in view of the immediate speech situation, as understood in terms of socio-cultural and organizational frames of reference, selects a certain array of signs and sends it as a text composed of signs. A hearer, participating in the same speech situation and sharing the same goals, perceives the text, selects which aspects of it to respond to, based on the same rules of interpretation followed by the speaker, and continues the communication process by sending texts (verbal or nonverbal) to the first speaker, who becomes hearer and/or doer, and/or to another hearer/doer(s). The horizontal arrows and the oval surrounding text represent the channel or medium by which the text is sent and perceived. In this easy communication situation, the shared sociocultural frames enable the participants to share the same codes and rules for interpretation. (Again, ‘Speaker’ and ‘Hearer’ are used for ease of presentation, but the model is applicable to communication in any medium.) The model explicitly identifies three basic realms of experience shaping a communication event: sociocultural, organizational and that of the immediate communication situation. The organizational and communication situation frames are embedded within the relatively more complex and less observable sociocultural ones. A diagram such as Figure 7 risks trivializing the specified notions – not to mention those that must be swept under, for example, the sociocultural label: economics, history, language, etc. But not to represent any framing factors runs the greater risk of diminishing appreciation for the context-dependent nature of communication in general, and translation in particular.

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2.5.2 Differences communication

from

earlier

models

of

Before going on to represent ‘difficult communication’ situations, we note significant differences between how this model depicts the communication situation and how models in previous discussions of Bible translation have done so: 1. Perhaps most importantly, the frames of reference influencing interpretation and formulation of goals are explicitly represented as fundamental to the communicative process. 2. The organizational context is identified as having a crucial role. 3. The arrow extending from the speaker towards the hearer does not arrive at the hearer; the degree to which the speaker’s goals are met, with regard to the interpretation of the sent text, is dependent on the hearer’s frames of reference, perceptions, and goals, as well as on how the speaker has shaped the text. 4. The hearer’s goals for participating in the speech event are represented as being as important as the speaker’s. 5. The centrality of exchange in communication is represented. 6. ‘TEXT signs’, that is, a text composed of verbal and/ or nonverbal signs, replaces ‘message’. 7. The notions of ‘message’ and ‘noise’ are not represented because of their ambiguous, if not misleading, uses in translation literature.

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These aspects have been discussed in the preceding sections, apart from ‘noise’. ‘Noise’ is a notion of information theory, assuming the mechanical, transmission model of communication. It refers to what affects the channel of transmission so that signals are not received as sent. For example, solar flares cause static in a radio transmission and prevent the listener from hearing the broadcaster’s message; an overused ribbon in a financially strapped office renders unreadable the second paragraph of a long-awaited fax. Writers have attempted to apply this notion to Bible translation but overextended its use from the strictly material sense in which it was originally used to a psychological one, as in the statement “usually more important than physical noise is what may be called ‘psychological noise’: preoccupation, worry, boredom, and emotive opposition to the content or to the source of a message” (de Waard and Nida 1986:19).47 This reflects another aspect of the ‘powerful-message’ assumptions discussed above (section 2.1.2.2): the audience’s opposition to a message is viewed as being due to noise in the head, which should be eradicated so that the message will be received as intended. What has been referred to as psychological noise is much better treated in terms of differing frames of reference. If the notion of noise is to be kept at all, it should refer only to physical interference with transmission of a text, an interference that would be readily recognized by all parties involved as unintentional and undesirable, such as water damage of New Testaments during shipping.48

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2.5.3 Difficult communication Figure 7 represents one extreme of a continuum of communication situations. The closest one could come to it would be in a closed society with continual, close personal contact. Figure 8 represents the other extreme: the hearer perceives and responds to the signs sent by the speaker but there are only minimal links with regard to the communication situation and vast differences in the frames of reference for formulating and interpreting the text and deciding how to respond to them. The degree of difficulty in communicating by translation will depend in part on the degree to which the frames of the translator and of the target audience overlap with those of the biblical texts. Little overlap in some areas may be offset by great overlap in other areas. For example, extreme differences in linguistic systems might be offset by similarities in other important cultural practices and values. Initial difficulty in understanding biblical customs and means of expression might be offset by a high motivation to learn about them.

Figure 8: (Extremely) difficult communication.

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Speaker’s frames are represented by solid lines; Hearer’s by dotted lines. Specified elements pertaining to Speaker’s production of a text are in regular font; those pertaining to Hearer’s interpretation are in italics. For ease of presentation, the element of exchange is not represented. The extreme of difficult communication via translation would be in the increasingly rare situation of an outsider trying to represent a text to members of a socioculturally isolated people group having little sociocultural and no organizational links with the producers of the text to be translated. In this situation, the outsider-translator works to understand how the potential audience’s language system is used and understood in contemporary situations and then how it might be used to represent biblical texts. Much more typical (at least in terms of potential audience population figures) are those situations in which the Bible translator is a member of the culture of the target audience, sharing organizational (especially church) ties with the producers of the texts. The communication situation becomes easier because the translator has mother-tongue mastery of the language of translation and an understanding of how the language is used that outsiders rarely achieve. Further the organizational links between the cultures of the producers and audience have resulted in the development of common frames of reference facilitating the communication task. In this kind of situation, translators must still study their culture and language, to exploit their riches as much as possible, but this study and its applications can be much more in-depth and creative than in the first situation. Often, in this kind of situation, translators’ most pressing need is increased 125

understanding of the frames within which the ancient texts were produced and of how the ancient producers’ used language to portray their concerns. A key task for training translators is expanding their frames for appreciating the source text; a key task for training members of the target audience is expanding their frames for appreciating the translated text(s). Figure 9 depicts the translator as a mediator between the producers of a source text and an audience for the translated text. Of course, the figure greatly oversimplifies the Bible translator’s situation since multiple cultures, communities and communication situations are involved, as pointed out in the next chapter (and in section 2.1.1). However, it can provide a useful starting point for discussion.49 A definition of translation in terms of this model might be: Translation is a process in which a text Y is produced with the basic goal of enhancing an audience’s appreciation for a text X, undertaken because the producers of text Y believe that its intended audience cannot satisfactorily appreciate text X’s signs, due to the lack of sufficient overlap between the frames of text Y’s intended audience and the frames of the producers and audience of text X. ‘Appreciation … appreciate’ is used, in a broad sense, rather than ‘understanding … understand’ since the latter term would accentuate the goal of

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Figure 9: The translator as mediator using a translation for informational purposes, only one of a variety of goals for producing and using translations, as the previous sections have indicated.50

2.6 Conclusion To return to Carey’s observation (section 2.3.3): communication involves community and commonality. The Bible translator is an intermediary between several communities, identifiable in highly general terms, and numerous sub-communities: • Faith communities providing frameworks for interpreting and using the Bible; • Communities of Scripture producers: writers, transcribers, copyists, editors and publishers united over more than 2000 years in the common cause of recording how people in biblical communities perceived, responded to, and interacted with the divine and with people of other communities; • Parachurch organizations: working for the publication and use of Scriptures; • Secular communities: not necessarily interested in belonging to a faith community but perhaps interested in the Bible as literature, a cultural-historical document, or a source of ethnic or linguistic pride; • Academic and /or political communities influencing matters such as orthography and literacy.

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Each of these communities shapes the translator’s frames of reference for understanding what the document to be translated says and how to represent it. The translator can in turn influence the frames of reference of members of the communities, reinforcing, challenging, expanding or modifying them. Between representatives of these communities and translators there are varying degrees of commonality with regard to matters such as language use, goals, respect for and adherence to tradition, understanding of biblical notions and motivation to use Scriptures. The study of communication should help translators understand these commonalities and differences and how to make decisions in view of them. This understanding will provide a foundation for evaluating the options available for treating the traditional foci of translation studies, such as grammatical restructuring, figurative language and key terms.51

Notes 1

My thanks to the following for their careful reading of earlier versions of this chapter and for their helpful comments: Carlo Buzzetti, Eric Hermanson, Phil Noss, Don Slager, Jan Sterk, Phil Stine, Ernst Wendland and Lynell Zogbo. 2

See the citation of James Carey in section 2.3.3.

3

The text is the whole of the conversational turns of different speakers, like a game is the whole of the moves of the players. As pointed out in great detail by the

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ethnomethodoligists, these interactions can be characterized in terms of rules and structures understood and exploited – or negotiated – by the participants (for an overview, see Schiffrin 1988). 4

It might be helpful for translators, and their audiences as well, to consider how the translator’s role compares to that of reporters expected to accurately and objectively depict foreign affairs. How do the reporters’ use of quotes and explanations of events compare to what the translator must do? In the most common approach to Bible translation, the translator is, in a sense, one who attempts to provide direct quotes of the writers and editors of the biblical texts, as pointed out by Gutt (1991/2000) in his discussion of ‘Direct quotation … and direct translation’ (chs. 6 and 7). There is increasing agreement that accompanying explanations are crucial for understanding the quotes. These explanations may be in the form of notes or aids accompanying the translation, supplementary publications, or presentations by members of interested communities. A reporter’s explanations usually take up more space or time than direct quotes of key players in an event. Generally, the opposite is true for translators. But some study Bibles (for example, the New International Version and La Traduction Oecuménique de la Bible) give more space to explanations, in the form of footnotes, than to the ‘quote’ of Paul’s letter to the people of Rome. How motivated would people be to read a newspaper in the format of most study Bibles? Discussing normative theories of performance in mass media, McQuail (1994:145) says that “the most central concept in relation to information quality has probably been that of objectivity … The main features are: adopting a position of detachment and neutrality towards the object of 130

reporting (thus an absence of subjectivity or personal involvement); lack of partisanship (not taking sides in matters of dispute or showing bias); attachment to accuracy and other truth criteria (such as relevance and completeness); and lack of ulterior motive or service to a third party. The process of observing and reporting should, thus, not be contaminated by subjectivity, nor should it interfere with the reality being reported on.” How does the value of objectivity in reporting work out in practice, and what are parallels in translation? What is the relationship between reporting and editorializing? 5

As the textual critic Sanders says: “… every translation was intended to serve the needs of the community for which it was translated. This is sometimes the case even for copies of the Hebrew text itself, as with the large Isaiah scroll, and most of the Qumran biblical texts. Every tradent, whether copyist or translator, had a concept of what the text he or she was handing on meant; and his or her concept of the text of necessity was lodged in the cultural thought forms of the tradent and the community served” (1999:524). 6

For example, secular scientists shaping our understanding of the creation account, or culturally approved behaviour overriding biblical norms. 7

This presentation assumes that the quantity of interactions will influence how translators perceive and perform their tasks. One key question is how to maximize quality of interactions when they must be fewer than desirable, due to limited resources. 8

In diagram 3, there is basically no interaction between the marketing manager, the translators and the intended audience, 131

until it is time to sell the printed publication, a situation I have frequently witnessed. But there can be considerable interaction. One colleague informs me: “In [one country], the publisher may insist that a church pay ahead of time for a shipment of New Testaments or Bibles; until this is done, they don’t start the translation.” 9

This last definition of message is given in Nida and Taber (1969:203): it is another, rather dramatic indication of the untenability of their communication model. Nida and Taber seem to use interchangeably ‘reproducing the message’ and ‘reproduc[ing] the significance of [the] source-language expression’ (ibid:12), and ‘meaning’ and ‘content’: “To preserve the content of the message the form must be changed … The extent to which the forms much be changed to preserve the meaning will depend upon …” (ibid:5); “meaning must be given priority … the content of the message … is of prime importance …” (ibid:13). de Waard and Nida (1986:35) are similarly ambiguous: “universal nature of the message … real significance of a statement … universal implications of the good news.” 10

This simple definition would be viewed by many semioticians as wrongly equating the signifier or sign-vehicle with the sign – the relationship between the signifier and the signified. However, the proposed definition is pedagogically advantageous in that it corresponds to common uses of the word ‘sign’ and allows for application of important insights from semiotics. “In everyday language, there are no words to distinguish between sign vehicle and the sign … Even Saussure and Peirce did not consistently distinguish between signifier and sign …” (Nöth 1990:79). de Waard and Nida (1986:60ff) use ‘sign’ in the sense that we propose. 132

11

The blurb for the 2000 edition of Gutt’s book refers to his “call to move from semiotics to an inferential paradigm of communication”; it is hard to discover what is meant by this since neither the detailed index nor the table of contents contains an entry for ‘semiotics’ or ‘signs’. Semiotics is an extremely diversified area of study and it seems unnecessary to dichotomize between the study of signs and the study of inferential processes. 12

Discussions of semiotics in view of Bible translation are in Hodgson (1997), Aichele (1997) and de Waard and Nida (1986:73-77). For general, reader-friendly introductions to semiotics see de Saussure (1959[1916]:65-78; Eco (1976); Nöth (1990). A delightful lesson on semiotics is Eco’s (1983) novel The Name of the Rose. In his introduction to lexical semantic analysis, heavily influenced by Wierzbicka (see section 4.3 in this book), Goddard (1998:10) describes his approach as “semiotic or translational … ‘translational because … you give the meaning of one expression by way of a translation into another, more easily understood expression … ‘semiotic’ because the world of ‘signs’ [is taken] as irreducible.” 13

Using Pierce’s (1958[1904]:391) much-cited typology but with my paraphrase of the definition for each type; Pierce’s phrases are put in quotes. 14

Part of their diagram in 1969:23. The rest of the diagram depicts the translator comparing “the real or presumed comprehension of M1 by R1 with the comprehension of M2 by the average receptor R2” (ibid:23). Barnwell (1986:30), Larson (1984[1998:4]) and Sundersingh (2001:125) use similar diagrams. 133

15

This also illustrates the problematic nature of the translation goal proposed by Louw (1991:1): to provide “a rendering that will avoid any misunderstanding of the message by the receptors.” 16

My thanks to Hart Wiens and to a participant, whose name I wish I could remember, in the August 2001 conference sponsored by the Bible Society of South Africa (see Tolmie forthcoming) for their comments on this aspect of the model. 17

See for example, Nord in approving reference to Vermeer (1997:25-26, 119-120). But the metaphor is also used in arguments for the translator’s originality, creativity and status; see, for example, Paloposki’s (2001) use of the metaphor (p. 82) and discussion of similar trends in translation studies. 18

For example, Osty aimed for a very literal translation but also “to produce a text for the listener as well as for the reader” (preface, my translation). Of their translation in basic French (the vocabulary being limited to about 3,500 words, readable by an average student of the 3rd or 4th year in primary schools of France), the translators of Parole de Vie said: “We have always worked in view of the text’s being read aloud, in public gatherings or by beginning readers. We have therefore been particularly attentive to the text’s orality” (Diagouraga-Scherrer and Khac-Rivière 2001:32, my translation). 19

For example: Newman (1978, 1980, 1987) and Hollander (1986) on translating for children; The New Reader Translation Manual (n. a. 1992) on translating for audiences acquiring literacy; Transcribing Bibles into Braille manual 134

(n.a. 1987); Large print editions for the visually handicapped (n.a. 1987); Reggy (1980) on translating for the disabled; Sundersingh (2001) on Audio-Based Translation; Soukup and Hodgson (1999) and Hodgson and Soukup (1997) on new media. 20

Applications of the notion to translation are in Neubert and Shreve (1992), Snell-Hornby (1995), Gile (1995) and Katan (1999). Katan’s work is discussed in detail in section 3.1. 21

Gutt’s (1991) application of relevance theory to translation marks the transition from an era in which it was assumed that the psychological processes involved in translation would “simply have to [be taken] for granted” (Nida 1964:146) to the contemporary era in which many look to cognitive studies for better understanding the translation task. His (2000) expansion should be required reading for all Bible translation consultants. Our book, including this chapter on communication, focuses more on outside-the-head aspects of translation than does Gutt’s work; we also indicate cognitive studies outside of a relevance theory framework that can contribute to our understanding of the translation process (especially in chapters 3 and 4). I view our work as complementing, rather than competing against, Gutt’s and that of others who are exploring applications of relevance theory to translation. 22

As briefly indicated in section 2.2.4.2.

23

Yorke’s (2000) ‘Bible translation: an Afrocentric perspective’ and Crisp’s (forthcoming) discussion of the Russian Orthodox view of Scriptures are notable exceptions.

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Much attention is given to this matter in secular translation studies, as indicated in sections 1.4.5 and 1.4.7. 24

The importance of looking at the organizational framework of a translation project has been mainly brought out in studies of secular translation over the past couple of decades. In Bible translation, it has sometimes been mentioned, but often more as an appendix than as a primary factor influencing the translation project. One important, contemporary school of translation holds that it is the skopos of a project, identified in organizational terms, that is the primary determinant for evaluating a translation. From this perspective, the primary question is not “How faithfully has a translator rendered a source-text metaphor?” but “How well have translators fulfilled the brief given to them by their employer?” Of course, part of the employer’s brief may be “Translate metaphors according to one of the following options”, but it is important to recognize that this is indeed a brief, organizationally influenced, if not determined. (See section 1.4.1 for further discussion of the Skopostheorie School.) 25

For overviews of the notion of organizational culture, see S. Robbins (2000) and Hodgetts and Luthans (2000). For studies from the perspective of organizational communication, see for example, Bantz (1993), Mead (1990), and Mumby (1988). 26

S. Robbins (ibid:153), evidently indirectly citing Kanter (1979). Robbins devotes a chapter of his book to ‘Power and politics.’ Mumby (1988) provides a more detailed study. For other studies from a communication perspective, see, for example, Orbe (1998) and Kova–¥… (1995).

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27

In claiming that translation ‘imposes’ meaning, Bassnett seems to make ‘powerful message’ assumptions (1.1.3) and understate the power of the audience. However, the ‘concealing of’ and ‘enmeshment in’ power relations involved in the translation process has been demonstrated in a wide variety of studies of translation. 28

One national translation organization has for nearly twenty years given taxing financial support for an inefficiently run project that, finally near its end, will result in a ‘translation’ that is little more than a mediocre revision of a missionary translation. At first, this poor work was tolerated because the funding for it came from an international organization. When the project had to be supported on the national organization’s budget, it was far enough along to encourage hope that it might soon finish, but slowdown tactics of the translation team prevailed, accompanied by complaints about sporadic salary payments, the translators’ churches providing no financial support. Ironically, the coordinator of the project is chief pastor of an enormous, solidly built ‘cathedral’, worth the equivalent of hundreds of thousands of dollars. To build it the members of the local parish raised a large sum of cash and contributed materials and labor. ‘Not one dollar’ came from outside organizations, the pastor proudly says. The director of that Bible Society has a similar story. The head representative of his church, in an area considered to be one of the poorest in the country, received a visit from a government official and had to do so in the church representative’s house “with children and chickens running in and out”. This was a great embarrassment to the church so they decided to build a respectable office. They planned a fund-raiser with the slogan, using the dollar equivalent, “$10,000 in one year”. They met their goal in three months 137

and ended up with enough money to also buy a vehicle for the church leadership. It might be worthwhile to investigate how such stories of power and independence in some church projects relate to claims of dependence on outside funding with regard to translation projects. 29

Hymes 1974:1-66. My adaptation of his explanations of each key phrase in the acronym. 30

This table is based on one in Wilt (forthcoming).

31

Jakobson (1987[1960]:64). The quote continues: “but the aims are different and the conformity of the means used to the effect aimed at is a problem that evermore preoccupies inquirers into the diverse kinds of verbal communication.” Translators are certainly among those inquirers! 32

These functions are similar to those listed by Jakobson; the explanations are mine since Hymes does not give any in this article. Examples of other lists are Searle’s (1976): Representative, Directive, Commissive, Expressive, Declarative; and de Waard and Nida’s (1986:25-32): expressive, emotive, interpersonal, informative, imperative, performative, aesthetic, cognitive. A more fine-grained list, such as the one given in section 4.4.2, can facilitate the detailed analysis of particular texts and consideration of how to communicate them through translation. 33

This would include devices for textual cohesion and for indicating, respecting, maintaining or negotiating social relationships.

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34

In section 4.6, Ross considers some aspects of discourse and textlinguistic studies. In chapter 6, Wendland discusses representing text producers’ goals at various levels, and refers to some recent studies in this area. 35

This involves the common managerial approach of management by objectives: Management by objectives (MBO) emphasizes participatively set goals that are tangible, verifiable, and measurable … MBO operationalizes the concept of objectives by devising a process by which objectives cascade down through the organization … But … MBO works from the ‘bottom up’ as well as from the ‘top down’ … For the individual employee, MBO provides specific personal performance objectives … If all the individuals achieve their goals, their unit’s goals will be attained and the organization’s overall objectives will become a reality … There are four ingredients common to MBO programs: goal specificity, participative decision making, an explicit time period, and performance feedback. The objectives in MBO should be concise statements of expected accomplishments. It is not enough, for example, merely to state a desire to … improve service, or increase quality … Such desires have to be converted into tangible objectives that can be measured and evaluated (S. Robbins 2000:58). 36

Compare, for example: “The real issue, of course, is not what the Greek or Hebrew text literally ‘says’ but what it actually ‘means’” (Louw 1991:5) and “Meaning always takes priority over the form … Meaning also has priority over a perceived beauty of style” (principle for a translation project cited by Williams 2000:211-212).

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37

This example is taken from Wilt 1998. The tension involved in representing lower and higher level goals is further discussed in chapter 6. Also, see the last paragraph of section 1.4.1. 38

Markedness refers to the relative frequency and complexity of closely related linguistic structures (e.g. unmarked ‘lion’ and marked ‘lioness’; unmarked ‘I went to the store’ and marked ‘It is the store that I went to.’). Structures are marked for communicative purposes. See section 1.4.3. 39

An important exception is Soukup’s discussions of translation in non-print media (1999:226ff; 1997:92, 98). 40

“In the prototypical ritual, the actor is a member of a community for whom the order of signs is powerful … Rituals vary in formality … from relatively loose celebrations … to very strictly scripted occasions of the greatest solemnity in which variance of procedure will be considered morally wrong or even dangerous. In all ritual there is an emphasis on form, on the sequence of signs … independent of the actor. So a ritual order of signs is a condition in the environment of the actor.” (Tambiah 1985:65-66) 41

Crisp (forthcoming) explains:

Orthodox tradition views language as an intrinsically inadequate tool for comprehending the holy, and therefore as performing verbally a symbolic role analogous to that enacted visually by icons. Just as the icon makes no claim to be a photographic – or even essentially pictorial – depiction of the scene or event it represents, but rather a window onto the timeless reality to which it testifies and a mysterious means of 140

mediating that reality to the worshipper, so the language of Scripture cannot be a series of logical propositions with a single intended meaning: instead “it is intentionally polyvalent, having several intended meanings, because what is being communicated is generally too complex to be communicated in clear and simple statements. It is not that kind of language” (Sanford 1986:31). … An Orthodox approach would tend to maintain in some way the status of the text as a window onto another world by preserving a sense of the distance between the (modern) reader and the (ancient) text, and by marking in some way the inherent strangeness or otherness of that text. 42

One of the goals “from the beginning of the project” was “to preserve some measure of continuity with the long tradition of translating the Scriptures into English” (preface). 43

“Even Wycliffe and Tyndale could not translate some terms or expressions the way they knew they really should because there was already a church tradition and usage they could not go against. They, too, were afraid of the pastors.” (Philip Stine, personal communication) 44

Jan Sterk has developed a computer program for estimating time-lines for a project and evaluating a team’s progress. Available from UBS, it runs on Microsoft Excel. 45

For example: Thomas (1983) and Zogbo (2001) on general principles for selecting and producing texts for special audiences; Thomas (1996) on study Bibles; the UBS handbook on translating for Muslim audiences; the UBS

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Background Paper (Bible Society work with refugees (n.a.1982); plus references given in section 2.1.3. 46

See 2.2.3.2.

47

Similarly, Wendland’s (1990:38) reference to psychological noise: “negative feelings of the receptor regarding the source, e.g. hatred, suspicion, doubt, or lack of respect, or the message itself, e.g. a Muslim’s reaction to the claim that Jesus is the son of God.” Also, Margot (1979:100) gives as examples of psychological noise “a reader’s lack of attention … biases, presuppositions leading to the deformation of what was really said or written.” (my translation) 48

“Recognized by all” is an important qualification. What one participant might like to dismiss as noise may be perceived as a significant sign by another, especially if the relatively powerful producer of a text does little or nothing to repair the noise damage. For example, after long awaiting the first publication of a biblical book in their language, a community received a poorly printed Gospel of Luke: crooked pictures, dropped verses, pages out of sequence, etc. There was no explanation from the publisher, no apology and no offer to make amends; in the view of certain representatives of the publisher, this was unfortunate noise due to the incompetent and/or dishonest work of certain employees of the organization, who were later dismissed. In the view of the intended audience, however, the signs signified financial exploitation of and lack of concern for their group; in the view of other audiences, who had seen attractive publications for neighboring language groups, it

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evoked a humiliating assessment of the project members’ ability to produce quality materials. 49

A PowerPoint type of presentation can represent various degrees of overlapping and expanding frames, at different stages in the translation process, and similarities and differences in goals. 50

A more concise definition of translation is proposed in the conclusion to this book. 51

Various scenarios concerning the structure, goals, communication lines and translation approach of projects are illustrated in Appendix F.

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3. The Role of Culture in Translation ROBERT BASCOM1 Understanding the influence of culture on the production, understanding and communication of the Scriptures is of course a fundamental concern of Bible translators. Books such as Nida (1954), Smalley (1967), Nida and Reyburn (1981), Wendland (1987) and van der Jagt (forthcoming) indicate the ongoing concern to understand the cultural dynamics of translation. Consultants with little background in cultural studies would benefit from reading through these works in the early stages of their training. Works such as these indicate the pervasiveness and depth of implicit knowledge and values within a culture and how cultural frameworks influence the understanding of and communicating about materials originating from other cultures. The task of cross-cultural communication involved in Bible translation is especially daunting in view of the multiplicity of cultures involved. One translation project might involve: • The culture of the text, different in different parts of the Bible, but more or less definable for any specific passage;

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• The culture of translation consultants, often outsiders to the cultures they work with, and usually having had their attitudes toward and understanding of Scriptures filtered through western academic experience and training; • The culture(s) of the language(s) used in communication between consultants and translators (for example, the Hispanic culture in Latin America); • The culture(s) of the translator(s); • Neighbouring and national cultures of the translators that differ from those mentioned above. In the first part of this chapter, we give an overview of Katan’s (1999) introduction to culture and translation and briefly discuss Lakoff’s (1987) study of psychological and cultural influences on the categorization of experience. In the second part of the chapter, we consider how various lexical items are framed within a culture and how the cognitive mapping of lexical relationships overlap and diverge between cultures. We look briefly at some examples from contemporary cultures, then, in more detail, at two basic biblical notions.

3.1 Katan’s Translating Cultures The relationship between language (and therefore, translation) and culture has been discussed at length by linguists, social scientists, and philosophers of language for many years now. The most famous of these earlier discussions was centred around the so-called Sapir-Whorf hypothesis, which claimed (in various versions and forms) that language was crucially culture-bound. An obvious implication of the strong version

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of this hypothesis is that nothing like real equivalence is possible in translation. But this idea has met with only limited acceptance among. In fact for a time the consensus seemed to be building that linguistic expression could and did exist more or less independently of cultural considerations. But recently the pendulum of scholarly opinion seems to be swinging back to at least a weak version of the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis. Katan (1999) has documented this history and especially the recent shifts admirably in his book Translating Cultures. He organizes his discussion around the idea of cultural frames, and more importantly, around the concept of framing as an activity, important notions in the model of communication developed for our own book (see especially section 2.2). For Katan, culture itself is not simply a static frame, context or background against which linguistic expression must be understood. “Culture here is viewed as a dynamic process, constantly being negotiated by those involved” (p. 21). Linguists have long been used to the idea that words and their referents are matters negotiated by speakers within a given cultural frame. But students of culture are now saying the same thing about the frames themselves, and including linguistic expression itself as part of the activity of framing. This approach places culture (understood dynamically) at the centre of any understanding of language and, thus, translation. In the book’s first section ‘Framing Culture: the Culture-Bound Mental Map of the World’, Katan uses several images from past discussion to describe various aspects of culture (layers, onion, iceberg). The point of each image is to distinguish the parts of culture that are readily visible (customs, behaviours, artifacts, etc.) from those which are hidden from view (values, norms, beliefs, 146

etc). The latter presumably motivate the former, yet are precisely what is taken for granted by members of a society. The very unexamined nature of underlying values and beliefs is part of what makes them available for use as the underlying grid of culture. If these values, beliefs and norms were made explicit and debated, they could no longer be assumed when making culture-specific arguments. Thus a question such as ‘Is that any way to act?’ loses it’s force as a reminder of accepted cultural boundaries if the participants treat it as the starting point for a discussion not of the behaviour, but of the norm itself. Of course norms, beliefs, and values are debatable and debated. But usually this kind of conflict happens indirectly, and often simply by means of establishing personal identity and group allegiance (pp. 62ff). Thus conflicting external behaviours are often not seen so much as arbitrary choices people make but rather as a matter of who they are and with whom they wish to associate. The bases of the cultural judgements made about behaviours are not likely to be subject to examination, nor are they likely to be made explicit. If someone does not agree with a judgement about a culture-specific behaviour, it is assumed that either that person is ignorant of how to act properly, or flouting what ‘everyone’ knows is the right way to act (‘the rules’). In any case, such a person has placed himself outside the group, either by choice or by ignorance. Katan (pp. 80ff) describes what he calls ‘lexical and conceptual gaps’ mostly in terms of a mismatch between the differing cultural experiences of individuals. Either a specific term can be ‘missing’ (such as a single specific term for ‘older sibling’ which many languages have, but not English), 147

or a concept itself (illustrated in my discussion of several Hebrew terms and their underlying concepts in section 3.5). The problems posed for translation in such cases are normally of a practical sort, since almost anything can be explained in another language, even if it cannot be ‘translated’, if translated means saying the same thing in about the same number of words.2 A more serious problem for translation is differing categorization/evaluation of the same or similar terms or concepts. Katan cites a study comparing what American college students associate with the term ‘United States’ and what Mexican college students associate with ‘Estados Unidos’. The results indicated the problematic nature of using these terms as ‘equivalents’ in translation: For the North Americans, ‘United States’ has a fairly technical meaning in terms of ‘states’ and ‘America’; there is also a strong feeling of … patriotism. For the Mexicans, ‘United States’ is anything but technical. The lexical item cues historic frames of exploitation and war, as well as comparative frames … [representing] what Mexico does not have: … wealth, power and development. (p. 75) Katan notes that these associations, while part of cultural patterns, are largely ‘out-of-awareness’, or part of the hidden aspects of culture, and therefore are difficult for translators coming from outside cultures to discover and take account of. It may be that a continuum of associations exists for linguistic expression from denotation (direct referent) through connotation and evocation (close associations with other referents, including feelings and values, and the stirring up of such feelings and values). As Katan states:

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There are two points to be made here. First how languages convey meaning is related to the culture. Secondly, though languages can convey concepts from other cultures, people (including translators and interpreters) tend not to realize that their perception (through language) is, in fact, bound by their culture. (p. 86) According to Katan (and those he cites), much of the cultural framework needed for understanding even everyday linguistic expressions is influenced by how humans tend to process sensory input. Research stemming from Gestalt theory indicates that frames and signs (including linguistic signs) interact dynamically in the creation of communication events. Signs evoke frames (‘Ladies and gentlemen’ signals a formal beginning to a public event), and frames are tried out provisionally (Is it a joke? Is he serious?) to interpret emerging signs. These processes take place very rapidly in communication, with incomplete data constantly being processed on the sensory side, and provisional frames constantly being constructed, discarded, and replaced on the cognitive side: “…sensory signals are encouraged to fit preconceptions, and our general strategy is to use the information gained from the sensory system as a cue for representation, rather than as the representation itself” (p. 91). Cloze tests (where every nth word is dropped from each sentence of a text to test comprehension) support this kind of hypothesis, as do various kinds of optical illusions. Katan refers to Brown and Yule’s (1983:64) ‘Principle of Analogy’ operative in the processing of discourse, “suggesting that we interpret according to past experience of similar genres, and that we naturally expect things to conform to previous experience.” (p. 91)

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This happens at many different levels. For example, going through a fast-food drive-through window in the U.S. can be an unsettling experience the first time. What comes out of the speaker is usually nearly unintelligible, due to several factors (all-weather speaker system, second-language speaker of English taking the order, outside noise, etc.). But for those who have experienced the context before, the expectation is that the stream of sounds coming from the speaker will be ‘May I take your order?’ or something very close to it. So we tend to hear and understand that, or at least pretend that we do. That ‘understanding’ comes from knowing the context and what to expect, and not from actually hearing the linguistic components of the communication. But it is precisely that shared part of the semantic iceberg under the surface of verbal expression that is often lacking in cross-cultural communication. And it is a large part of what makes translation so difficult. Katan refers to the idea of mental maps or models which impose order on the raw data of the world we live in. These maps “to be useful … must generalize, distort and delete what is real” (p. 92). This view of understanding and communication becomes crucial for his view of what happens in translation as well. In the second section of his book Shifting Frames: Translation and Mediation in Theory and Practice, Katan takes up the problem of cross-cultural translation directly, arguing that the notion of frames and framing (pp. 123-125) leads not only to an understanding of translation that moves beyond the ‘particularly influential’ model of Nida and Taber (p. 123) but also to an understanding of the translator as a cultural mediator:

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… an essential difference between a traditional translator and a mediator is the mediator’s ability to understand and create frames. The mediator will be able to understand the frames of interpretation in the source culture and will be able to produce a text which would create a similar set of interpretation frames to be accessed in the target reader’s mind. (p. 125) In practical terms, Katan proposes to deal with the problem of cultural mediation in translation by various techniques, most of which have been employed by translators at some level for some time. He builds upon his concepts of generalization, deletion and distortion at the perceptual level and applies them to translation. The crucial difference between Katan’s approach and that of earlier ones is that he includes and even foregrounds the context (frames) of culture with regard to what is being generalized, deleted, and distorted.3 In his third and final section ‘The Array of Frames: Communication Orientations’, Katan portrays various aspects of cultural frames and attempts to classify them. He begins with the idea of cultural myths and their uses. He describes ‘real culture’ as obscured by two layers of perception – one by natives of a culture about their own culture, and the other the perception by those same individuals of other cultures (pp. 161-167) Putting aside for a moment the difficulty in defining ‘real culture’ from any objective point of view, Katan makes an important point. While U.S. citizens would by and large most likely classify their own culture as egalitarian, for example, an outsider might well classify it as hierarchically structured based on material wealth. Katan argues that the role of a translator/cultural mediator is to correct these distortions, or to at least clearly communicate the differing

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points of view to the different parties involved in cross-cultural communication. Katan claims that cultural myths are indirect expressions of cultural orientations and values. And it is these orientations that form the patterns of our perceptual maps and communicative frames. “It is our orientations which govern how perception is generalized, and deleted”, Katan says, using the glass half-empty/half-full image as a well-known example of a basic orientation (p. 167). Again it is the part of the understanding or communication that is out-of-awareness, the part of the cultural iceberg that is underwater, which determines the explicit expression, and to which the explicit in fact refers. Katan uses the ideas of Hall4 and others to attempt to sort out some of the different kinds of cultural orientations of which he is aware (pp. 170ff). For the most part, Katan cites examples only from European-based cultures. But even there he finds many differences in orientation. Whether having to do with time, space, relations to others and the environment, or activity in general, cultures refer to the same data but with differing evaluations and associations. As most travellers well know, seemingly straightforward definitions of activities such as ‘being on time’ or ‘standing in line’ are anything but straightforward, and in fact are not activities as such at all, but evaluations of activities based on cultural orientations. In attempting a preliminary taxonomy of cultures, Katan refers to a variety of continua (though he presents them as binary opposites) to describe differing cultural orientations. Thus such opposing orientations as high context/low context, formal/informal, implicit/explicit, polite/impolite, author/ 152

addressee, direct/indirect are discussed in terms of how they contribute to a culture’s uniqueness and can make cross-cultural communication difficult. When attempting to produce irony, for example, different means are used in different cultures. In English the (Gricean) maxim of quality will be flouted (that is, the opposite of the truth will be said); but in Arabic the maxim of quantity (as well as quality) will be flouted for the same purpose, that is, the speaker will take a much longer time to say the opposite of the truth, and it is the length that gives away the irony (p. 212, referring to Hatim and Mason). Katan ends his book with an attempt to deal with both non-verbal communication and cultural orientations to action. In so doing Katan recognizes that non-verbal communication is ‘… still not fully catalogued’, and that it must mostly be related to linguistic expression to be analyzed in detail. As to the relation of non-verbal communication and action orientations to linguistic expression, he quotes Hasan’s (1984) claim that “there is a culture-specific semiotic style … a congruence, a parallelism between verbal and non-verbal behavior, both of which are informed by the same set of beliefs, values, and attitudes” (p. 235). Katan ends his book by changing the question with which he began. He began by asking what the cultural factor looked like in the act of translation, and ends by suggesting that: culture is not a factor, but is the framework (the context) within which all communication takes place. However, the emphasis on the frame itself will depend on the level of the culture… the context of culture becomes more important as

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we move from technical to out-of-awareness uses of language. (p. 241) This observation is critical for those involved in Bible translation, since the use of language in the Bible as well as about the Bible is so bound up with (cultural) values, beliefs and orientations.

3.2 Women, Fire, and Dangerous Things In his groundbreaking book Women, Fire, and Dangerous Things (1987), Lakoff uses concepts from cognitive psychology and linguistics to develop his own provocative approach to human thought and communication, beginning with the way in which people construct categories. To begin with, he builds on the work of Rosch and others concerning prototype effects. Researchers have noticed for some time that when humans categorize, there will often be a central member (or members) of the set that will be considered to be a better example than others, depending on the frame. He cites Wittgenstein: “Someone says to me: ‘Show the children a game.’ I teach them gaming with dice, and the other says ‘I didn’t mean that sort of a game’” (p. 17). Lakoff goes on to state that “dice is not a very good example of a game”. He seems to mean that dice is not a good example of a game that one ought to teach to children. Thus prototype effects are related directly to the frame one uses to categorize. An extension of the basic prototype idea is that of ‘centrality gradience’, which means that the members of any (radial) set 154

will fall along a line (or radiate) from ‘better’ examples of the set to ‘worse’ examples. Another key to Lakoff’s approach to categorization is the idea of ‘basic level structures’: “a particular name, at a particular level of categorization, ‘has superior status. While a dime can be called a coin or money or a 1952 dime, we somehow feel that dime is its real name’” (p. 31, citing R. Brown). Other examples might include thinking first of dog rather than of boxer or mammal, or of flower instead of petunia or plant. These basic level structures seem to be a middle entry-level category, with room to move either up or down. Lakoff relates this phenomenon to human bodily experience with the world. That is, he believes that basic level structures have much to do with the human sensory interface with the natural environment (pp. 31-40). But again these structures are subject to frames, whether natural, cultural, or communicative. One of the most counterintuitive notions Lakoff advances with regard to categorization has to do with family resemblances. Here he borrows his ideas from Wittgenstein and extends them: Members of a family resemble one another in various ways: they may share the same build or the same facial features, the same hair color, eye color, or temperament, and the like. But there need be no single collection of properties shared by everyone in the family. Games, in this respect, are like families. Chess and go both involve competition, skill, and the use of long-term strategies. Chess and poker both involve competition. Poker and old maid are both card games. In short, games, like family members, are similar to one another 155

in a wide variety of ways. That, and not a single, well-defined collection of common properties, is what makes game a category. (p. 16) Lakoff, developing notions such as Fillmore’s frame semantics, speaks of idealized cognitive models (ICMs). He uses the concept of the week as an example: “Our model of a week is idealized. Seven-day weeks do not exist objectively in nature. They are created by human beings. In fact, not all cultures have the same kinds of weeks” (p. 69); Lakoff proceeds to describe a very complex Balinese calendric system. But, he argues, ICMs also work at the basic level of lexical semantics. He takes up Fillmore’s example of the term bachelor. He points out that while most people would think of this word as referring to an adult single man, it does not properly describe unmarried men in long-term live-in relationships, nor the (rare) case of an adult male raised outside of any contact with human society, or a Muslim man with three wives but not yet a (permitted) fourth, or the Pope: “In other words, bachelor is defined with respect to an ICM in which there is a human society with (typically monogamous) marriage, and a typical marriageable age” (p. 70). With this ICM (or cultural frame) in place, the idea of bachelor as an adult single man works rather well. It is the ICM itself that fits the world imperfectly, or more accurately, only fits well according to one set of cultural assumptions. Again, prototype effects (i.e. what is a good example of a bachelor?) are dependent on the frame within which a given concept is being considered. But not all frames are such obvious cultural constructs as the ICMs Lakoff describes. Some are more basic to the way that humans interact with the world, though even here they tend to 156

be culturally relative. Lakoff calls one such category of frame image schemas. One of his examples is the Japanese classifier hon. Hon is commonly used to classify long thin shapes, such as sticks, trees, rope, and so on. But it is also used to classify telephone calls, baseball hits, and ping-pong rallies. While one can easily see how the long-thin image can be extended to such cases (i.e. how the cases are motivated), it would be nearly impossible to predict such cases. Prototype effects combine with metonymic reasoning in unpredictable ways to form categories that make sense after the fact but which could never have been foreseen. (pp. 104-105) Lakoff finds other attempts to account for prototype effects lacking. In particular, he critiques theories based on feature bundles. These theories assign binary properties (symbolized as features) to words, for example, and attempt to map a semantic domain from the listing of such properties. A hierarchical ordering of the properties is what is supposed to explain prototype effects (some features are more salient than others). But as Lakoff notes: Since they don’t differentiate background from foreground, they cannot account for the Fillmore (1982a) bachelor examples…they cannot account for the effects that result from metonymic models …[they] cannot provide descriptions of the types of links …[finally] feature bundles cannot describe motivated, conventional extensions that have to be learned one by one, but are motivated by general linking principles. (pp. 115-116) Lakoff illustrates the main themes of his book with a case study of the word over. He uses diagrams to show the variability in the various components making up the meaning 157

of over, such as landmark (shape, extent), trajectory (type of motion), and whether or not any contact is involved. These illustrations point out the similarities between as well as the distinctiveness of each of the various uses of the term (pp. 418-434). Some of his examples are:

It is hard to exaggerate the importance of the ideas presented in Women, Fire, and Dangerous Things and of their impact on research. Many of the problems discussed are due to the complex ways in which humans and cultures categorize, ways which Lakoff has helped us to begin to understand.

3.3 Night, sun and wine Sentences such as the following indicate the difficulty of defining ‘night’ in English: 1. She couldn’t see a thing – it was night. 2. The meeting will be tomorrow night at eight.

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3. The ringing of the phone woke me up in the middle of the night. The first sentence above has dark – light in focus. The second focuses on time of day. And the focus of the third is awake – asleep. Any of these three foci could conceivably be listed as meaning number one in a dictionary, though usually the focus of sentence one is taken as representing the central meaning and the other meanings are taken as radial or secondary. But one only has to be in a place such as Alaska to recognize the limits of this approach. A word by itself does not determine meaning, but rather the frames within which it is used. Just how strong these frames are can be shown by a rewrite of sentence 3: • 4. The ringing of the phone woke me up in the middle of the night. In fact, it was two o’clock in the morning! The simultaneous use of the a.m./p.m. system with ‘night’ results in a morning which is still night. This would doubtless seem as strange to someone unfamiliar with these systems as does the ancient Israelite notion that a day begins in the evening to those outside that cultural framework. Further, the entire set of usages associated with time of day would have to be seriously reworked in cultures unacquainted with timepieces. Going beyond denotation, ‘night’ can and often does connote the other major meanings. Thus the meeting ‘tomorrow night at eight’ may not be in the dark, but somehow the darkness is

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still in the background. Even in Alaska, ‘night’ always has a bit of darkness in the background of its meaning: residents speak of the ‘long night’ of winter and the ‘long day’ of summer, for example. Night time is usually for sleeping; and even when it is light at 3 a.m., people working from 11 p.m. to 7 a.m. would say they work at night, though one might wonder whether some of these associations are recent adaptations to the outside world. Further, ‘night’ can and does evoke a far wider set of meanings, though these are likely to be even more culture-specific than the more basic systems of organization outlined above. Thus feelings of loneliness or fear, or a spooky or ominous atmosphere can be evoked by the word ‘night’.5 Yet nights can also be balmy, tranquil, cool, quiet, peaceful, etc. For some cultures, night may be when spirits or wild animals are about, for good or for evil, and may evoke feelings and associations of which those outside that culture cannot even dream.6 Two other examples of the difficulty in mapping the cultural associations of what on the surface may seem to be uncomplicated terms are from Tzotzil. When the Spanish arrived in southern Mexico, the Mayan ancestors of the Tzotzil Indians were using the terms ‘holy father’ (ch’ul jto’tic) and ‘holy mother’ (ch’ul jme’tic) to refer to the sun and the moon, respectively. Catholic missionaries insisted that they drop the modifier ‘holy’ (ch’ul) and simply use ‘father’ and ‘mother’ to refer to these heavenly bodies. Still many speakers continued to use the traditional full phrase.

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Much later, in the twentieth century, Protestant missionaries arrived, and insisted on a further, more radical change. They introduced ‘day’ (ca’c’al) for sun and ‘month’ (u) for moon. As before, many speakers continued to use the former terms, both those introduced by the Catholics and the original traditional terms. Thus with the passage of time, there developed three distinct sociolinguistic usages: Traditional terms for the sun and moon: ‘holy father’, ‘holy mother’; Catholic terms: ‘father’, ‘mother’; Protestant terms: ‘day’, ‘month’. What was different about these terms was not what they referred to in the real world, but with which group the communication would be associated. In the end, Bible translators used notes to give recognition to the alternative expressions. A different sort of cultural issue in Tzotzil involves the term for wine. The Tzotzils have always had a local drink (pox), but it is not made from grapes. Thus with the arrival of the Spaniards they borrowed the term vino. In time this borrowing came to mean any alcoholic drink, similar in usage to the English verb ‘to drink’ without an object (‘he drinks’). The problem for Bible translators came when they tried to translate the term as it appears in the Bible. In the local Tzotzil setting, social drinking was virtually unknown. If Tzotzils drink any sort of alcohol, it was and is widely assumed they do so to become intoxicated. Thus the use of vino would make all the passages in Scripture seem to be talking of situations in which the partakers were getting drunk. Yet no other terms seemed appropriate. One could use 161

‘juice of the grape’, but that had no alcoholic associations whatever. And the use of both terms would make it seem like there were two kinds of drink rather than two kinds of drinking. Again notes were needed to explain the cultural mismatch.

3.4 ‘Key’ Use of a term within a variety of frames makes discussion of its meaning complicated enough within a specific culture; how much more so when terms are compared across cultures. For most English speakers, the word ‘key’ will most quickly be associated with the frame of entering a previously locked door. But this prototypical use of the word is extended to uses in other frames associated with, for example, pianos, computers, maps, codes, music, and problems. The relationship might be associated with size as well as access: a key is a small item enabling access to a relatively large one, such as a locked box or house, or by extension, a ‘small’ detail enabling access to a ‘big’ problem. The frame for entering a house is of course shared by Spanish speakers and English speakers and it is easy to establish an intercultural link between ‘key’ and ‘llave’. However, as is always found out early in the pro-cess of learning a second language, a correspondence in meaning between terms of different languages in one situation does not entail their correspondence in other frames. Llave, but not ‘key’, can refer to the handle of a faucet or to a wrench. In more general terms, llave seems to be something you handle to open and shut things, or get them on and off. Unlike English, a different word (tecla ‘push-button’) is used to refer to piano or

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computer ‘keys’. There is a domain in Spanish having to do with abstract access as such, but here the word is ‘clave’ (related historically to llave, but now independent). Figure 10 illustrates the problem.

Figure 10: ‘Key’ and ‘llave’: matches and mismatches. The prototypical use of ‘key’ leads us to llave in Spanish, although the terms arguably belong to different domains: llave being an instrument for turning and ‘key’ an instrument for enabling access. The place where a domain of use of ‘key’ matches well with a domain in Spanish is where use of the English term is least prototypical – least like a key to a house or box: abstract tools of access. But Spanish uses a different term for this domain. Further, whereas key is both a striking tool and an access tool, Spanish uses two different terms for these domains. These mismatches occur in European languages having many speakers in frequent contact with each other. The challenges to understanding how notions are related to each other can become even greater when cultures with relatively infrequent contact are involved: 163

For [the Osage Indians], the eagle is associated “with lightning, lightning with fire, fire with coal, and coal with the earth. The eagle is thus one of the ‘masters of coal’ that is, a land animal”. On the other hand, the chest of the turtle with a serrated tail represents the vault of the sky, and the gray line across it, the Milky Way, because ‘the number thirteen has a mystical value for the Osage. The rising sun emits thirteen rays, which are divided into a group of six and a group of seven corresponding respectively to right and left, land and sky, summer and winter. The tail of this species of turtle is said to sometimes have six and sometimes seven serratures.’ It was simple, but one had to be Osage to think of it. (Sperber 1975:25, citing Lévi-Strauss)

3.5 A map of some fundamental biblical notions In the remainder of this paper, we shall consider how the notions of reciprocity and of frames and boundaries link a wide variety of biblical key terms, practices and perspectives.

3.5.1 Reciprocity When someone utters the greeting ‘Hello!’ in English, she will almost invariably receive ‘Hi!’, ‘Hello!’ or another expression from a limited and predictable set of responses. ‘How are you?’ will likely receive a response like ‘Fine, and you?’ This is an example of linguistic reciprocity. The principle of reciprocity extends through virtually all other areas of public and private communal life. The general structure of a given

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society, as conceived by members of it,7 will of course greatly affect the actual forms the principle of reciprocity take in any specific instance. Several key terms, and the textual frames of their occurrences, indicate how reciprocity was realized in biblical cultures. 3.5.1.1 Tsedeq/tsedaqah Righteousness in the Bible has personal-dynamic aspects (doing right, being a right kind of person), but also legal-static aspects (state of ‘rightness’ judged against an established norm). But what is central: the static or the dynamic? Or is there a centre? A key text (though by no means the only one) in determining this question is Genesis 38. In this text, Judah is seduced by his daughter-in-law Tamar, after refusing to give her his third son in marriage, in opposition to their cultural norms. Tamar dresses up like a prostitute, seduces her father-in-law, then makes off with his staff, cord and ring. As she had intended, she became pregnant from this encounter. When she is brought out to be stoned, Tamar shows everyone the items Judah had left her. When he realizes what has happened, Judah declares, “She is more righteous than I am.” In other words, Tamar had fulfilled her obligation to Judah better than he had to her. In fact, she had fulfilled both obligations at once, as the point of their reciprocal relationship was to produce an heir in the lineage of Judah. This text is puzzling to many modern readers, whose ideas of what is ‘righteous’ would by no means include the actions of Tamar, and for whom the obligations she felt she had to fulfil

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have no meaning. The fact that Tamar felt forced to carry out these obligations in a manner inconsistent with modern views of righteousness should not keep the biblical interpreter from understanding the term in its original contexts. In Tzotzil of southern Mexico, translators struggled with the two terms in Spanish which had been used to translate tsedaqah and tsedeq. Neither rectitud ‘rightness, righteousness’ nor justicia ‘justice’ seemed to match well with Tzotzil lexical items or cultural notions.8 One could talk of being or doing good, but the idea of an abstract norm which rightness and justice bring to mind were simply not a part of the conceptual system of this language. What they did have was a term for someone who fulfilled his or her social obligations faithfully. This turned out to be a better match with the Hebrew notion than any terms we could provide from major languages. This understanding of righteousness as moral obligation within a (hierarchically structured) cultural context of mutuality and reciprocity works extremely well in other biblical contexts also. And it interfaces with another important biblical concept: faith, trust, belief. 3.5.1.2 ‘emet/‘emunah/he’emin In Genesis 15.6, Abram believes or trusts (he’emin) in God, and God considers it to be tsedaqah. ‘Belief’ can refer to a static understanding of something. In the Genesis passage, ‘trust’ better captures the reciprocal relation involved. God obligates himself to do something on Abram’s behalf, that is,

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to give him a huge number of descendants. Abram reciprocates by trusting that God will do what he says, thereby indicating his respect for God’s power and dependability. In other passages, a more active sense of ‘emet/‘emunah is evident: faithfulness, loyalty. This indicates another aspect of the reciprocity involved in the Genesis passage. In trusting God, Abram is implicitly loyal to him, and God recognizes Abram as having fulfilled his part of the reciprocal relationship in trusting and being loyal. That loyalty is not merely obedience can be seen from the examples of Saul and David. The biblical writers depict David as often acting counter to prescribed norms, but as also being favoured by God and by the people. Perhaps his continued and apparently genuine repentance after wrong-doing is what makes the difference. Of course God is seen as always faithful or loyal. In this case it is not a matter of trust, since the more powerful one in the relationship does not trust the less powerful one, but rather lives up to his own commitments. 3.5.1.3 Go’el This term is well understood by commentators but is often unsatisfactorily translated with an expression such as ‘near kinsman’ or ‘close relative’. This indicates one part of the meaning, but not the relationship of power and responsibility evoked by the Hebrew term. A go’el at times will rescue an individual, or avenge him or her, or take restitution for a wrong

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done to someone under his protection (in a patriarchy, a go’el would certainly be a male). A go’el owed tsedaqah to the one under his protection, and the protected one owed emunah to his or her go’el, as well as hoped for emunah from him. If a go’el showed hesed (translated as ‘kindness’ in some languages), then one was truly fortunate. 3.5.1.4 Hesed ‘Covenant love’, ‘relational faithfulness’, ‘commitment’ are some of the many expressions used to translate this term. Sakenfeld (1985:131) defines it as involving: 1. Personal loyalty, not loyalty to a cause or idea; 2. Attitude manifested in action; 3. Offered to a person in need from someone able to fill the need; 4. No law against not showing loyalty of this sort, no coercion to show it. However, its use in Isaiah 40.6 suggests that there may be a more basic meaning of ‘constancy’ or ‘steadfastness’: “All people are grass, their hesed is like the flower of the field.” It is possible that the word means something like ‘commitment in a relationship’ and that there is a sort of backwards metaphorical use here. But it is also possible that the basic lexical meaning is constancy, the usual Scriptural frame for its use being with regard to human relationships. In Isaiah 40.6, then, it has the same basic sense as in other passages but a different frame. The above terms, frequently used to refer to God’s special commitment to his people and to theirs to him, should be 168

nearly always understood in the framework of reciprocal obligations, usually with the added component of hierarchy. They presume, as do many other biblical terms, contexts of social inequality. A person brought up in a culture teaching how to link idealized notions of egalitarianism and personal freedom may have a hard time processing the network of meanings suggested by the above terms, used in a society of hierarchy and social reciprocity. Hierarchical systems of mutual obligation are not what modern interpreters are used to, at least at an idealized or theoretical level. Recognizing mutual and reciprocal obligations where modern cultures are used to looking for and finding (only) rights takes practice. Experience with contemporary traditional cultures can help the interpreter of the Bible see various aspects of the biblical text which have tended heretofore to be overlooked.

3.5.2 Frames and Boundaries in Ancient Israelite Society: Holiness and Pollution in their Social and Religious Contexts9 When one tries to map the meanings of the concept ‘holy’ (and ‘unholy’) in Scripture, two things become immediately clear: the underlying idea (separation) is quite simple, but the surface realizations (in the ritual, moral, and religious spheres) are many and seemingly varied.10 This leads one directly to the related semantic domain of clean and unclean. Most commentators have attempted to treat these as related but neatly categorized spheres of holy-profane-unclean, with rituals guiding the crossings between the different, contiguous spheres. The holy and unclean, in this interpretation, could never come in contact without disastrous results (for example,

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Nelson1993:19). Although this kind of scheme seems to hold for much of the biblical material, it fails to account for such things as the biblical texts at Qumran being referred to as those ‘which defile the hands’. One would think it would be the other way around. Even in biblical material, there seems to be a general category of taboo which encompasses both the holy and the unclean, depending on the context. Thus for the purposes of this analysis, these various spheres will be treated together under the category of the preservation or violation of agreed-upon frames and boundaries, whether these frames and boundaries are considered symbolic or ontological. Life in ancient Israel was understood as a strictly bounded existence, and these boundaries, whether at a social or religious level, were represented symbolically in a great number of different ways. The central thrust of these representations was the ritual preservation or, in the case of a ‘transgression’, restoration of the underlying 11 religious-cultural frames and boundaries. In the following sub-sections, a partial list of symbolic representations is given by category, following the general outline of the system as I understand it. 3.5.2.1 Time The concepts of Primordial time and Eschatological time as opposed to historical time – or of cyclical versus linear time, form a boundary between the sacred and the profane. Some commentators have gone so far as to claim that in biblical representation God’s time (whether at the creation of the world or at its restoration/re-creation) is cyclical, while human time is linear (Knierim 1995:171-224; Nelson 1993).

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In the realm of human history, “Sacred time was manifested in the rhythmic cycles of holy Sabbath, new moons, the three annual festivals, and the ritual beginning of the new year …” (Nelson ibid:29). A good example of this conceptual duality with regard to time can be found in Genesis 1:14: “And God said, ‘Let there be lights in the firmament of the heavens to separate the day from the night; and let them be for signs and for seasons and for days and years.’” Reflecting a notion of time more familiar to traditional cultures than to modern technological societies, the passage focuses first on the astrological, religious, kairos-timing of important events and only secondarily on the linear passage of time. The two concepts can be described as ‘historic’ versus ‘historical’: 1. Historic 1. ‘signs’: portents, like the star of Bethlehem 2. ‘seasons’: religious festivals 2. Historical 1. ‘years’ 2. ‘days’. 3.5.2.2 Space Horizontal boundaries such as River and Sea figure prominently in the biblical text. The boundaries of the tribes are also considered to be of great importance, as are the boundaries of Israel as a whole. Vertical boundaries such as high places, Sinai or Zion are repeated within the structure of the sanctuaries themselves, with altars and levels.

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Sanctuaries represent the fundamental bounded space in religious terms. The fact that geographical landmarks (trees, rocks, mountains, etc.) are behind all the permanent sanctuaries reinforces the idea of a fixed boundary. The temple in Jerusalem was the idealized representation of the sanctuary.12 The tabernacle, on the other hand, did not have the same spatial boundedness, yet was constructed so as to keep all areas carefully distinguished, and was ratified by the pillar of fire and the cloud. All these local representations were self-consciously referencing the distinction between heaven and earth, between God’s dwelling and humanity’s dwelling (cf. Exodus 15.17). 3.5.2.3 Creation The idea of creation as the initial setting up of boundaries is pre-eminent in Genesis chapter 1. Chaos is the absence (Genesis 1.2) or destruction (e.g. the Flood) of order, or boundaries. These boundaries are not only physical (e.g. between water and land), but apply at every level. Thus Genesis 6.1-4 refers to the unnatural mixture, or boundary-crossing, of spiritual beings ‘sons of God’ and human beings ‘daughters of humans’. An example of this boundary system in nature can be found in Deuteronomy 22.9: “Do not plant two kinds of seed in your vineyard; if you do, not only the crops you plant but also the fruit of the vineyard will be defiled.”13 3.5.2.4 Symbolic Numbers Symbolic numbers may be viewed in terms of bounded systems. A brief outline of this system shows that for the most

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part it represents the conservation of the boundedness frame, though at times it also deals with its violation.

3.5.2.5 State Certain states are unclean, but again an examination of these states leads us back to the violation of boundaries. Death, birth, and menstruation were all considered unclean states. Death represents crossing the ultimate spiritual boundary into the unknown, the afterlife (cf. Jesus’ injunction that Mary Magdalene not ‘hold’ – possibly touch – him in John 20.17). Birth and menstruation both involve life (and blood), but also

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the physical crossing of the boundary of the human body (see next section). 3.5.2.6 The human body Douglas (1966:51-52,128,115) has captured the essence of this important category as follows: … the idea of holiness was given an external, physical expression in the wholeness of the body seen as a perfect container … rituals work upon the body politic through the medium of the physical body … The body is a model which can stand for any bounded system … We cannot interpret rituals concerning excreta, breast milk, saliva and the rest unless we are prepared to see in the body a symbol of society. One could add here that the body must be seen as an integral part of religious symbolism as well. The Hebrew term often translated by ‘leprosy’ refers to virtually any skin lesion, however minor, which compromises the integrity of the skin. This renders the person unclean until the lesion is healed and ritually purified. A skin blemish makes a person unclean, and an animal unfit for sacrifice. In the end, it seems that what is at issue is the maintenance of the wholeness or integrity of the body ‘purity’ as opposed to its violation or disintegration. Corresponding to leprosy on the human body is mould or mildew in a house (Leviticus 14.34ff). It follows the same logic and form as leprosy, so is mentioned here as well.

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Since everything inside the body which ends up outside the body pollutes, the primary structure seems to be that the sacred and the profane are represented by the inside and the outside respectively. Blood and semen have their own symbolic meaning (a direct connection with life), for example, and thus could be expected to carry their own power and danger.14 Blood especially carries a powerful pollution taboo in several different contexts (diet, sacrifice, sex), but can be used to purify as well in certain contexts of ‘dramatic reversal’ (van Gennep 1960; Turner 1977:166ff.).15 This phenomenon, common to many traditional cultures, involves breaking the taboo while in the liminal state. These reversals take place under special ritual circumstances or for persons of special character. Depending on the ritually bounded space and time, blood can be polluting or purifying, and depending on the context saliva can be polluting or healing. Thus the high priest sprinkles the people with animal blood in a sacrificial context, and Jesus heals the blind man by spitting on the ground and making a paste for his eyes. The notion that the conservation of the body’s boundaries represents purity of various kinds does not lack support. Bodily extremities figure prominently in various rituals. Phylacteries are to be tied to wrists and foreheads, which are at the margins of the body (like doors for houses and gates for cities). Circumcision involves another extremity (where ‘wholeness’ involves losing an ‘extra’ part). Foot-washing involves yet another extremity. These last two examples have often been interpreted (along with dietary laws and other pollution laws) as a kind of early system of hygiene. It seems much more likely they are part of the pattern of the maintenance of boundaries within a system of pollution.16 175

3.5.2.7 Dietary Laws As to regulating that which enters the body, the dietary laws are integrated into the system as a whole in a rather careful way. Thus blood and that which dies of itself is to be avoided. Also, again following Douglas, that which does not belong wholly to its class (the concept of ‘wholeness’ once more) is to be avoided.17 It is interesting to note how the various parts of the system interact, so that the list of unclean birds in Exodus seems to be based on the avoidance of blood (birds of prey) or contact with dead bodies/bodies with blood in them (carrion birds), while other unclean animals are classified as such due to other reasons (such as not belonging wholly to their class).18 3.5.2.8 Animal Sacrifice Animal sacrifice represents the intentional transgression of a symbolic boundary (the body of the animal) within the ritual boundaries of temple and appointed time. Only an unblemished animal is permitted – that is, one with absolutely unbroken skin. Then, in a dramatic reversal, the animal’s skin is cut, closing symbolically for a moment the distance between us and the Other. In another dramatic reversal, the blood of the animal, normally polluting, at least to eat (due to two symbolic unratified crossings of the boundary – the animal’s body cut open and the human body taking it in), now (in some cases) is sprinkled on various objects and people in order to purify them. Blood has its own symbolic power and symbolic system, but works together with the basic idea of boundedness and reinforces it.

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While Douglas understands these symbolic systems at the social level, there seems to be a religious component as well. Sacrifice represents the symbolic crossing of the fundamental boundary between God and humans within a ritually safe sphere. It is a point at which the people can make symbolic contact with their deity, if only for a ritual moment. Blood which normally pollutes now can be used for purification in a ritual reversal. The perfect container of the body of the sacrificial animal is intentionally violated, as if to indicate that the boundary between the profane and the holy, humans and God, has for a moment been obliterated. 3.5.2.9 Summary An underlying symbolic system of the Old and New Testaments may be outlined as follows: 1. ‘Holy’ refers to the spirit world, which is taboo for those in the profane world except for special people (priests) and under special circumstances (ceremonies carried out in special places sanctuaries). The separation of the sacred and the profane symbolically establishes the radical distinction between us and the Other. 2. Various elements in the real world symbolically represent the distinction between the sacred and the profane. These include the human body, the bodies of animals to be used in sacrifice, houses and cities. 3. ‘Impure’ refers to any unratified crossing of the boundary between the holy and profane (ratified crossings are those made by the proper people at the proper times and places). Unratified crossings can

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often be put right by various rituals, but not always (touching the ark of the covenant could bring immediate death). The symbolic contamination caused by the transgressing of the boundaries must be cleansed through purification. The two worlds should not be in direct contact with one another and must be cleansed of any material from the other world. Any crossing in either direction must be ratified, in part by ceremonial washings. These washings enable a safe crossing, that is, one which does not contaminate either world with the essence of the other. This is the essence of uncleanness – to be contaminated by the Other, or to contaminate the Other by human contact. That is also why the books ‘which defile the hands’ at Qumran were the biblical books (and not some sectarian material, for example). 4. Ratified crossings often involve ‘dramatic reversals’ such as happen in many rites of passage. Involving special people, places, and/or times, these reversals have as their major component the reversal of the normal rules of boundary crossing. This outline (perhaps with a few adjustments), along with the basic concept of a symbolic world based on the idea of bounded existence, can be used to explain many aspects of the sacrificial, ritual and even moral systems of the Old Testament. ‘Transgression’ is perhaps the most useful overall term in English (in spite of its archaic nature), since all unratified crossings in any sphere are transgressions. It is interesting that in the moral sphere there are not dramatic reversals in the biblical system as there are in other societies (Turner, Van Gennep).

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Douglas is convinced that societies with highly developed pollution laws are societies under external pressure. She may well be right. After all, the community which considered itself to have descended from Abraham was under pressure for most of its existence. But there is a religious and theological component to the pollution framework as well. A fundamental concern of Scriptures is how impure humans can approach a pure God. The awareness of the existence of an absolute chasm between sinful humans and a holy God is evident in many of the writers of both Testaments. According to Christian belief, God enacted the ultimate sacrificial reversal by not just crossing the barrier temporarily (as symbolized in animal sacrifice), but by providing a permanent mediation (symbolized by the tearing of the temple veil). This new situation is discussed the most fully in the book of Hebrews (Nelson 1993:148-154). Jesus’ sacrifice opens a safe passage from the profane to the sacred – but only at that crossing point. The problem situation as described in the book of Hebrews is that of ‘drawing near to God’. But, says the writer of Hebrews, God in Christ has made the crossing, thus erasing the boundary at that point. Once the ultimate dramatic reversal has been enacted, the temple veil is torn and all who are profane have access to the Holy via Jesus. Even head coverings for men who are praying are no longer needed (1 Corinthians 11). All other crossings are still unratified.

3.5.3 Sickness and healing in the New Testament While the preceding section deals with examples mainly drawn from the Old Testament, the New Testament is not without examples of symbolic expression of cognitive models based on bounded existence. There it most often takes the

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form not of purity and holiness laws, but of sickness and healing stories. Pilch has written extensively on the subject, drawing from the work of Malina and Douglas, among others, as well as from his own insights concerning medical and Mediterranean anthropology. Pilch’s (2000:24-25) first point is that modern ideas about disease and cure, or disability and rehabilitation, are not very helpful in the New Testament context. Pilch tries to clarify some issues by first defining his terms. He admits this is essentially an etic exercise (that is, an outsider’s analysis), but nonetheless can help us gain an emic perspective (an insider’s view). While sickness, according to Pilch, is an overarching term for both disease and illness, modern biomedicine has concentrated on the former. Thus modern medicine tries to find cures for diseases. This contrasts with perceptions of illness in the New Testament era: illness was experienced as a far more encompassing physical, psychological and social state of not being whole, and/or not being a part of a whole. This unwholesome state required not so much a cure as a healing, to restore the individual to his or her former state of well-being. Finally, this state of well-being was seen not so much in terms of restoration of physical ability, but of personal and social reincorporation. Thus in the New Testament, Pilch claims (ibid:4ff), whether healing had to do with ‘leprosy’ or blindness (in modern terms a disease and a disability, respectively) or some other problem, modern categories of restoration of ability (to be able to do what one could not do while diseased or disabled) are not nearly so prominent as the restoration of the person within the community (to be able to be who one was not able to be while ill). This social restoration is a cause for conflict 180

between Jesus and community leaders. Thus Jesus is able to equate healing with forgiveness of sins (Matthew 9.2ff), to direct lepers to priests who are to declare them fit to return to their places in the social structure (Luke 1.14), and to use physical blindness as a direct symbolic pointer to spiritual ‘blindness’ (John 9). Jesus is not a first-century physician (and is only referred to as such metaphorically), but a healer. It was not the restoration of ability to the disabled that upset Jesus’ opponents, but the social reorganization implied in the ancient conception of healing. Restoring marginalized persons to communities challenges the existing structures of authority, unless carried out by those very authorities. Pilch uses various schemata to shed light on the New Testament world as it pertains to sickness and healing. He borrows from Malina’s (1993:74ff) categories of the human body to make sense of the kinds of illness and healings which are presented in the New Testament. According to Malina, the Semitic authors of the New Testament made extensive use of the human body to metaphorically speak of the person as a whole. In this he has followed others, including Wolff (1974), who have made similar observations about the writers of the Old Testament. Malina specifically sees three zones corresponding to three areas of the human experience: eyes-heart (emotion-fused thought), mouth-ears (expression), and hands-feet (purposeful action). Thus all of the diseases presented to Jesus in the New Testament fall into one of these zones, and open up possibilities for social meaning in the healings which follow. When the blind see and the seeing become blind, and the deaf hear while those who hear become deaf (John 9.39; 12.41, Matthew 13.15), the holistic view of illness in the New Testament makes the social reversal which 181

is implied in the healing stories far more than clever word-plays. From Kleinman (1980), Pilch (ibid:25ff.) picks up and develops an analysis of healthcare systems, ancient and modern. In this analysis, there are three sectors to be considered: popular, professional, and folk. The popular sector exists in all societies, and relates to the everyday experience of sickness in any society and the immediate social networks (family, friends, etc.) which exist to deal with it. In ancient times the professional sector was underdeveloped to the point of irrelevance, at least by modern western standards of biomedicine. The same can be said of the professional healthcare sector in contemporary traditional cultures. The inverse is true for the folk sector. In ancient times, the folk sector was the centre of the healthcare structure. Thus, as noted above, it was not a doctor in the modern western sense that was called for in the ancient healthcare context, but a healer. The expectations placed on a healer were far different than those modern medicine places on a physician. While the ailment might arguably be the same in the ancient or traditional as well as in the modern western contexts, even the descriptions of the problems vary widely as well as predictably. Whether in diagnosis (what is the ailment), etiology (what has caused the ailment), prognosis (what is likely to happen as a result of the ailment) or treatment (what we are to do about the ailment), the contrasting healthcare systems structure the situation in ways which only incidentally resemble each other. To begin with, Pilch notes that most if not all instances of healing in the New Testament involve the spirit-world, either 182

directly or indirectly. Thus a fever is treated as a demon (Luke 4.39), and what modern medicine would treat as epilepsy is also presented as demon possession (Matthew 17.14ff; Mark 9.20ff). Pilch cites Foster (1976) in contrasting once again ancient-traditional and modern western world views on these matters. Foster contrasts personalistic (caused by personal agents such as spirits or other people) versus naturalistic (usually modern biomedical) explanations of illness. While there does seem to be some room for materialistic explanation of illness in traditional societies (e.g. a cold draft can make you sick), most if not all of these cases can be traced to personalistic origins (winds and spirits are often associated with each other, as are coldness and death). The personalistic terminology used in the New Testament is sometimes obscured in modern translations. Thus the ‘epileptic’ boy from whom Jesus casts a demon is actually ‘moonstricken’ according to Matthew 17.14 (in Mark 4, he is described as having an evil spirit). Ultimately Pilch comes back to the idea of boundaries, as found in the work of Douglas, as the most useful for describing the ways in which the ancient and modern healthcare systems differ at the cognitive level. Illness in the New Testament can nearly always be seen in terms of boundaries. For example, demon possession is presented as an invasion of the boundary of the body. When demons come out of people, the people become whole. As in the Old Testament, leprosy was any kind of skin lesion that would not heal, thus (symbolically as well as literally) breaking the boundary of the body. The woman with a menstrual flow (Mat 9.20ff) also falls into this category as do the blind, deaf and mute who all have ailments of entry/exit points of the body.19 Withered hands (e.g. 183

Matthew 12.10) and crippled feet (e.g. Mark 2.34) both are symbolic of action, as noted above, and are extremities, or at the boundaries of the body; compare Old Testament rituals involving putting blood on the thumb and big toe in, for example, Leviticus 8.2., as well as the use of phylacteries given in Deuteronomy 6.8 and elsewhere. Finally, the poor, sinners and tax-collectors (e.g. Matthew 9.10), with whom Jesus associates and to whom he explicitly offers salvation using medical terminology (Mat 9.12), are at the margins of society. Thus the highly symbolic world of the New Testament, coupled with ancient science, gives rise to multi-layered texts (at least from a modern perspective, the ancients probably saw the matter as a whole) where disease, disability and sin could be equated in a universe where reversals were seen as possible and classified as healing. Another example of this kind of complex of relationships is in Jesus’ remark about the eye being the lamp of the body (Matthew 6.22; 11.34-36). This text, strange to modern readers, can be better understood in light of ancient notions about the eye. The ancient Greeks (Pilch cites Aristotle) considered the eye not as a receiver of light rays, but as a transmitter. Thus people either had light (or goodness) inside of them which came out via the eye and made them see,20 or else they had darkness (evil) inside them and this darkness also came out through their eyes. This dark transmission was associated with the evil eye (Pilch:2000:132ff). These associations are not the modern ones of enlightenment and knowledge, but of moral darkness and light. Similarly, in the Old Testament, wisdom is associated with moral and spiritual commitment, rather than with knowledge. 184

3.6 Conclusion The consideration of how cultures vary in their framing of lexical references and in their mapping of relationships between notions is of course important for Bible translators. Some implications of the above discussions are: 1. All cultures give rise to highly developed and often similar (at times deceptively similar) mental maps of the world (including similar symbolic systems), which are to a large extent sub-conscious for the members of those cultures. 2. Mother-tongue speakers of the target language are the only ones who can be expected to have anything close to an adequate grasp of the implicit aspects of communication which lie below the surface of explicit expression. 3. The intermediate cultures to which those helping with Bible translation so often belong do not share many features of these conceptual mappings and symbolic systems. 4. As suggested in the discussion of contemporary trends in biblical studies (5.2.3; 5.2.5), many biblical texts can and will be understood by minority receptor cultures in ways that members of mediating Western (technologically developed, ‘modern’, non-traditional) cultures have not considered or appreciated. These interpretations may be at variance with or shed new light upon the original meaning of the text, while connecting with conceptual and

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5.

6.

7.

8.

symbolic systems in the original cultures which have been ignored by mainstream exegesis. Translators must be trained to explicitly understand both source and receptor cultural maps, and help their intended audience (most likely through helps such as side-notes) to make relevant connections between the conceptual and symbolic worlds of the biblical text and their own. These helps will also have to be developed for the presentation of Scripture in non-print media. Different kinds of translation, reflecting different kinds of similarity (at the grammatical, poetic, or cultural levels) should be not only accepted but actively promoted in different contexts. Handbooks will have to be adapted to contain more of this culturally implicit information so that the translators will know it exists and be able to include it, either in the translation itself or in helps. Cross-cultural studies should be a required area of training for translation mediators.

Notes 1

I owe many thanks to those who have read and reviewed this chapter, especially Reinier de Blois and Ernst Wendland. 2

Not a definition we would want to argue for, but somewhat reflective of common expectations about translation. Two different suggestions for a definition of translation are given in section 2.2.3 and the conclusion to our book.

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3

The notion of translator as mediator is discussed in our book’s sections 2.1.1 and, linked to the notion of frames, 2.5.3. 4

See, for example, Hall 1990.

5

As in: the Gospel of John’s use of en de nux ‘And it was night’, nicely discussed by Gutt (1992:52-54) in terms of relevance theory and poetic effects; the infamous story-opener ‘It was a dark and stormy night’; or the idiomatic expression ‘work the graveyard shift’ as a substitute for ‘… night shift’, meaning to work during the late night and early morning hours. 6

Even orthography can play a role in the connotations and evocations of words. Spelling ‘night’ as ‘nite’, ‘nait’, ‘nayt’ or ‘ni§t’, etc., create different frames of interpretation, and depending on the rest of the context, can be used to mark various communication situations such as informal speech, dialect, idiosyncratic speech, or an academic paper. 7

While it may not be possible to describe the structure of a society in objective terms, its members will have, to use Lakoff’s expression, idealized cognitive models of the society. Members of some cultures may have an idealized model of egalitarian relationships, those of another may have idealized models of hierarchical or, more specifically, patriarchal relationships, as in biblical and many contemporary cultures. 8

Cf. Stephen Voth’s (2000) Justice vs. Righteousness, which develops the socio-cultural aspects of the terms in depth.

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9

The ideas in this section are based in general on Douglas (1993, 1996a, b), Goffman (1974), Turner (1977) and van Gennep (1960). 10

One of the most obvious examples is that cult prostitutes (or perhaps ‘pagan’ temple workers) can be called ‘holy ones’, as in Deut 23:17; 1Ki 14:24; 15:12; 22:46; 2Ki 23:7; Hos 4:14. More importantly, the subtle differences and underlying unity of such concepts of sanctification, consecration and purification point in the direction of a common mapping for these ideas at some level. 11

Yet at times the boundaries are intentionally violated. Van Gennep and Turner were the ones who popularized the idea that it was in the transitional states that both danger and the potential for gaining a new identity existed. Thus Jewish purification rites were to restore the old state/identity, but Christian baptism was a true ‘rite of passage’ into a new state/ identity (more analogous to the crossing of the Red Sea or the Jordan River). 12

A particularly striking example of the cultural distance of the biblical text from most receptor cultures is Deuteronomy’s insistence in the worship of Yahweh in one place – Jerusalem. This is a major theme in Deuteronomy, but makes little sense outside the context of the symbolic use of space in ancient Israel. I owe the basis of this observation to Roger Omanson (personal communication). 13

New International Version.

14

Gen 9.4-6 clearly relates the life-blood system and the system of the holy. Only God owns life, blood represents life. 188

15

Krijn van der Jagt (personal communication) sees the symbolic systems as functioning in a more dynamic manner than outlined here, viewing them in terms of rules of discourse. He cites Sperber (1975) for this idea. This may well be right. But if so, it makes the ever-shifting frames even more difficult to locate and map. 16

Symbolic elements can have more than one function, of course, as in the case of foot-washing, which has a practical side in a sandal-wearing culture. 17

Douglas adds: “… food is not likely to be polluting unless the external boundaries of the social system are under pressure” (1966:126-127). 18

The point about the unclean birds seems to have escaped most commentators, including Douglas. 19

As Countryman (1988:13) has noted in a related context: “what is consistent from one culture to another is that purity rules relate to the boundaries of the human body, especially to its orifices.” 20

Ross has pointed out to me that seeing in some languages is a transitive verb always requiring an object, supporting the idea that in some languages the eye is seen as active in the seeing process rather than passive.

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4. Advances in Linguistic Theory and their Relevance to Translation1 L. RONALD ROSS Linguistics has long been recognized to be a vital component of a translator’s training. In this chapter, we will examine a number of subdisciplines of the field that seem particularly relevant to translation, especially those that have undergone major development over the past few decades. Though the subdisciplines dealt with doubtless reflect the special interests of the author, there has been an effort to achieve as much breadth as possible within the available space. We will not consider formal theories of linguistics, since their direct contribution to translation theory and practice seems to be minimal.2 Most formal approaches draw a pretty tight circle around what they consider legitimate linguistic inquiry. They are primarily concerned with sentence grammar, concentrate on competence to the exclusion of performance, assign meaning to only one component of the grammar and disregard the effects of context on structure and meaning. This suggests less fruitful ground for people who are looking to linguistics for help in dealing with the translation of texts.

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4.1 Universalism versus relativity One of the issues that most divide the field of linguistics today is that of universalism versus relativity. Universalism assumes that the underlying structures of all languages are pretty much alike, cut from the same mould, as it were. One approach posits universal principles that explain the general alikeness of languages and describes the differences as simply language specific parameters or ‘levers’ that must be pulled by the language learner when acquiring a specific native language. It is assumed that language structure in the main is acquired genetically and that all languages share a universal semantic structure and underlying syntactic structure.3 Whatever can be said in one language can be said in any other. Regarding the lexicon, Chomsky (1987:22) claims that “there is no clear alternative to the assumption that the acquisition of vocabulary is guided by a rich and invariant conceptual system which is prior to any experience”. Relativists argue that languages differ far more than universalists concede and that they reflect grammatically and lexically many of their speakers’ assumptions about the world around them. In its stronger versions, it is assumed that languages determine to some degree the conceptual system of a linguistic community by leading their speakers to perceive some aspects of their reality, while concealing others from them. This is in essence what Boas, Sapir and Whorf4 believed and taught during the first half of the twentieth century, and the idea that concepts are largely language determined goes back at least as far as Humboldt, in the early nineteenth century.

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With the death – in the space of five years – of Boas, Sapir and Whorf and the birth of generative grammar, linguistic relativity fell upon hard times. Chomsky was bent on turning linguistics into a ‘hard’ science, and science was supposed to be a generalizing rather than a particularizing enterprise. The quest was for universal grammar (UG), and to focus on variation, especially at the level of cognition, was considered irresponsible scholarship (Lakoff 1987:304). Linguistic relativity could scarcely be mentioned in polite company. Lately, linguistic relativity has been making a comeback, and has been closely associated with cognitive linguistics.5 In a recent issue of Language,6 one of the main articles and two of the book reviews had to do with linguistic relativity. Linguists such as Steven Levinson, John Gumperz, John Lucy, Elinor Ochs, William Foley, Dan Slobin and George Lakoff are among those who have lent their names to the cause. Today’s linguistic relativity is not necessarily a carbon copy of the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis. Much greater emphasis is now placed on empirical research, and some of those who do research in this area would not agree that languages determine aspects of a community’s perception of their reality, preferring instead to talk in terms of influence. Still others would argue that it is culture that impacts language. Whichever way it is – and it may be both ways – there is a growing body of evidence that languages differ in intriguing ways that reflect equally intriguing differences in how people see and classify their world.7 The position one adopts with respect to the linguistic universalism versus linguistic relativity debate will ultimately influence one’s position regarding crucial issues in translation 192

theory as well. The assumption that languages differ widely to reflect widely differing cultures and world views seems heuristically more productive for a translation theory than the assumption that all languages are underlyingly very similar and share a common semantic structure. Needless to say, this does not imply that language diversity is totally free from constraints, a clearly untenable position, since there are numerous linguistic universals.

4.1.1 Metaphor One popular example of the relativist approach is Lakoff and Johnson’s (1980) Metaphors We Live By, in which they argue that metaphor is more than a rhetorical device employed in literary art forms. Rather, important concepts that people use to organize their world are conceptualized metaphorically. The authors are not talking about isolated metaphors, but rather entire networks of metaphors or metaphor themes, and they give numerous examples such as the time is money metaphor, common in Western civilization. We can spend time, waste time, lose time, invest time, save time, give somebody our time, live on borrowed time, etc. Another example is the argument as war metaphor. When we engage in arguing, we take different positions, we attack someone’s ideas, we win, lose, retreat, we defeat or shoot down someone’s arguments, etc. For Lakoff and Johnson, the very essence of metaphor is experiencing one thing in terms of another. And metaphor themes such as time is money or argument as war constitute frames that lend coherence to a large number of lexical collocations that would otherwise have to be viewed as exceptional or highly marked cases of lexical items. The

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authors argue further that metaphor themes are not arbitrary, but rather reflect the way that speakers perceive and experience the world around them: “In actuality, we feel that no metaphor can ever be comprehended or even adequately represented independently of its experiential basis” (ibid:19). To affirm that metaphor themes are not arbitrary in no way implies that different cultures share the same ones. Certainly the members of different cultures perceive and experience the world around them in dissimilar ways, and come up with their own peculiar metaphor themes. Lakoff and Johnson ask us to consider a culture in which argument is viewed as a dance. In such a case, the participants would not be seen as at war, but rather as performers. They would have to execute their performance in a ‘balanced and aesthetically pleasing way’. It would not look like an argument to us at all, and we may assume that they are engaged in some other kind of activity. Translators have always known that metaphors from one culture often do not work in a translation for another and dealing with metaphors and figurative language in general has always been a part of Bible translators’ training. What is interesting in Lakoff and Johnson is the pervasiveness of metaphor and the existence of metaphor themes, whose representation poses a greater challenge to translators than that of metaphors in isolation (cf. the discussion of archetypes in section 6.1.3).

4.1.2 Spatial orientation An area of particular interest to linguists working within the realm of linguistic relativity or cognitive linguistics is that of spatial orientation (e.g. Foley 1997; Levinson 1996; Pederson 194

et al. 1998). Apparently all languages have absolute spatial orientation, based on cardinal directions, whatever form these may take in a given language (north, east, where the sun comes up, toward the mountains, down river, toward the ocean). Many languages, but by no means all, have relative spatial orientation as well, based on positions relative to the human body, usually the speaker’s. In such languages, locations are often expressed as being behind or in front of the speaker or to the speaker’s right or left. This is especially true when the location is nearby. The point of reference need not be the speaker. It can be projected onto someone or something else (behind the table, to the right of the oak tree). In languages lacking relative spatial orientation, all locations are expressed in terms of cardinal directions. This, of course, implies that the speakers of such languages must have nearly perfect bearing at all times, and indeed this has been shown to be the case. Pederson et al. (1998) carried out a series of nonlinguistic experiments to determine whether a speaker’s cognitive frame of reference corresponds to his linguistic frame of reference. In other words, they wanted to test whether or not the speakers of languages that differ in the categorization of spatial orientation differ in a corresponding way with respect to their perception of space and resultant behaviour. Spatial orientation is an important testing ground for linguistic relativity because space is something that presumably all human beings experience in the same way, so differences cannot be attributed to dissimilarity in culture or environment. Pederson and his colleagues (ibid:557) believe their research demonstrates a language-to-conceptualization directionality:

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The findings from these experiments clearly demonstrate that a community’s use of linguistic coding reliably correlates with the way the individual conceptualizes and memorizes spatial distinctions for nonlinguistic purposes. Because we find linguistic relativity effects in a domain that seems basic to human experience and is directly linked to universally shared perceptual mechanisms, it is likely that similar correlations between language and thought will be found in other domains as well. Clearly such correlations have implications for translation theory. For instance, the biblical languages have both absolute and relative spatial orientations and both commonly occur in the biblical text. Therefore, numerous passages would prove problematic for translation into a language such as Tzeltal (Mayan, Mexico), which does not have relative spatial orientation (Foley 1997, Levinson 1996, Pederson et al. 1998). Take, for instance, Ezekiel’s description of his vision of the four winged beings all having four faces: Each living creature had four different faces: a human face in front, a lion’s face at the right, a bull’s face at the left, and an eagle’s face at the back. (Ezekiel 1.10, TEV) People who lack relative spatial orientation use absolute terms as in: “Pass me the salt. It’s over there, just east of the catsup bottle.” One could say something like, “They had a human face to the north, a lion’s face to the east, a bull’s face to the west and an eagle’s face (presumably) to the south.” But the Ezekiel text does not indicate which cardinal direction the four beings were facing, so one would be forced to make arbitrary choices. And what does ‘facing’ mean when a being has four faces all looking different directions. One could even 196

ask if it makes much sense to talk about cardinal directions referring to a dream. Probably the best option would be to undertranslate and put something like “each had four faces on its head. On one side they had a human face, on another, a lion’s face ….” This is undertranslating because it gives us no real idea of the organization of the faces on the head, whereas the Hebrew text does. Referring specifically to translation problems, Lakoff (1987:311ff) says essentially that the possibility of translation between two languages depends on the existence of common conceptual systems (the commensurability problem). Probably no languages have totally disparate conceptual schemata, so translation is possible, as we know. But of course translation problems arise at those points where there are mismatches. Foley (1997:171) observes: Because translation requires moving the categories of the alien system into those of our own, this imposes constraints on how radically different the alien system can be. If completely incompatible, even partial translation should be impossible. The fact that a fair degree of translation between conceptual schemes across languages and cultures does seem possible indicates that at least some minimal communalities (sic) do exist. But this should not blind us to the wide gulf between them. Quine emphasizes that languages are systems; we are not trying to match the meanings of words across the systems, but the conceptual schemes these belong to – a much taller order, as this implies aligning the systems as wholes. Mismatching conceptual schemata between source and target languages are a source of problems for the translator that need to be addressed in 197

any theory of translation. And learning to identify them and deal with them should be a part of any translator’s training.

4.2 Typology Linguistic typology attempts to lump languages into types on the basis of structural commonalities. Nowadays typology is concerned with practically all aspects of language, even at the discourse level.

4.2.1 Constituent order typology One of the most traditional concerns of linguistic typology has been the order of constituents at the clause level or words at the phrase level. At the clause level, the overwhelming majority of the world’s languages have one of the following three basic (i.e. unmarked) constituent orders: Verb Subject Object (VSO), Subject Verb Object (SVO) or Subject Object Verb (SOV). This does not mean, for example, that in a VSO language, only that order occurs. It means that it is the unmarked, most neutral, most expected order in that language, and that when speakers deviate from it, they are communicating something of pragmatic import to the hearer. English is now an SVO language, but certainly other marked orders are possible and occur all the time, as can be seen from examples 1a-b: • [1] 1. I like guacamole (SVO) 2. Guacamole I like (OSV)

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These two sentences are semantically identical, but pragmatically distinct and would be used in different contextual circumstances. It would behoove a translator who is translating from an SVO language like Spanish into, say, a VSO language like Garifuna (Arawak, Honduras) to be acutely aware of this typological difference. Garifuna permits SVO when there is a pragmatic need to confer special prominence on the subject. However, it is easy to imagine the disastrous consequences of a Garifuna translator’s ingenuously reproducing the unmarked SVO order of Spanish as a marked SVO order in Garifuna. As she translates, it is unlikely that any single instance of this mistranslation would sound very wrong to her. But the overall impact on the discourse would be calamitous. And when she reviews her work, it would no doubt sound strange to her, though she may not know how to correct the problem. Certainly to ensure as high a degree of pragmatic similarity as is possible between the source text and the target text, workshops should include training with respect to the unmarked constituent orders of both the source and target languages and the kinds of pragmatic changes that occur in each when marked orders are chosen. Care should be taken to translate unmarked orders with unmarked ones and marked orders with marked ones of similar pragmatic effect. The constituent order of clauses often correlates with other aspects of a language.8 For example, if a language has a VO order, one can be fairly confident that it also has prepositions, whereas OV languages will more likely have postpositions. This is not too helpful – even if the source language and the target language are typologically different in this regard – since few translators are likely to start tacking prepositions onto the end of nouns in the target language just because the 199

source language has postpositions. However, an awareness of other typological information – predicted by word order – can be crucial, because the differences they signal are nowhere nearly so mechanical nor so easy to deal with as adpositions. Basic word order also gives us clues as to what the marked and unmarked order of nouns and modifiers will be and recognition of this can help to avoid translating unmarked orders with marked ones or vice versa. In current linguistic theory, the term head refers to the element that determines the syntactic character of a constituent. So the head of a noun phrase is the noun, the head of a verb phrase, the verb, etc. Theo Vennemann (cited by Comrie, 1989) noticed a universal tendency for VO languages to be head-initial. (i.e. for the head to be the first element in the phrase) and for OV languages to be head-final (i.e. for the head to be the final element in the phrase).9 Roberts (1997), a specialist in the languages of Papua-New Guinea, shows just how important this typology can be to translators. He is working with biblical Greek and Amele. Greek is a VSO language,10 and therefore head-initial. Amele is SOV and therefore a head-final language. It happens that the head-initial/head-final contrast has profound consequences because it predicts how languages will order clauses expressing various kinds of logical relationships, as indicated in Table 2 (adapted from Roberts). Table 2: Clause ordering in a VSO language and an SOV language.

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Roberts has found sufficient support among his colleagues working in OV languages in Papua New Guinea and elsewhere to suggest that this might be a linguistic universal. Although in less detail, Larson (1984) cites similar clause-order dissimilarities between English and Upper Asaro (citing data from Deibler and Taylor 1977) as well as some unnamed languages in Amazonia. Stephen Levinsohn (personal communication to Roberts) specifies Inga as one such Amazonian language. Bribri (Chibchan, Costa Rica) – also an SOV language – works the same way as Amele. A translator who was unaware of these typological differences and was translating verse by verse would likely follow the structure of the often more prestigious source

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language, and wind up with a very unnatural sounding translation that would require considerably more processing effort to comprehend. Further on in his article, Roberts suggests that this typological distinction is related to many other differences between Greek and Amele, including the way in which speakers construct an argument. For instance, in Greek the approach is deductive: The thesis is given first and then the supporting arguments. In Amele, the order is inductive: The supporting arguments are given first, followed by the thesis. When checking the translation, the Amele readers would come to a thesis and then backtrack through the text in search of the supporting arguments. But they were nowhere to be found because the translators had followed the structure of the source text, thereby placing the arguments after the thesis and rendering the argument impenetrable. Substantial restructuring was required to enable them to grasp the argumentation of the text. This would be particularly troublesome in the case of the epistles, where there is considerable argumentation.

4.2.2 Grammatical typology One of the interesting grammatical differences between languages is the way they organize their grammatical relations or whether they even have grammatical relations. Two of the more common types are accusative languages and ergative languages. Accusative languages treat transitive and intransitive subjects the same, for example by putting them in the nominative case. Direct objects, on the other hand, typically go in the accusative case. Ergative languages, however, treat the intransitive subject and the direct object the

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same, putting them both in the absolutive case, while transitive subjects go alone in the ergative case.12 Languages can be accusative or ergative in different ways. For example, a language is morphologically ergative if it marks the core arguments with ergative and absolutive cases. In an imaginary language that had the same vocabulary as English but was morphologically ergative we could expect the following constructions, in which the direct object in 4a and the intransitive subject in 4b have the same form, that is, are in the same grammatical case: • [4] 1. He hit him. (transitive subject/direct object) 2. Him ran. (intransitive subject) Languages can also be ergative with respect to word order if intransitive subjects and direct objects appear on one side of the verb, while transitive subjects appear on the other. If the same imaginary language had ergative word order, we would find constructions such as: • [5] 1. Bubba scared Todd. (Preverbal transitive subject /postverbal direct object) 2. Fled Todd. (Postverbal intransitive subject) We have syntactic ergativity if the intransitive subjects or direct objects function as the syntactic pivot, while transitive subjects do not. Syntactic pivots are the nouns that interact with syntactic rules, such as deletion in coordination. In syntactically accusative languages like English, the subject of the second of two coordinate clauses is normally deleted if it 203

refers to the same person or thing as the subject of the first clause. The only requirements are that both nouns be subjects (either transitive or intransitive) and that they both have the same referent. • [6] 1. The man hit the dog. The man ran off. 2. The man hit the dog and [the man] ran off. Sentence 6b would be understood differently by speakers of syntactically ergative languages because they apply deletion in coordination only between two intransitive subjects, two direct objects or one of each. Example 7b is normal, however, and herein lies the problem for translators: • [7] 1. The man hit the dog. The dog ran off. 2. The man hit the dog and [the dog] ran off Although 6b and 7b are phonetically identical, they clearly have different meanings (F. Palmer 1994; Payne 1997; Van Valin and LaPolla 1997). In a recent workshop for Iñupiak speakers, one participant brought up a conflict she had noticed between her Iñupiak and English New Testaments. The conflict was due to an Eskimo translator having read an English sentence similar to 6b and having interpreted it as 7b. Another student in the class, who is absolutely fluent in English, repeatedly read the English version and persistently misinterpreted it as though it had been written in Iñupiak.13 This translation error, which could conceivably occur whenever there are coordinate clauses with deletion of the 204

second clause’s subject, sneaked past the original Iñupiak team because of their unawareness of the typo-logical implication of the contrast between syntactic ergativity and syntactic accusativity, and underscores again the need for translators and consultants to be cognizant of the typological distinctions between the source and target languages. It is not impossible to translate 6b into Iñupiak; it requires using the antipassive voice to alter the grammatical status of the participants. But the danger is that the translators will misunderstand the source language sentence and not realize the need to adjust the grammatical relations in the target language in order to preserve the meaning. There may be important typological distinctions between neighbouring dialects as well as between languages. The translators of one dialect ‘dialect A’ of Chuj, a Mayan language spoken in Guatemala, were using a Spanish translation as their base text, but were also relying heavily on an already existent Old Testament translation in the neighbouring dialect B. Dialect B had only two grammatical numbers, singular and plural, whereas dialect A had three, singular, dual and plural. The plural of dialect B was derived from a previously existing dual and looked just like the dual of dialect A. The translators were unaware of this fact. They believed the plurals of dialect B were duals, and translated accordingly. So wherever the existing translation in dialect B had a plural, in dialect A they put a dual. This typological mismatch was not discovered until the translation was nearly finished. The resulting error, which occurred thousands of times in the text, was not amenable to a computer fix. So it had to be corrected manually, thereby delaying the project several months.

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Garifuna has a morphologically very complex system of possessive marking in which possession is marked on the possessum rather than on the possessor.14 Nouns referring to some things, for example trees and animals, cannot take possessive marking. This does not mean that their referents can never be possessed, but rather that Garifuna grammar does not allow such words to take possessive morphology. To get around this problem, for instance in the case of animals, they must use some form of the word ilügüni (roughly ‘pet’), which can take possessive morphology. One does not say my dog in Garifuna, but rather my pet dog. Recently, while working on the book of John, we came to the passage where Jesus says to Peter: Feed my sheep. But, of course, the Garifuna word for sheep cannot take possessive marking. Inserting a possessed form of the word ilügüni before sheep caused raucous laughter amongst the translators, since to do so precludes any possibility of understanding sheep metaphorically. Often different grammars simply transmit different information, information that cannot be conveniently approximated – much less duplicated – by the grammar of another language. Casad and Langacker (1985, quoted by Hudson 1996:83-84) discuss the case of two affixes that are widely used in Cora (Uto-Aztecan, Mexico). The use of these affixes is far too complex to describe here, but the choice of one or the other depends on the position of an object with respect to the line of vision of the speaker. In reading the description of how these affixes are used, it becomes clear that they reflect a particular conceptualization of space that is determined largely by the fact that the Cora people live out in the open, and yet are surrounded by mountains. Cases such as these lead us to conclude with Hudson (ibid:84) that “even if 206

we concentrate on grammatical constructions, affixes and the like, we still find dramatic differences from language to language in the kinds of meaning that can be expressed”. And we might add that there are dramatic differences as well in the kinds of meaning that must be expressed.

4.2.3 Typological semantics In an important article published in 1985, Talmy did some groundbreaking work in typological lexical semantics. He deals with a large number of aspects of verbal semantics any one of which could have important implications for a theory of translation. For the purposes of this chapter we can consider only one of them, one that has often been a source of difficulty for translators who are unaware of the issues involved. Talmy points out a crucial typological difference in the ways that different languages conflate semantic features in motion verbs. The central feature of a motion verb would have to be MOVE, and let’s assume that by MOVE we mean move from point A to point B at least. In English, the semantic feature that most frequently combines with MOVE is that of MANNER, and English has a veritable wealth of verbs in which this happens, a few of which would be: crawl (MOVE + MANNER: using all four limbs), stumble (MOVE + MANNER: briefly losing control of one’s legs), walk, stroll, wander, meander, roam, drift, amble, hike, skip, saunter, traipse, trot, lope, jog, run, bolt, dart, dash, sprint, scurry, race, rush, sail, fly, drive, swim, and cruise. All of these verbs express motion (presumably linear) and the manner in which such motion is carried out. But they alone tell us nothing

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about the trajectory, which Talmy and others refer to as PATH. If it is necessary to express information about the PATH, this can be done with a wide variety of satellites, which usually take the form of a prepositional phrase. (In the following examples, the motion verb appears in cursive and the satellite in bold face.) • [8] 1. Philip sauntered into the house. 2. The duck flew up on the roof. 3. The castaway crawled up onto the beach. English has numerous other verbs which – while not essentially motion verbs – can readily be called into service as such: push, shove, jump, hop, roll, kick, knock, float, and even such non motion-like verbs as laugh and drink. These verbs, like the others, tell us nothing of the trajectory when used as bare verbs, but do so by adding satellites. • [9] 1. The bottles floated / rolled into the cave. 2. They bounced / knocked the ball into the street. 3. They kicked / pushed / laughed Nigel out of the pub. 4. O’Riley drank Murphey under the table. The pattern of combining motion and manner lexically into the verb is referred to as the MOTION + MANNER CONFLATION, and is very common among the Indo-European languages. It is not the preferred pattern, however, in the Romance languages,15 Semitic languages, Polynesian languages, most Bantu and Mayan languages, 208

Japanese, Nez Perce and Caddo (Talmy 1991). In these languages the prevailing pattern is MOTION + PATH, and they tend to have a large number of verbs that conflate these two features.16 Spanish, for instance, has numerous verbs such as entrar ‘enter’, subir ‘move up’, bajar ‘move down’, volver ‘move back’ and cruzar ‘move across’ (Slobin 1999). But these verbs say nothing about the MANNER in which the MOTION takes place and Spanish has nothing like the sentences of 9 a-d. If in Spanish one needs to express the MANNER, it will have to be done by adding a satellite in the form of an adverbial phrase of some kind, often a gerund, as in examples 10a-c: • [10] 1. Las botellas entraron a la cueva flotando. The bottle entered the cave floating. 2. El muchacho cruzó el río a nado. The boy crossed the river by swimming. 3. Sacaron a Juan de la casa a patadas They extracted John from the house with kicks. Talmy (1985:122) points out that one of the ways languages can differ is in the “amount of information they can express in a backgrounded way”. For instance, the fact that English lexicalizes MANNER into the verb means that MANNER is, in effect, backgrounded. Because Spanish expresses MANNER by adding an adverbial phrase, it is necessarily foregrounded. So a good Spanish translation of an English movement sentence may well not include any mention of MANNER.

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Talmy (1991) considers PATH of movement core information. Those languages like Spanish that map such core information onto the verb itself have framing verbs and are called verb-framed languages. In contrast, those languages like English that map such core information as the PATH of movement onto a satellite have framing satellites and are said to be satellite-framing languages. Slobin (1999), building on Talmy’s work, takes the verb-framed language / satellite-framed language typology further, by studying how they behave in discourse, and by so doing, makes this typology even more relevant to translation. Slobin and his colleagues have elicited spontaneous narratives based on a wordless picture book they call ‘the frog stories’ about a lost frog and a little boy and his dog who go looking for it. Slobin has used the book to gather numerous narratives from children and adults in Spain, Latin America and the United States. The picture story is packed with action (i.e. movement) and therefore the narratives serve as an ideal database for a comparison of how a verb-framed language, Spanish, and a satellite-framed language, English, deal with all that movement. The researchers didn’t confine themselves to the spontaneous descriptions of the events depicted in the storybook. They also compared the way that movement was dealt with in a number of Spanish and English novels, and even analyzed the way motion events were treated in translation. Slobin uses statistics in his analysis and approaches the issue from a number of different angles, so it is not easy to summarize here his conclusions. But this will be attempted in very general terms.

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Due to the tremendous diversity of MOTION + MANNER verbs in English, the English-speaking narrators used nearly twice as many distinct verb types in their narration of the frog stories as the Spanish-speaking narrators did, suggesting that the English narratives are richer in their description of movement. Many times in a narrative there appear extended paths, which Slobin calls journeys, and which can be spread out over several clauses. The journeys are described in terms of figures and grounds. A figure is the object which is moving (in 11, the deer) and the ground is the relatively stable object with respect to which the figure moves (in 11, the cliff and the water). Perhaps to intensify the action of the movement, narrators often avail themselves of a strategy Slobin refers to as clause compacting, in which several steps of a journey are compacted into a single clause: • [11] The deer starts running and he throws him off1 over the cliff2 into the water3. Three pieces of information are packed into the second clause of 11. Slobin says that there is nothing about verb-framing typology that should preclude Spanish speakers’ use of clause compacting. Yet, though constructions such as that in [11] are very common in English, only two cases were found in the entire corpus of 60 Spanish frog stories (ibid:202-3). So Spanish speakers tend to use at most one prepositional phrase for each motion verb, thus including only one piece of information about a ground per clause. To sum up thus far: in comparison with English speakers, Spanish narrators use a smaller set of motion verbs; they mention fewer ground elements in individual clauses; and they describe fewer elements of a journey. Yet their 211

narratives, overall, seem to ‘tell the same story’ as English accounts … However, movement always takes place within a physical setting. The two languages seem to differ, further, in relative allocation of attention to movement and setting. English, with its rich means for path description, can often leave setting to be inferred; Spanish, with its sparser possibilities, often elaborates descriptions of settings, leaving path to be inferred. (Slobin 1999) So it would seem that speakers of English and Spanish have distinct rhetorical styles. English speakers apparently pay more attention to the dynamics of motion in a narrative, while Spanish speakers “seem to be led (or constrained) by their language to devote less narrative attention to the dynamics and perhaps somewhat more attention to static scene-setting” (ibid:205). Slobin (note:205) points out that these same rhetorical differences hold for other satellite-framed and verb-framed languages he has studied. Slobin reaches similar conclusions from his examination of the corpora of novels, and shows how this typological difference is dealt with in translation. Spanish translations of English novels reduce the level of detail regarding path given in the English original; presumably to do otherwise would result in a translation that would sound over laden with motion to the more setting-sensitive Spanish readers. Conversely, in English translations of Spanish novels, the amount of information given about the path is often increased. To refrain from this would possibly result in a text that sounds unbearably static to the English ear. Slobin (ibid:218) believes that his study of motion events demonstrates that “typologies of grammar have consequences 212

for ‘typologies of rhetoric’ [and that] the effects of such typologies on usage may be strong enough to influence speakers’ narrative attention to particular conceptual domains”. All of the examples in this section strongly suggest that typology has a good deal to offer a theory of translation, and that much of this transcends the sentence to affect the discourse in major ways. It would seem that an essential part of translator training should be raising the translators’ awareness of the typological differences between the source and target languages and of the kinds of other differences their respective typologies should lead them to expect. Wong (1997) points out that typology is important not only for the translators, but for the consultants as well: … typological studies are directly relevant to the work of consultancy, especially for those who may not have an in-depth knowledge of the language involved. Typological studies across kinds of languages can provide us with a mapping guide to the ‘type’ of language one is dealing with.

4.3 Cross-cultural semantics If Chomsky (1987:22) is correct about our inheriting genetically “a rich and invariant conceptual system prior to any experience”, then we should expect translation to be a far more straightforward undertaking than it seems to be. Our problems should be limited mainly to the areas of grammar and syntax. Even there, the problems should not be severe, since Chomsky also presumes languages to have like underlying syntactic structures. With respect to semantic

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meaning, since both the speakers of the source language and those of the target language would share the same invariant conceptual system, our only problem would be to match the lexical items of the source language with those of the target language that express the same invariant concepts. Experience in translation suggests otherwise. Wierzbicka, who together with her colleagues has spent decades looking into this matter, agrees that some concepts are universal or nearly so. But she disagrees sharply with Chomsky about the number of such concepts. Quoting his assertion that “the conceptual resources of the lexicon are largely fixed by the language faculty, with only minor variation possible”, Wierzbicka (1992:19) considers that “cross-linguistic and cross-cultural variation are not minor but colossal”. In her more recent work she assumes there to be in the neighbourhood of 60 very simple universal primitives such as I, you, someone, something, want, don’t want, this, say, feel, think, become, good and bad. According to Dirven and Verspoor (1998:144), the number of universal semantic primes is ‘almost certainly less than 100 words’. Languages take their basic stock of simple universal concepts and organize them into complex language-specific constellations, which are the source of the cross-linguistic variation.17 In her 1992 book entitled Semantics, Culture and Cognition: Universal Human Concepts in Culture-Specific Configurations, Wierzbicka forcefully argues for the conceptual diversity of human languages and proposes to demonstrate this to be the case by comparing cross-linguistically terms such as soul, mind, heart, fate, destiny, courage, bravery, recklessness, fear, surprise, shame, embarrassment, humility, and pride.18 However, these are 214

‘folk’ terms taken from English, and Wierzbicka sees no reason whatever to assume that other languages, even closely related ones, will have matching terms. To investigate this, she needs some way of comparing lexicons that allows her to avoid the trap of ethnocentrism. Obviously one cannot simply ask how to say ‘shame’ in Hausa and then assume that whatever word is given means the same thing as ‘shame’. To get around this, she has devised a Natural Semantic Metalanguage (NSM) based on very simple words taken from her stock of putatively universal semantic primitives.19 In the samples of her work that we have had access to, the metalanguage is based on English simply because she is writing in English, but presumably one could base the NSM on any language in the world. Wierzbicka uses the metalanguage to describe the semantic components of a lexical item in a given language. By then comparing the description with that of cognate words in a different language (or even the same language), Wierzbicka argues that we can free ourselves from attempting to get at their meaning through the use of the culture-bound folk terms current in one of the languages.20 For example, Wierzbicka maintains that English has no monolexemic equivalent for the Polish tęskni, which refers to a particular Polish emotion. However, it is possible to explain this feeling in English by breaking down the complex Polish concept “into parts whose names do have simple English equivalents” (ibid:121). Her description of tęskni looks like this: • X tęskni do Y →

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• X thinks something like this: • I am far away from Y • when I was with Y I felt something good • I want to be with Y now • if I were with Y now I would feel something good • I cannot be with Y now because of this, X feels something bad Her description of tęskni conjures up in the mind of an English speaker words like homesick, long, miss, pine, nostalgia, etc. However, Wierzbicka maintains that these words all differ from the Polish word – and from each other – in significant ways, and she proceeds to analyze each of them to show how they differ. In Chapter 4 of her book, on ‘Describing the Indescribable’, she tackles the description of numerous concepts she holds to be culture-specific taken from more ‘exotic’ cultures, such as the Ilongots in the Philippines. Her aim is not just to prove that cultures vary in their concepts, but to show how an analysis of such concepts can reveal a great deal about the cultures themselves. Moreover, she suggests that lexical differences “may not only reflect but also encourage different, culture specific, modes of thinking and feeling” (ibid:124). One of the cases she explicates is the concept of ‘friend’. She points out that many languages have a word resembling ‘friend’, and that we blithely translate them from one language into another by means of each other, assuming a high degree of correspondence. However when the meaning of these words is analyzed, enormous dissimilarities appear. For instance, to Anglo Saxons, ‘friend’ refers to someone

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they are very fond of, want to spend time with, do things with and for, go places with and confide in. The corresponding Polish word, however, means something very different. It refers to a person who does the same thing you do at the same place you do it. If you sell fish at the market and there is a fellow across the aisle who sells carrots, and the two of you spend many hours together every day talking, complaining about the government, and grousing about the low price of fish and carrots, then you are friends. But it would never occur to you to invite him to your house or suggest that you go to the beach together. That’s what the family is for. The Polish notion of ‘friend’ is strikingly similar to that of amigo in certain parts of Latin America. She attributes the Anglo Saxon concept of friend to this culture’s having replaced the extended family with friends. In the same vein, Hudson (1996:82), after providing a number of examples of putative untranslatability between such closely related languages as French and English, says, “The conclusion to which examples like these point is that different languages do not simply provide different ways of expressing the same ideas, but they are also different in the more fundamental (and interesting) sense that the ideas that can be expressed differ from language to language.” After examining more ‘exotic’ examples, Hudson (ibid:84) adds, “It is hard to avoid the conclusion that semantic relativity is limited only by the limits of cultural variation, and it is at any rate certain that there is much more semantic variation between languages than most of us are aware of.” If it is the case that the differences between semantic structures cross-linguistically are indeed colossal as the

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analyses of Wierzbicka and others suggest, then the implications for a theory of translation would appear to be quite significant. This conclusion is bound to have an impact on certain core assumptions regarding the attainability of equivalence in translation and is doubtless partially responsible for the currently widespread assumption among translation theorists that various degrees and types of similarity – rather than equivalence – are what translators can and do actually achieve. Even translators professing to attain some kind of equivalence (formal, functional, etc.) characteristically hedge by using dubious qualifying phrases as in closest natural equivalent. How is a theory of translation to deal with such colossal semantic variation? Hudson (ibid:84ff), though not referring specifically to translation, proposes prototype theory21 as a way to at least put some limits on the differences. Semantic differences between languages seem to diminish ‘if meanings are examined in relation to prototypes’. Hudson mentions several societies such as the Seminole Indians of Oklahoma and Florida and the inhabitants of the Trobriand Islands in which a single term (X) refers to all of these relations: • • • • • • •

(1) father (2) father’s brother (English uncle) (3) father’s sister’s son (English cousin) (4) father’s mother’s sister’s son (English?) (5) father’s sister’s daughter’s son (English?) (6) father’s father’s brother’s son (English?) (7) father’s father’s sister’s son’s son (English?)

Where English has a word for these relationships, they do not accurately coincide with X except for number (1). So in the

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strict sense, English has no term that will translate X in all or even most of its uses. X may well seem chaotic to the speakers of other languages, but in fact all of the uses of X can be derived by means of three relatively simple rules.22 English also has some exceptional uses of the word father, such as when it means priest or stepfather. But if we ignore all of the derived forms and focus on the prototypical meanings of both X and father, we will see that they do in fact coincide. This may impose some constraints on semantic variation, but translators can hardly restrict themselves to translating at the level of prototypes. Besides, Hudson readily admits that languages differ even in many of their prototypical concepts, so it seems that translation theory will have to find another way to deal with the problem of semantic variation.

4.4 Pragmatics A number of philosophers of language and semanticists came to the realization that the logical formulation of the meaning of a proposition was frequently at odds with the meaning of the corresponding utterance as expressed in natural language. British philosopher Paul Grice’s solution to the problem was foundational to the development of the field of pragmatics. He pointed out (1975) that much of the meaning of natural language was inferential in nature. We often communicate more than we actually say and understand more than we actually hear. And the problem lies not in the semantic or syntactic rules of natural languages, but rather in the ‘rules and principles of conversation’ (Fasold 1990).

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4.4.1 The cooperative principle The cornerstone of Grice’s approach is doubtless his well-known Cooperative Principle (CP), which consists basically in making one’s contribution to a conversation as appropriate as possible at the juncture at which it occurs. He defines ‘cooperation’ in terms of four general categories under which appear one or more maxims: • 1) Quantity • 1. Make your contribution as informative as is required (for the current purposes of the exchange). • 2. Do not make your contribution more informative than is required. • 2) Quality • 1. Do not say what you believe to be false. • 2. Do not say that for which you lack adequate evidence. • 3) Relation (Be relevant) • 4) Manner • 1. Avoid obscurity of expression • 2. Avoid ambiguity • 3. Be brief (avoid unnecessary prolixity) • 4. Be orderly Relevance theory, which Gutt uses to discuss Bible translation (see section 1.4.4), contends that all of Grice’s maxims can be melded into the third one: Be relevant. According to Grice, there are five ways in which a speaker can react to these maxims.23 The first one, of course, is to follow them. The second way is to violate them, as one would 220

do if telling a deliberate lie. Thirdly, a speaker can opt out of a maxim. This is infrequent, and would occur, for example, when someone has information required by the speech event, but has been obliged not to divulge it, as when a person says, ‘My lips are sealed.’ The fourth possibility would be a maxim clash, as when following one maxim implies the violation of another: for example, if a person is unable to fulfil the maxim ‘Be as informative as is required’ without violating the maxim ‘Have adequate evidence for what you say.’ The most interesting way to deal with the maxims is to flout one of them. When a speaker flouts a maxim, he or she does not observe it, and yet cannot be accused of violating it because the infraction is so utterly obvious that the speaker knows he or she is not observing the maxim and knows that everybody else involved in the conversation knows it too. This takes us to the notion of ‘conversational implicature’. Conversational implicatures are what makes it possible for a speaker to communicate to the hearer more than what is actually said. Let’s look at one of Grice’s examples: • [12] A is standing by an obviously immobilized car and is approached by B and the following exchange takes place: A: I am out of petrol. B: There is a garage around the corner. Literally speaking, B’s response is irrelevant. He simply tells A that a certain kind of business is located around the corner, although A has not asked him that. Yet A would assume that B’s contribution is somehow relevant and that he is indeed cooperating. But for B’s participation to be relevant, it is necessary that he believe that the garage may be open and 221

probably has petrol to sell (Fasold 1990). The implicature is that A, by walking a short distance, could solve his problem by purchasing petrol at the garage around the corner. .

• [13] A and B are going out for dinner and are trying to decide where they should go, when the following exchange takes place. A: Shall we go for Chinese food? B: I have high blood pressure. Looking at B’s response literally, it does not seem like much of an answer to A’s question. A has asked a yes/no question about what kind of food they should go for and B responds by giving A some information about his health, thereby flouting the maxim of relevance. However A will normally assume that B is being cooperative and will therefore look for some way to make sense of what B has said. Both of them are aware the Chinese food is often high in sodium and that sodium is to be avoided by people with high blood pressure. The implicature then is that B feels that he should not eat Chinese food; that is, his affirmative statement about his health actually constitutes a negative answer to the question. In general, communication theorists assume today that communication is vastly more inferential than it was ever thought to be a few decades ago. But the inferential capacity that makes mutual understanding of implicatures possible requires that the participants in a particular speech event share a large number of assumptions. In example [13], both participants must share the assumptions that Chinese food is high in sodium and that sodium is bad for people with high blood pressure for the implicature to be made and correctly inferred. And it is very likely that one and the same exchange

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between different sets of participants will generate completely different implicatures (Kempson 1975). This brings us to the cross-linguistic application of Grice’s maxims. Let’s presuppose that the original readers of a text share many assumptions with the author, who was, after all, writing to them. The author adjusts the message to his or her audience and is aware of the kinds of implicatures they will be able and are likely to process. However, the readers of a translation of the source text are in a different communicative situation. Depending on how distant they are from the source text culturally, temporally and linguistically, they will share more or less the original author’s assumptions. And to the degree that they do not share the author’s assumptions, they will be unable to correctly process his or her implicatures. Such cases would seem to necessitate some benign intervention on the part of the translator to help the target readership resolve the unreachable implicature.24 The degree to which this should or even can be done in the translation itself, as opposed to supplements to the translation, depends on a wide variety of communicative factors. The universality of Grice’s maxims is debatable. Is it the case that the same Cooperative Principle governs civil dialogue everywhere? Certainly some scholars think not. Ochs-Keenan (1977) argues that Malagasy speakers (Madagascar) do not observe the maxim, ‘Make your contribution as informative as is required.’ She points out that ‘as informative as is required’ means according to Grice, ‘as informative as is required by the needs of the other person’. It is, after all, meeting the informational needs of one’s conversational partner that makes one ‘cooperative’. Yet, Malagasy speakers 223

are regularly uninformative. Ochs-Keenan suggests some reasons for this. In Malagasy society, one’s life is an open book to other members of the community. They share a common history, carry out the same daily activities, go to the same places, and in general live their lives under the unrelenting scrutiny of their neighbours. This places enormous value on the possession of ‘new information’, which therefore is not quickly surrendered. Let’s look at another example: • [14] A encounters B in the street and the following exchange takes place: A: Where is your mother? B: She is either at the house or at the market. Members of a typical Western society would assume that B, by not observing the maxim of informativeness, is making an implicature: B does not know for sure where his mother is. However, Ochs-Keenan maintains that no such implicature is assumed in Malagasy culture “because the expectation that speakers will satisfy informational needs is not a basic norm” (ibid:258). That is, Ochs-Keenan suggests that the maxim ‘Be informative’ is inoperative in Malagasy society. Another reason given for the uninformativeness of Malagasy speakers is their reluctance to commit to the truth of new information. They ‘do not want to be responsible for the information communicated’ because of possible dire consequences in case it turns out to be false. Of course, if it is the case that Malagasy speakers withhold information because they genuinely fear it might turn out to be false, this would not suggest the inoperativeness of ‘Be informative’ so much as it would a clash between ‘Be informative’ and 224

‘Don’t say that for which you lack adequate evidence’. If Ochs-Keenan is correct that B’s response in [14] does not communicate to Malagasy speakers the implicature that B does not know the whereabouts of his mother, then this would be an example of an exchange that would generate different implicatures for participants of different cultures. Wierzbicka (1991) also disputes the universality of Gricean type maxims, arguing that they are based on a scandalously Anglocentric view of what is ‘normal’ in civil conversation. There is a need for further research in this area. However, should it turn out that people of different cultures and languages operate with different sets of principles governing conversational civility, this would clearly have implications for translation. For instance, in Matthew 26.63,4, when Jesus is appearing before the Sanhedrin, the high priest demands that Jesus state under oath whether he is the Messiah, the Son of God. And Jesus’ response is simply, Su eipas (‘You said’). Understood literally, this answer may not seem to provide all of the information requested. That is, Jesus seems to not be cooperating in Gricean terms, and this is doubtless what moved the translators of the NIV to expand the answer thus: ‘Yes, it is as you say’, making it seem more like a cooperative affirmation. It also makes more explicit what the translators presume to be the underlying speech act, an aspect of communication to be discussed in the next section.

4.4.2 Speech acts One of the main interests of pragmatists has been the analysis of speech acts. The philosophers of language Austin and Searle pointed out that when speakers use language, they do

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not just say things; they also do things. In English some of the things they do are promise, threaten, request, warn, order, beg, affirm, deny, suggest, complain, acknowledge, admit, explain, remark, apologize, criticize, stipulate, advise, describe, invite, and censure. English has hundreds of such verbs used to name different speech acts and different linguists have classified them in numerous different ways. For instance, Fraser (1975) suggests the following speech act taxonomy: • [15] 1. Acts of asserting (accuse, advocate, affirm, claim, comment, concede, conclude, etc.) 2. Acts of evaluating (analyze, appraise, certify, characterize, estimate, figure, judge, etc.) 3. Acts reflecting speaker attitude (accept, acclaim, admonish, agree, apologize, blame, etc.) 4. Acts of stipulating (abbreviate, characterize, choose, classify, describe, define, designate, etc.) 5. Acts of requesting (appeal, ask, beg, bid, enjoin, implore, order, request, solicit, etc.) 6. Acts of suggesting (admonish, advise, advocate, caution, counsel, exhort, propose, etc.) 7. Acts of exercising authority (abolish, abrogate, accept, adopt, approve, bless, condemn, etc.) 8. Acts of committing (accept, assume, assure, commit, dedicate, promise, undertake, swear, etc.)

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There is no consensus regarding specific speech act categories or their number, and there seems to be little likelihood of coming up with any that is both universal and has an acceptably small number of categories (e.g. Goddard 1998:143). It is clear that there is tremendous diversity in the number and kinds of speech acts that occur cross-linguistically. English has an inordinately large collection, while the Mayan languages seem to get by with very few (say, tell, ask).25 Kaqchikel seems to have no verbs that are similar to threaten, warn, acknowledge. Of course lacking names for speech acts does not necessarily mean that a language cannot express those speech acts. Presumably Kaqchikels can warn others of impending danger even though they have no word for warn. But it does seem reasonable to assume that a language would have names for those speech acts that are culturally salient. (Wierzbicka 1991:150) Gumperz (1972:17 [cited in Wierzbicka 1991]) says, “Members of all societies recognize certain communicative routines which they view as distinct wholes, separate from other types of discourse”. And he adds, “These units often carry special names”. Hymes (1962:110), considers that, “one good ethnographic technique for getting at speech events … is through the words which name them”. Wierzbicka considers speech acts to be mini speech genres and the names given to these genres (question, warn, threaten) to be folk taxonomies pertaining to a given language and culture. Probably no one would debate the language-specific nature of speech acts like christening, absolving from sin and proposing matrimony. Wierzbicka is convinced that speech acts such as promising, ordering and warning are no less language-specific. In fact, Kaqchikel has no word that corresponds closely to promise. The word they use to 227

translate promise is the same one they use to translate offer and seems to involve a lower level of commitment than promise. Wierzbicka points out that speech act genres are described in one of two ways: from without or from within. When they are studied from without, she says, researchers discuss issues like: ‘Blessings and curses in Yakut’. When they are studied from within, we find topics more like namakke and sunmakke26 in Kuna (Sherzer 1983:98ff). That is, the speech genres of a given culture are viewed in their own terms. The drawback of the first approach is that it imposes the folk taxonomy of one language onto another. Words such as judging, acclaiming and apologizing belong to the folk taxonomy of English speech acts, and taxonomies of speech act verbs are culture-specific. So to use them to analyze the speech acts of another culture is to look at the other culture’s speech acts through a grid of English speech acts. The drawback to the second approach is that terms like namakke or sunmakke are not very accessible to outsiders. An interesting exercise is to look through the domain of ‘Communication’ in Louw and Nida (1989, section 33). A surprising number of entries are Greek speech act verbs that have no monolexemic English equivalent and therefore must be explained. For instance, the verb paradidomi means ‘to pass on traditional instruction’, often implying over a long period of time. The English glosses that are given are simply ‘to instruct, to teach’, terms which obviously lack the features of ‘traditional’ and ‘over a long period of time’. The verb sophronidzo is defined as ‘To instruct someone to behave in a wise and becoming manner’. The glosses are ‘teach’, ‘train’. The verb entrepho means ‘To provide instruction and 228

training, with the implication of skill in some area of practical knowledge’. The suggested glosses are ‘train’, ‘teach’, as in the previous case. All three verbs are glossed ‘teach’. Obviously if we translate all three as ‘teach’ we are losing a large part of their meaning, plus the fact that they are different verbs. Even if we exploit the glosses to the maximum and translate them as ‘instruct’, ‘teach’ and ‘train’ respectively, we are still not much closer to capturing their whole meanings. All we would have succeeded in doing is differentiating them in the translation. The Greek verb kauchaomai is common in the writings of Paul and is usually translated into English as boast. But in many contexts it sounds forced at best (all citations are from the New Revised Standard Version): 1. 2. 3. 4.

You that boast in the law (Romans 2.23) … and we boast in our hope (Romans 5.2) … we also boast in our sufferings (Romans 5.3) Let the one who boasts, boast in the Lord (1 Corinthians 1.31) 5. … we are your boast even as you are our boast (2 Corinthians 1. 14) 6. … since many boast according to human standards (2 Corinthians 11.18) 7. If I must boast, I will boast of the things that show my weakness Corinthians 11.30) But because many translators have simply assumed that the Greek speech act verb means essentially the same thing as the English verb boast, it has typically been translated thus. However, unlike boast, kauchaomai is not always self-focused, and is not necessarily a negative thing to do. 229

Therefore, to consistently translate it as boast seems to distort the text. George Davis, author of a dissertation on ‘Boasting in the writings of Paul’, says that kauchaomai is often associated with the theme of trust, and suggests that in Romans 5.2 we translate take confidence in (personal communication). The sense is quite different and the Greek’s reference to a speech act no longer evident. David Baer (personal communication) points out that in the Septuagint this verb and its nominal derivatives frequently translate Hebrew words relating to praise and rejoicing, though they apparently did not have these meanings in Classical Greek. Some translators have, in fact, translated it thus in some contexts.27 Whatever kauchaomai really means, English does not seem to have a similar speech act verb. Languages not only do not coincide in the speech acts their speakers perform, but they differ as well in the formulas they use for similar speech acts. English has imperatives and therefore the possibility of saying directly, ‘Pass me the salt.’ However most Anglo Saxon English speakers are reluctant to use the imperative in most situations, preferring instead a less direct strategy. There are numerous degrees of indirectness: ‘Can you pass me the salt?’ ‘Could you pass me the salt?’ ‘Would you mind passing me the salt?’ ‘The soup needs a little salt, don’t you think?’ Wierzbicka (1991) points out that while it is possible to say, ‘Can you pass me the salt?’ in both English and Polish, it would be understood as a request only in English. A Pole who was learning English would have to learn both the propositional meaning of this sentence and the fact that it is used to express an indirect request. Poles do not use questions to make requests, and when English speakers do it, they sound wimpish to Poles. Poles are vastly more 230

inclined to use bare imperatives, and therefore come across as pushy and overbearing to English speakers. Yet English speakers do not sound wimpish to each other, they sound polite. And Poles do not sound pushy to one another, but just appropriately assertive. Translators would have to take this into consideration when translating between two such languages. An English translation of a Polish text would be defective if the Poles came across as overbearing. And likewise, a Polish translation of an English text would miss the mark if the normal discourse came across as wimpish. Could this be the reason that Jesus’ response to the Sanhedrin (cited in 4.4.1) seems strangely evasive to us and yet is apparently understood as an affirmation by his judges? Translators should not only receive training in basic speech act theory, but also with respect to the particular speech acts and formulas of the source language in contrast to those of the target language, which they should be taught to identify.28

4.5 Sociolinguistics Sociolinguistics can be broadly defined as the study of language use in its social context. Sociolinguistics can help us relate speakers to communities, tease apart different registers and dialects, get a better grasp of the multilingual world in which the biblical cultures co-existed, seek solutions to the difficult issue of inclusive language and use language to better reflect the nature of interpersonal relationships or social deixis. Because a substantial amount has been written about the application of socio-linguistics to translation,29 we will consider only one example of its importance.

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Social deixis is the grammaticalization of the personal (social) relationships that obtain between interlocutors and even between a speaker and someone who is not present in the speech event but is being talked about. This crucial area has often been ignored by Bible translators in many parts of the world because it has no clear grammatical marking in the biblical languages. In many languages such as Spanish, Portuguese, German and French there is a two-way split in the grammar between the so-called ‘formal’ and ‘familiar’ forms.30 Brown and Gilman (1960), in their seminal article ‘Pronouns of power and solidarity’, use V and T (from the French vous and tu) to represent these two forms respectively. The V form is used to reflect social distance and the T form to reflect social closeness. In languages like Spanish all dyadic relationships between interlocutors must be defined as a symmetrical V V or T T relationship or, alternatively, as an asymmetrical V T relationship, in the case of interlocutors of unequal social rank. There is no neutral ground; this is an inescapable fact of the grammar. Yet, amazingly, before the publication of the Common Language Version, not a single Spanish translation of the Bible had ever taken this sociolinguistic fact into account, rendering all first/second-person relationships as symmetrically T T, thereby giving the erroneous impression that the participants of virtually every dialogue that occurs in the biblical text takes place between persons who are either social equals or feel a high degree of mutual solidarity (Ross 1993).31 This practice introduces an enormous amount of distortion into the text.32

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Translating from a sociolinguistic perspective places the onus of correctly assessing countless biblical relationships squarely on the shoulders of the translator. Often there are clear contextual cues. When Abraham is talking to his servant, there is an obvious asymmetrical master/servant relationship that requires grammatical expression. But even in less apparent cases, an educated guess is far better than simply levelling all the relationships in the whole text. Some languages pose even more challenging problems for translation. For instance, Hudson (1996:124ff, citing data from McGivney, 1993) describes the situation for Mijikenda, a language spoken in Kenya. Mijikenda, like a number of Western languages, uses a singular pronoun for T and a plural pronoun for V. However unlike Western languages, the choice of pronoun is determined by the respective generations to which the speaker and the addressee belong. If the addressee belongs to the same generation as the parents of the speaker, then the speaker is obliged to use V. This fact alone could make it seem that power is a factor. But the speaker is obliged to use V also when speaking to persons of the same generation as his or her children and the use of T and V is always reciprocal, while in power-based systems nonreciprocity is the norm. What happens when the generation gap spans more than one generation? Speakers use T with addressees of their grandparents’ generation, V with addressees of their great grandparents’ generation, etc. Mijikenda societies are close knit, so typically people are aware of how others fit into the generational scheme of things.

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Of course the biblical text does provide substantial generational information about numerous biblical characters. But there are countless cases where the reader is given no clue as to the respective generations of two interlocutors. What were the respective generations of Jesus and Nicodemus, for instance? It is likely that Nicodemus was older, given his status in the Jewish community, but was he one generation older or two? Such information is not grammaticalized in the biblical languages, and yet presumably must be known in order to choose the appropriate pronoun.

4.6 Discourse analysis Discourse analysis deals with virtually any aspect of language use (Fasold, 1990:25). The field is so broad that it is often included as an essential component of other subdisciplines of linguistics such as sociolinguistics and pragmatics (e.g. Schiffrin, 1994). Its source of data are real texts, whether written or oral, taken as unified wholes. This distinguishes it from most versions of formal linguistics, the source of whose data is the imagination of the linguist, who makes up his own corpus in the form of sentences designed to suit his particular analytical purposes and deprived of any real-world context. Discourse analysts work with utterances (genuine acts of communication carried out in real contexts) and assume that ‘meaning’ does not stop with the semantic content of the words or even of clusters of words arranged into sentences, but is largely dependent upon the context in which the utterance is produced. Discourse analysts hold there to be functional differentiation in human language and they view the structure of speech as ways of speaking and not just a 234

grammatical code (ibid:22ff). They look at discourses of any length and assume that chunks of language larger than sentences are grammatically relevant. Cotterell and Turner (1989:230-1) describe discourse thus: … discourse has a beginning, a middle and an end, and the beginning could not be confused with the end; the parts could not randomly be interchanged and still have a reasonable discourse. Discourse, in fact, is characterized by coherence, a coherence of supra-sentential structure and a coherence of topic. That is to say there is a relationship between the sentences which constitute any discourse, a relationship which involves both grammatical structure and meaning. More and more linguists are reaching the conclusion that sentence-level linguistics is inadequate as an approach to the study of natural language. One of the reasons for this is the awareness that much of what happens in any real utterance of sentence length is determined by what has been happening in previous sentences and even what is expected to happen in following ones. The willingness of functionalists to look beyond the sentence and to focus on the role of grammatical structures within a context means that the questions they ask are very different from those that a formal linguist would ask. For example, while Chomsky and his disciples are interested in how passive sentences are derived (i.e. what is their underlying structure), discourse analysts are more interested in discovering why a speaker, given a choice of grammatical voices, decides to use the passive voice in a particular context rather than some other voice. What work is the passive voice doing in this particular context? And the answer will nearly always be found outside the sentence of which the passive 235

verb is a part. Therefore, it seems clear that even to do good sentence linguistics, one must, as Grimes (1975) put it, ‘peer out’ beyond the confines of the sentence itself. At least as important as accounting for sentence structure is accounting for the myriad structural features of the discourse that cannot even be seen at the sentence level. For example, participants need to be linked to events they participate in and also to other mentions of the same participants (Grimes1975), and the ways participants are tracked through a discourse vary considerably from one language to another. By grammatical means participants are introduced as topics, maintained for a while and then left behind, often to be reintroduced later on. It is crucial that the translator be aware of the strategies used by both the source language and the target language for participant tracking. Discourse analysts have long noted that in narrative discourse, the main events of the story line are foregrounded, while crucial supportive information is backgrounded. Hopper’s study (1979) was among those dealing with the linguistic marking of groundedness. He noted that in a number of languages groundedness is marked by means of grammatical strategies. For instance, at the beginning of Swahili narratives, there is an initial tense marker, often the preterit affix -li-, which seems to define the tense for the following discourse. From that point on, events that constitute part of the main story line are marked with the affix -ka-, whereas other events, such as explanatory or concurrent ones, are marked by other verbal affixes such as -ki-. Similarly, Hopper pointed out that Romance languages

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mark grounding by means of a contrast in verbal aspect, the central events of a narrative being in the perfective and the backgrounded ones in the imperfective. But, Hopper noted, there are also non-grammatical ways of distinguishing foregrounded from backgrounded material. For instance, foregrounded text tends more toward action events, often punctual in nature, whereas the backgrounded portion of the narrative is usually more stative. Foregrounded events are prone to appear in chronological order, to the contrary of backgrounded events. Grammatical strategies and others such as these help the listener wend his or her way through the discourse and are a key part of the structure of a discourse that would unquestionably have to be taken into consideration in translation with regard to both the source and target languages. Discourse analysts have also contributed to the study of frames and the framing of texts. Brown and Yule (1983:139), for instance, show how different titles for the same text could lead to radically different interpretations. Their example is taken from Anderson et al (1977:372): • [16]Rocky slowly got up from the mat, planning his escape. He hesitated a moment and thought. Things were not going well. What bothered him most was being held, especially since the charge against him had been weak. He considered his present situation. The lock that held him was strong, but he thought he could break it. This paragraph was read to one group of people framed by the title ‘A Prisoner Plans His Escape’ and to another framed by 237

the title ‘A Wrestler in a Tight Corner’. The two groups interpreted the text in radically different ways due to the difference in framing. Granted, their sample text is contrived, hence the extreme difference in interpretation. But a title undeniably provides a frame for interpreting what follows. Giving the familiar biblical parable the title The prodigal son will likely move the reader to focus on the reprehensible behaviour of a son who leaves home and squanders his inheritance. The same parable titled The lost son will probably lead the reader to associate this parable with the preceding ones about a lost sheep and a lost coin. Or, were the parable to be called The forgiving father, the reader would be more likely to focus on the father in the story as a representation of a merciful God. Zogbo (1988) has written a helpful article devoted specifically to the application of discourse analysis to translation. There she deals with a much wider variety of topics than can be considered here, and the interested reader is urged to see her article for a fuller view of one of the areas of linguistics that has the most to offer a theory of translation. An important book for translators and consultants alike is Levinsohn’s (2000) Discourse Features of New Testament Greek: A Coursebook on its Information Structure and Other Devices.

4.7 Information structure Space constraints and the inherent complexity of the field make it impossible to give this topic the attention it deserves. What can be done briefly is to describe what the study of information structure is useful for and why it should be taken

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seriously by translators. Information structure has been studied for quite a long time by a number of linguists, though not known necessarily by this name. But Lambrecht’s Information Structure and Sentence Form (1994) has broken new ground and is required reading by anyone interested in the field today. Lambrecht’s approach has been adopted by Van Valin and LaPolla as an integral part of their monumental Syntax (1997). Every proposition can be expressed in a multiplicity of ways, and these different ways are not in free variation, but rather are determined by the surrounding discourse and the perceived communication needs of the hearer. The speaker tailors the syntactic structure of the proposition to the receiver, taking into account the linguistic context, the hearer’s presuppositions, his presumed communication needs, etc. At the time of speaking, is the referent of a given noun phrase known to the audience or is it new information? If the addressee is able to identify the referent it may be because he has it in mind at the time, or he may have access to the referent because it is present in the physical environment or because he knows the referent, even though he is not thinking about it at the time of the utterance. The availability of the referent to the hearer is one of the many things that will have an impact on the structure of a sentence, because it will determine the status of the referent within the sentence. Can it be considered the topic (old information)? Or is it being introduced into the discourse at the time of the utterance? The fact that the speaker tailors his utterance to the hearer is a major concern for the translator. Because the translator’s audience is different

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from that of the original author, there is no reason to assume that they possess the same presuppositions, theories and communicative strategies as the primary audience and therefore neither is there any reason to assume that they will be able to make the same inferences. So translators will likely need to adapt their text to their own audience in a way that is quite distinct from that of the source text. The two key elements of Information Structure are topic and focus. Lambrecht does not define them in the traditional ways, segmentationally, but rather relationally. Further, he does not really tie them to the traditional concepts of old and new information. Topic, rather than being the first constituent in the clause, must meet the condition of ‘aboutness’. Focus is the piece of information with respect to which the presupposition and the assertion differ. It is not simply the new information, nor is it linked necessarily to a certain segment of the clause, that is, the predicate. Lambrecht distinguishes three different levels of focus and he uses the following examples to illustrate them. The words with ‘focus accent’ are in the upper case. There is ‘narrow focus’ in which a single constituent is in focus. Question: I heard your motorcycle broke down. Answer: My CAR broke down. There are two kinds of ‘broad focus’. The first is predicate focus: Question: What happened to your car? Answer: It BROKE DOWN.

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And finally, there is sentence focus, in which the entire sentence is focused: Question: What happened? Answer: MY CAR BROKE DOWN. In sentence focus, because the whole sentence falls within the focus domain, there is no topic. Lambrecht compares the way that English, French, Italian and Japanese handle these different kinds of focus, and shows that they all do it differently. Most use some degree of prosodic prominence, but they use a variety of marked syntactic structures as well, such as clefting. The translator would have to know which kind of focus he is dealing with and how it is encoded in both the source language and the target language in order to appropriately represent the source text. Because of the frequent use of prosodic prominence as a marker of focus, this would also have important implications for audio translations. There is much more to information structure than can possibly be dealt with here. Interested readers are urged to read Lambrecht’s monograph themselves, or the shorter version in Van Valin and LaPolla (1997), and to explore the ways in which a study of information structure can enrich our understanding of translation.

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4.8 Conclusion Linguistics played an important role in Bible translation in the twentieth century, the understanding of its domains and the tools for analysis ever evolving. Throughout the century, increasingly sophisticated tools were developed for studying languages from the sound to the sentence: phonetics, phonology, morphology and syntax. In the last decades of the century, the level of analysis was carried even higher enabling appreciation of the function of various lower-level structures in terms of the texts and the communication situations in which they occur. In this chapter we have offered evidence that the newer subdisciplines of linguistics such as typology, pragmatics, sociolinguistics, discourse analysis and cross-cultural semantics have an enormous contribution to make in Bible translation, whether for the mother-tongue translator or for consultants working with the translators. These disciplines enable them to better understand the part-whole relationships of the source text and how to represent them in the target language. They also increase the translator’s awareness of fundamental differences between the source and target languages that, when overlooked, can seriously skew the translation.

Notes 1

Thanks to Carla Jara, Tom Payne and Jeanina Umaña for their meticulous reading of an earlier draft of this paper and for their numerous helpful suggestions and comments. Thanks also to the United Bible Societies for their permission to reproduce Sections 4.5 and 4.6 from another article by the

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author titled ‘Linguistics and Translation’ and published in Discover the Bible (ed. Roger Omanson), 2002. 2

Chomsky (1988:180) expressed the view that linguistics had little to offer people involved in practical endeavours such as translation and language teaching in response to a question put to him while delivering his Managua Lectures, and was presumably referring to generative linguistics. 3

See, for example, Kayne’s (1994) assertion that all of the world’s languages have an S[vp VO] structure underlyingly (cited in Van Valin and LaPolla, (1997)). 4

The groundwork for the theory of linguistic relativity was laid by Boas, but it was developed further by Sapir and Whorf. It was Whorf who expressed the strongest version of the theory and called it the theory of ‘linguistic relativity’ (Lucy, 1992). 5

Palmer (1996) suggests that cognitive linguistics could be viewed as the ‘modern revival’ of the Boasian approach to linguistics, except for its lesser interest in culture and the ethnography of speaking. See also Duranti (1997) and Foley (1997). 6

September 1998, volume 74, num. 3.

7

See Lakoff (1987:305ff) for an enlightening review of different concepts of and approaches to linguistic relativity. 8

Predictions regarding the presence or absence of a specific linguistic parameter based on other linguistic parameters are known amongst typologists as implicational universals. This

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kind of linguistic universal was developed initially by Joseph Greenberg. An example would be: If a language has a trial number, it also has a dual; If it has a dual, it also has a plural. 9

The terms ‘head-initial’ and ‘head-final’ were not used by Vennemann, who preferred the more technical terms ‘operand-operator languages’ and ‘operator-operand languages’ respectively. 10

The VSO status of Ancient Greek is a judgement of Roberts. However, Greenberg (1966) also classifies it thus (assuming that he is referring to Ancient Greek, since Modern Greek is widely considered to be SVO), as do Friberg (1982) and Levinsohn (2000). Watters (2000:131) believes that verb and object order in Greek is determined more by discourse pragmatics rather than by syntax. 11

The glosses indicate clause order in Greek and Amele, but no attempt has been made to reproduce the word or constituent order in these languages. 12

We are somewhat inappropriately describing ergative languages in terms of accusative languages for the sake of brevity and simplicity. However, in ergative languages the properties of subjects are divided between the ergative and absolutive cases, so it is questionable whether subject is even a useful concept when referring to ergative languages. This has moved a number of functional typologists and others to prefer Dixon’s more neutral term syntactic pivot, the grammatically most central noun of a clause. See Dixon (1994), F. Palmer (1994) and Van Valin and LaPolla (1997).

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13

According to Tom Payne (personal communication), a Yup’ik Eskimo assured him that the only possible interpretation of the Yup’ik sentence Tom ate the bug and got sick was Tom ate the bug and the bug got sick. 14

Garifuna is a head-marking language.

15

The Romance languages seem to be the only branch within the Indo-European family that typically conflates MOVE and PATH. 16

English has a few of these verbs, mostly Latinate, such as enter, exit, extract, introduce, ascend, descend, traverse (see Goddard, 1998). Because of their Latin origin, they sound stilted in contexts in which they would be completely normal in Spanish. 17

Among the very basic concepts that Wierzbicka considers good candidates as semantic primes are: I, you, someone, people/person, something/thing, think, know, want, feel, say, hear, word, do, happen, move, there is, live, die, this, the same, other, one, two, some, many/much, good, bad, big, small, when/time, now, before, after, a long time, a short time, for some time, where/place, here, above, below, far, near, side, inside, because, if, can, very, more, kind of, part of, like (Goddard, 1998:58). 18

Wierzbicka deals with many terms organized into conceptual domains, making her treatment more useful than this chapter’s brief description may suggest. [Her (2001) What Did Jesus Mean? was obtained too late for it to be discussed in this publication – Editor.]

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19

Wierzbicka readily acknowledges the tentative nature of her list of semantic primitives, and in fact has modified it numerous times. But she assumes that very simple concepts are more likely to be universal and that, conversely, the more semantically complex a concept is, the more likely it is to be culture-specific. 20

Wierzbicka is not the first to use explication of this type. For a somewhat similar approach, see Labov and Fanshel (1977). Semanticist Goddard (1998) also uses the Natural Semantic Metalanguage in his work. The use of the metalanguage to define lexical entries (as in the following paragraph) has initially amused some scholars because of its simple vocabulary and syntax. But obviously its simplicity is essential if it is to work. 21

Developed by psychologist Eleanor Rosch.

22

The three rules are: A. A man’s sister is equivalent to his mother. B. Siblings of the same sex are equivalent to each other. C. Half-siblings are equivalent to full-siblings. 23

Fasold’s explanation (ibid:130) of the five ways that a speaker can respond to Grice’s maxims is closely followed since it is more reader-friendly than Grice’s own. 24

However Gutt (1991:89) finds little reason to believe that “wrong implicatures can generally be remedied by explication”. 25

However, it may be the case that Mayan languages simply have different speech act verbs. For instance, according to Margaret Dickeman (personal communication), Jakaltek has a 246

speech act verb that lexicalizes ‘to speak softly next to a river’. 26

These terms refer to specific types of ceremonial Kuna used only by priests in community meetings. Which one is used depends on there being only one priest present or more than one. 27

For example, Psalm 5.11: ‘exult’ (New Revised Standard Version (NRSV)); ‘rejoice’ Contemporary English Version (CEV)); Psalm 89.17: ‘exult’ (NRSV); ‘be happy’ (CEV). 28

For an in-depth discussion of the sociocultural reasons for the degree of directness with which a request is formulated, see Brown and Levinson (1987). For an application of their study to a Bible translation problem, see Wilt (1996). 29

For example, Louw (1986), de Waard and Nida (1986).

30

This is really an over-simplification, since many social forces come into play here. In many languages the ‘formal’ forms are used with persons considered to be socially superior or more powerful, while the ‘familiar’ forms are used to denote social inferiority or powerlessness, and this is indeed the way most of these systems began. However, as Brown and Gilman (1960) point out, such systems tend to evolve into others in which the axis is no longer power/powerless, but rather solidarity/non solidarity, and often both axes compete during a protracted period of transition. 31

In French there is still no Bible translation that makes this distinction, although the use of second-person pronouns is

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similar to that of Spanish. For discussion, see Péter-Contesse (1991 and 1992). 32

In some languages of Southeast Asia, the expression of social deixis is a great deal more complex, involving substantial lexical shifts and many more levels of relative status. For discussion, see Hatton (1973 and 1979).

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5. Biblical Studies and Bible Translation GRAHAM OGDEN1 The following is an attempt to outline some of the major developments in biblical exegesis over the past few decades and to give an initial indication of their relevance to Bible translation. Particularly noteworthy are the increasingly interdisciplinary nature of biblical exegesis, especially with regard to the contribution of social sciences, the importance of literary studies, and the overlap of exegetical methods. While there still are of course the traditional fields of textual and language studies, the current situation has been well characterized as ‘eclectic’ (Exum and Clines 1993:12), with most scholars moving freely from one critical approach to another depending on their focus. Although for the sake of convenience I have used headings to identify different exegetical methods, they should not be thought of as discrete methodologies or approaches. This chapter will confine itself to the fields of some of the more traditional critical approaches, newer critical issues, textual and language studies, archaeological contributions, and ideological concerns. It is by no means comprehensive, but attempts to indicate key areas of which translators need to be cognizant.

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5.1 Long-standing concerns: new finds and tools We first consider basic areas of biblical studies long recognized as crucial for understanding of the biblical texts: lexical and grammatical studies, historical-critical studies, textual criticism, source and redaction criticism, and archaeology. We then look at some areas that received special attention in the second half of the twentieth century: canonical criticism, intertestamental studies and intertextuality.

5.1.1 Lexical and grammatical studies Though centuries old, these studies now benefit from the use of ever-developing electronic tools. Translators in any part of the world are now able more efficiently to do extensive, context-sensitive lexical and grammatical studies of biblical expressions, and to check and complement their studies with those of biblical scholars whose work is available in electronic form. The basic electronic tools for many Bible translation teams are Paratext and Translator’s Workplace2. These tools facilitate direct contextual studies of Hebrew and Greek expressions, provide parsing helps, facilitate comparison of numerous versions’ handling of translation problems, and provide access to a wide variety of exegetical and translation studies of the text in question. Reinier De Blois, one of the authors of the Paratext program, is now working on a Hebrew dictionary prepared especially for electronic applications. The

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goal is to build a dictionary that is based on semantic domains, comparable to Louw and Nida’s (1989) Greek-English Lexicon of the New Testament. De Blois’s dictionary will enable Bible translators to easily find and compare Hebrew expressions, such as those concerning different types of sin or of sacrifice, that cannot be well understood if they are not studied in terms of their semantic relationship to each other. Beyond these tools specifically geared for the Bible translator, there is of course an ever-increasing number of commercial electronic programs that provide access to biblical scholarship. At the time of writing, probably the two most useful exegetical tools for translators available in electronic form are the Anchor Bible Dictionary (about 7,000 printed pages) and the Word Biblical Commentary. Recognition of the many helpful tools available in electronic form must be accompanied by recognition of the need for discrimination in dealing with the plethora of information available, especially on the internet, where virtually anyone can publish anything, regardless of the quality of its content. Exegetical aids of all kinds and of widely varying value are now available to anyone with an internet connection. Much outdated and idiosyncratic material is available simply because there is no longer any copyright restriction on it, or because some individual somewhere approves of it and has the ability to make it available. Of the vast array of recent lexical and grammatical studies in print, we mention some that are particularly important for the translator. In biblical Hebrew, Waltke and O’Connor’s (1990) Introduction to Biblical Hebrew Syntax is a comprehensive, 251

user-friendly grammar. The Theological Dictionary of the Old Testament (Botterweck and Ringgren 1974), now almost completely translated from the German into English, should be on the shelf of every translation consultant, at least. The last of the five volumes of The Hebrew and Aramaic Lexicon of the Old Testament (Koehler and Baumgartner 1994) was translated into English in 2000; as well as reflecting more contemporary scholarship, it is more user-friendly than the older Brown, Driver and Briggs lexicon. It is also available in a 2-volume Study Edition. For New Testament Greek,3 the standard grammar is still Blass and Debrunner’s (1961) A Greek Grammar of the New Testament and Other Early Christian Literature, and the standard dictionary is Bauer’s (2000, 3rd revision in English) A Greek-English Lexicon of the New Testament and Other Early Christian Literature.4 Louw and Nida’s (1989) Greek-English Lexicon of the New Testament based on Semantic Domains, mentioned above, was a ground-breaking approach to analysis of the vocabulary of the Greek New Testament; it is best used in conjunction with commentaries on individual books of the New Testament. Particularly useful for work on the Gospels is K. Aland’s Synopsis Quattuor Evangeliorum (15th edition 1996, corrected 1997), using the Nestle-Aland 26th edition Greek text; each of the four gospels can be read in order and the parallels seen, and parallels from the apocryphal gospels and patristic sources are also given. Greek-English (1994) and English only (1985) editions are also available. The ten-volume Theological Dictionary of the New Testament (Kittel 1964-1976)5 has been much criticized, 252

especially in its earlier volumes, for a linguistic approach (notably the so-called ‘etymological fallacy’) which is now generally abandoned. This massive work, of which a one-volume abridgement is also available, remains however a mine of information. It is now complemented by the four-volume New International Dictionary of New Testament Theology (Brown 1986) and by the three-volume Exegetical Dictionary of the New Testament (Balz 1993). Commentaries on New Testament books are too numerous to be mentioned individually here. They are best used in conjunction with the Translator’s Handbook series,6 now complete for the New Testament. Otherwise, the most detailed commentaries on the Greek text are more likely than others to provide the lexical and grammatical information which translators and their consultants may require. Even detailed commentaries, however, will not answer all questions of translation. In addition to the Word series, mentioned above, useful series in English include the ‘new’International Critical Commentary (Edinburgh: T. & T. Clark), of which so far only commentaries in Matthew, Romans, Ephesians, 2 Corinthians, Acts and the Pastorals have appeared; and (rather less technical) the New International Greek Testament Commentary series, also not yet complete. Doubleday’s Anchor Bible series of commentaries and Fortress Press’s Hermeneia series, together with SCM Press’s Old Testament Library series are also valuable resources, though as yet incomplete.

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5.1.2 Historical-critical studies The historical nature of the biblical material requires that our interpretation or exegesis of its texts be grounded in that history. The setting of its texts in the emerging story of a people resident in a specific time and place requires that that historical setting be studied and understood as much as possible in order to more adequately grasp the texts’ meaning. This has been the main object of the historical-critical studies of Scripture that have been refined and developed over the centuries since the Enlightenment, and that have given rise to the current range of more specific studies such as textual criticism, literary criticism, and form criticism. Although historical criticism is one of the more basic exegetical tools applied in biblical studies, there is still no scholarly consensus concerning the date of composition of many biblical books or parts thereof and, thus, the settings in which their final form was produced. That sources were used in the compilation of biblical books is an acknowledged fact, though the exact nature and origin of these sources also eludes scholarly consensus. Nevertheless, historical criticism offers some general conclusions such as the fact that most of the texts come from periods later than they purport to have been written and that many are not written by those whom synagogue and church tradition have thought to be their authors or editors.

5.1.3 Textual criticism7 A fundamental concern of biblical scholarship is to ensure that we are working with the most reliable Hebrew and Greek

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texts. Not having access to the original manuscripts, textual scholars continue the search for what they believe to be the text closest to the original from among the many later manuscripts available. This kind of research has a long history, though in the so-called modern period we tend to consider work beginning in the sixteenth century as more significant. Scholarly work in the textual field over the past several decades has provided us with more reliable Hebrew and Greek source texts from which to translate. The importance of this cannot be overlooked. While some of our translators cannot translate directly from the original languages without a great deal of assistance, all are able to take advantage of the fact that we now work from Old Testament and New Testament texts that are arguably better than those we worked from in the past. Ongoing work by the United Bible Societies’ committee for Scholarly Editions continues to play an extremely important role here with the publication of the Hebrew Old Testament Text Project (Barthélemy et al. 1973). This project lists all the significant textual data for the Old Testament text together with the reasons for the Committee’s recommendations for the textual decisions made. It offers advice to translators and exegetes concerning related problems of meaning. The final report in French was published in 1986 and the English version is in process. Other resources include the development of Biblia Hebraica Quinta (Quinta, or 5th edition; BHQ). BHQ will refine the accuracy of the readings of the so-called ‘diplomatic edition’of the Leningrad Manuscript from 1009 CE. This is possible because of the higher quality of the colour photos of the manuscripts and the close co-operation with scholars in Masoretic studies. It will also take into account more of the 255

Qumran evidence than was possible for Biblia Hebraica Stuttgartensia, and it will provide an English translation of the masora parva and masora magna where significant. The other important feature of the BHQ is that it will provide textual commentary to explain some of the textual variants. In the New Testament the important resource is the UBS Greek New Testament 4th edition8 and Nestle-Aland’s 27th edition. The discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls9 revolutionized Old Testament textual studies and greatly influenced New Testament studies as well. The Scrolls have also shed important light on linguistic and cultural aspects of the Scriptures. The discoveries of written materials in the Judean desert and throughout the region since 1947 and their gradual publication has revealed a complex linguistic situation during the period from the third century BCE to the second century CE, in which Greek, Aramaic and Hebrew were all in regular and widespread use: Israel at the close of the Old Testament and beginning of the New Testament was a multi-lingual world. The Dead Sea Scrolls have also had a major impact on our understanding of the Hebrew text’s transmission as well as providing more information about the textual traditions within Palestine from the third century BCE to the second CE. At times both the Dead Sea Scrolls and Ugaritic materials have clarified difficult Masoretic Text readings. The fact that many of the Old Testament documents found in Qumran and the neighbouring caves also reflect readings that are close to that of the Septuagint has raised the relative status of its readings. Using it as a valuable source for checking some of the Masoretic Text’s problematic readings is possible, though it depends on the relative textual integrity of individual Old 256

Testament books as well as a recognition that the original Hebrew text from which the Septuagint was translated may differ from that of the Masoretic Text. The Septuagint provides not only material for textual studies, it also plays an important part in developing a fuller picture of Judaism in the period from the third century BCE to the first century CE. It is now recognized as having been the primary Scripture text for the early Christian community, providing many of the theological concepts and key terms found in the New Testament. In his report on the ‘impressive progress’ in New Testament textual research, Martin Hengel (1996) noted that the Nestle-Aland (1993) text of the Greek New Testament 27th edition is now supported by 93 papyri, 300 majuscules and other ancient translations over against the 89 papyri and 274 majuscules of the 26th edition in 1979. We do not have major textual changes to reckon with, but the New Testament text is being further refined and secured as additional textual information becomes available. The Nestle-Aland and UBS Greek New Testaments are identical in terms of the text. What is distinctive about each volume is the critical apparatus. The UBS text is aimed at translators and so has a more limited number of textual variants with an evaluation. Nestle-Aland offers more variants since its intended audience is the more technically-oriented student of the New Testament. The Orthodox churches use the LXX text for the Old Testament while for the most part using an ecclesiastical text that is close to the Majority text and Textus Receptus for the New Testament. However, in some contexts the text used 257

seems to be close to that of the Masoretic Text. In some cases, any significant variation from the critical text is noted.

5.1.4 Archaeology10 Archaeological discoveries continue to shed light on biblical religion and daily life. Pictures of excavations and artefacts can help translators to visualize items referred to in the biblical text. Appreciation of archaeological discoveries concerning a broad spectrum of ancient peoples, places and cultures can also help the translator to better understand the political, socio-economic, technical, trade and international settings of biblical events. For example, references to the city wall and to the city gate are frequent in the Old Testament. Pictures of the remains of these help the translator to better understand their form and functions and, thus, how to translate the associated biblical terms. Art objects with depictions of scenes from daily life continue to be discovered. Some are instructive not only for their contributions to an understanding of domestic life, rural and village scenes, flora and fauna, but also of certain terminology. One interesting example, discussed by Young (1990), is the depiction of the paidagogos on a number of recovered objects, as well as in a range of literary pieces, which contribute to the understanding of how to translate Paul’s reference to the Torah as a paidagogos (Galatians 3.24-25). A paidagogos could be either male or female; the latter often served as a wet nurse and the former as a kind of ‘foster father’ (trophos). Both could care for a sick child. They were responsible for getting the child to bed in the

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evenings, getting them up each morning and taking them to school, sometimes leading (agein) the younger child and sometimes following behind (akolouthein or hegeisthein). At times they joined the child in class. Though of low social rank, they are at times spoken of affectionately. Administering punishment and discipline seem also to have been among their tasks – as indicated by pictures of them twisting a young person’s ear, or carrying a cane or strap. The paidagogos’ responsibilities ended with the young person reaching maturity. Folk religion is one area of discovery that raises interesting problems for the biblical scholar. Some recent discoveries in the south of Israel (Kuntillet Ajrud) have brought to light a highly syncretistic sanctuary reflecting popular religion. The canonical texts can be said to reflect ‘official’ theology, but there are many points at which, directly and indirectly, we see textual evidence of popular religious practice that flies in the face of official requirements. Hard evidence like that which archaeology recovers can inform the exegete and lead to a better understanding of certain texts such as Judges 17.5; 18.14-20; 1 Samuel 15.23; 2 Kings 21.3; Ezekiel 8.14; 21.21. Archaeological finds of amulets and other religious paraphernalia are other indications of syncretistic elements in Israelite religion. Since we also know of the strong influence of Persian and other religious thought in the post-exilic period, it is hardly likely that this syncretistic feature disappeared from popular religion of the New Testament period. This kind of information points toward, for example, the multiplicity of ‘Judaisms’ that were current during Jesus’ ministry and

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against which background both he and the New Testament writers were acting. While the Dead Sea Scrolls may have more direct relevance for the Old Testament text than it does for that of the New Testament, they indicate that the Jewish religious situation of the period immediately prior to the New Testament, of the time of Jesus and of the emerging church is much more complex than previously thought. Ben Sira and Josephus, as well as other Jewish inscriptions and papyri, complete the picture. Principally they help overcome what had become a caricature of the Judaism(s) of that period as primarily, if not exclusively, a highly restrictive and legalistic community. A more rounded view of Judaism and its interests has surfaced through these materials and so, for example, our understanding of Paul’s comments about the Law and its custodians can be seen in a more balanced light. New Testament terms like ‘Pharisee’ and ‘Law’ can no longer be understood as negatively as they have in the past. Different groups of Jews had different opinions about even the basic notions of Sabbath, festival observances, purity and dietary rules, and the like. To which of the Judaisms of the day were Jesus’ reported words directed? To which ‘Jews’ was John referring when he pictured them in such strong oppositional terms? What then are the translational implications of this revised picture of first-century Judaism? Additionally, research into non-biblical materials found throughout the Ancient Near East has shed light on literary forms not discoverable from within the biblical text itself. An example would be the Egyptian Love Poems (Wasf) that shed helpful light on similar forms in Song of Songs (4.1-5; 5.10-16). However, the translational implications are not 260

always clear. There is always the need to beware of making etymology or forms in cognate languages the determiner of meaning in the specific context of their use in the Scriptures. And in the area of similar genres, one must know a good deal about the original form’s setting and function before uncritically assuming the same function in the biblical material. While archaeological discoveries will continue to enlighten our understanding of everyday and cult objects, cultural practices, literary parallels and general history in the ancient world, their direct impact on translation at the theoretical level is obviously minimal. However, at the practical level its contribution is important and one that continually grows as new finds are announced. The journals Biblical Archaeologist and Bible Review, among others, contain many interesting articles that provide a wealth of archaeological background information. They may require careful evaluation, but nevertheless are of value to the translation community.

5.1.5 Source criticism and redaction criticism: formation of the final text Source criticism of the Old Testament is one of the oldest of the critical methodologies. That biblical books were compiled from various sources is a given: this process is explicitly referred to in the Book of Chronicles (for example, 2 Chron 25.26). Determining sources not explicitly identified has long been a concern of biblical scholarship. Ibn Ezra, the Jewish scholar (c. 1167 CE), noted that the reference to the Canaanites being in the land (Gen 12.6) when Abraham

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arrived must have come from a later time when they were no longer present. This ran counter to the traditional view that Moses had written this and the other books of the Pentateuch. From very early days, then, there was an awareness that biblical material was formed from material put together over a long period of time. It was not until the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries that European scholars began in earnest to search for and identify the various sources from which the biblical books had been formed. One of the earliest focal points for this investigation was the Pentateuch. It is associated with the name of scholars like Karl Heinrich Graf, Wilhelm Vatke and Julius Wellhausen, among others. Once source critics had, to their own satisfaction, identified and isolated the various sources from which the Pentateuch allegedly was composed, scholars in the earlier part of the twentieth century began to focus more on the processes of selection, arrangement and supplementation of materials that produced the completed text. Subsequently scholars such as Van Seters (e.g. 1994), Rendtorff (1990[1977]) and Rendsburg (1986) have argued that the various component parts of the Pentateuch were put together as different layers related to different movements within the life of Israel. In the prophetic material, the focus moved to an interest in the books as testimonies to living traditions that continually actualized the prophets’ messages. Wolff’s (1977[1969]) commentary on Amos, for example, claims a long process of growth and reinterpretation of the prophet’s words leading eventually to the final edition of his work in the post-exilic period. The Isaiah text has been another favourite subject for study using this approach since it clearly has been reworked by an ‘Isaianic school’. 262

Historical and poetic books demonstrate the same redactional activity with ideological and theological tensions pointing to a complicated process of evaluation and re-evaluation as the traditions were handed on. It is not surprising that there are differences of opinion with regard to the application of the methodology, its scope and definition. Differences as to the role of ‘authors’ and ‘redactors’ are evident. The fact that it is not possible to demarcate clear boundaries between composition, tradition, and redaction suggest that Old Testament literary development has been a very complex one. Advocates of a canonical approach have questioned the value of any diachronic approach since they wish to focus on the final, completed text. However, one cannot deny the long and complicated process through which any final form of a biblical book has come to be, and the relevance of this process to interpretation of the book. Modern exegetes acknowledge the process of compilation or redaction within traditions and the authenticity of the reinterpretations of those traditions that it demonstrates. In the New Testament, redaction criticism has concerned itself principally with the Gospels, and with Matthew and Luke more successfully than with Mark. It has also established an assumed source consisting of Sayings of Jesus, called Q, sayings found in Matthew and Luke but not in Mark. Critics have also sought to identify the theological motivation involved in the process of gathering, arranging, editing, and modifying traditional material to produce the final text. It has involved the identification of discourse units (pericopes) and a comparison of their context with that in the other Gospels. It has then looked at the theological purpose of 263

the unit within the overall purpose of the Gospel. Uncovering the literary activity of the final editors/redactors, the critic then makes judgements about the theological reasons behind that particular redaction and the community within which it arose. Redaction Criticism, in reaction to the fragmentation of texts suggested by earlier studies, has always sought to treat a biblical book as a whole and to identify from within the text the theological perspective of the final redaction. One of the contributions that this method has made has been in the underscoring of the pluralism of the communities within the early church, their differing theological emphases and, at times, the conflicts they faced.11 Redaction criticism’s role may have changed to the extent that it has been incorporated into other methodologies such as the kind of literary criticism associated with New Criticism and Deconstructionism. Further, sociological and anthropological approaches are natural correlates of redaction criticism’s concern with the community that preserved and adapted the traditions behind the Gospels. It also merges with an interest in Intertextuality (5.1.8) since there too is a focus on the way in which earlier literary and historical traditions are taken up and reapplied in new contexts. Redaction Criticism’s fundamental concern with the processes at work in the compiling and editing of the traditions means that its contribution to the task of exegesis is a significant one. Through a study of the processes at work, the exegete arrives at an understanding of the specific concerns of the final editor/author. Awareness of the process sheds light on the function of the specific tradition within the 264

overall ideology of the editor. In this way, specific texts are better understood within their literary as well as theological context. While there is value in understanding something of the complex processes that have given us the biblical books, our ultimate concern as translators is with the end product of those processes. We translate the final form of the books forming the canons of Scripture that our respective church traditions acknowledge.

5.1.6 Canonical criticism In 1972 Sanders published his book Torah and Canon. In it he used the term ‘canon criticism’ (later ‘canonical criticism’) as an extension of other general critical approaches to Scripture. Sanders wanted to focus on the canonical process, the historical process of the canonization of Scripture that took place in stages. He focused on the relationship between these various stages and the impact it had on the community of faith. This approach sees the process of canon formation reflecting the faith community’s understanding of the way in which God formed and shaped a people to live out the divine purpose. Biblical writers from different social and historical periods might well find different meaning or values in a given tradition. This difference is to be celebrated since each meets specific needs in the community and so is ‘true’ for that faith community. The Scriptures represent ‘frozen’ moments in an ongoing process. Childs, in 1970, had already begun to explore what he termed the ‘canonical context’ of Scripture and subsequently developed a method that he called ‘the canonical approach’. By this he means to describe the significance of the canonical

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context for interpreting Scripture. The process by which earlier traditions became authoritative for the community and formed their canon of Scripture was a hermeneutical one. That is to say, authors or editors interpreted earlier traditions in a way that shaped the material theologically for later generations. Thus what the earlier or earliest authors and editors might have intended in their material is subordinated to the larger canonical perspective; interpretation of specific texts needs to be carried out in the context of the whole of Scripture. Rendtorff (e.g. 1993) and Sheppard (e.g.1982), among others, have continued to refine Childs’ approach. Childs would contend, for example, that the Gospel of Luke in its present setting alongside Matthew and Mark, and separated from the book of Acts, indicates that it is to be read as a Gospel even though it was intended originally as part of the Apostle’s memoirs along with Acts. Despite the differences between the Gospels and their individual perspectives, the four Gospels are to be understood as together witnessing to the one gospel about Jesus. This canonical approach to the Scriptures, if adopted by translators, will have an influence on the way in which the text of individual books is read and interpreted, and to that extent has significance for the task of exegesis and translation.

5.1.7 Intertestamental studies When it comes to discussion of inter-testamental writings from the third century BCE to the second century CE, the so-called Apocryphal and Pseudepigraphical writings, there has been a significant development in recent years. The 266

development is especially important to the Bible Society movement. The academic re-evaluation of the inter-testamental materials has coincided with a practical demand upon Bible Societies to recognize the canonical dimensions of the wider Christian communities that they serve. Indeed, the two terms Apocrypha and Pseudepigrapha themselves are anachronistic, reflecting Reformation values and attitudes that are now seriously questioned. The Dead Sea Scrolls, other materials from the Judean deserts, and Nag Hammadi documents all point to the wide extent of literary activity contemporary with the canonical materials of late Judaism and the emerging Christian corpus. The Apocrypha (literally, ‘hidden’) documents of the Old Testament are a closed collection of 13 works found in the Septuagint. The New Testament apocryphal material comes from various early Christian communities but failed to gain widespread church support for inclusion in the Christian canon. The Pseudepigrapha of the Old Testament consists of books written mostly by Jews but in some cases later modified by Christians. They contain revelations alleged to have been received by prominent Old Testament personalities, expanded versions of some biblical narratives, some psalms and wisdom writings.12 Apart from providing a great deal of historical information about the period, this diverse body of literature offers important linguistic and literary information about the period between the two Testaments for biblical scholars. Translators can find the insights gained from these studies in most of the modern commentaries.

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Over the past 40 years or so there has been a change in direction in the study of Apocalyptic literature, one of the important literary types from this period. ‘Apocalyptic’ refers to a literary type marked by a special revelation, an apocalypse, from an other-worldly being to a human agent. It speaks of a transcendent reality that leads to a salvation at some end time and involves a supernatural world. In the early part of the twentieth century, the major scholarly concern in this field was the question of the origins of this worldview and of its relationship to Jesus and the early Christians. Old Testament scholars were more concerned about the origins of Apocalypticism, some seeing it as coming out of a prophetic worldview. They saw it in a very positive light, namely as God directing history (e.g. Rowley 1964, D. Russell 1964). Others saw it as originating in the mythic traditions of Israel’s distant past (e.g. Mowinckel 1946). Yet others saw its origin not in Israel’s own past but rather in external influence, especially from Persia. In New Testament studies, English-speaking scholars supported by Schweitzer (1948/1906) generally tended to see Jesus as being heavily influenced by the apocalyptic worldview. Subsequently, Bultmann (1968/1957) and others viewed Jesus and the early church as quite separate from this influence. Then later the social setting of an apocalyptic world view was identified with the concerns of a persecuted minority (Plöger 1968/1962). Once the Dead Sea Scrolls finds were published, not only were other apocalyptic texts becoming available but also the very character of Jewish apocalyptic expectations was emerging. How these expectations impacted on the community’s exegetical treatment of the biblical texts was made clearer. The wider question would then be the extent to 268

which the Dead Sea Scrolls community’s approach was typical of others more within the mainstream of Jewish thought and practice of the day. Since the 1970’s and the appearance of Koch’s (1972) seminal work, apocalyptic studies were seen in a less negative light. Since then primary interest has been in describing the genre and in finding a relationship between the wider Hellenistic world and the apocalyptic views of Judaism and early Christianity. The Society of Biblical Literature’s group working on genres has made a considerable contribution to this discussion. Despite von Rad’s (1972) attempt to link apocalyptic to Wisdom, most scholars now agree that apocalyptic has deep roots within Judaism though sharing much in common with similar developments in surrounding cultures. Cosmological interests rather than eschatological interests seem to be the agreed priority in current apocalyptic studies, especially with regard to 1 Enoch. A variety of religious, political and social crises seem to be the environments from within which apocalyptic materials emerge, not exclusively that of oppression or persecution. The literature coming out of these environments, both in its forms and peculiar language, reflects a varied origin about which there is no final consensus.

5.1.8 Intertextuality This approach to reading the Scriptures is generally regarded as having come into prominence during the late 1960’s and early 1970’s. T.S. Eliot (1920), however, is often credited with being one of the first to employ this approach in the 269

early part of the twentieth century. Eliot sought to approach literature from the perspective of interrelationships and borrowings from within the wide field of literature. Rhetorical criticism, semiotics and structuralism all relate to this approach in one way or another. Within biblical studies the approach seeks to identify patterns of borrowing from different biblical and extrabiblical literary traditions. Whether by indirect allusions or direct references, biblical writers referred to other texts to enhance the meaning of their own. This might be called an ‘evolutionary’ approach, for an older tradition is adapted so that it might be applied in a new context. The creation theme, the Exodus theme, together with vocabulary associated with specific situations or individuals, all are taken up and reapplied throughout the Old and New Testaments. The re-use of apocalyptic imagery in so much of Jesus’ speech is yet another example of the intertextual dimension within Scripture. Fishbane (1985) refers to ‘inner-biblical exegesis’ as the way in which each new generation of interpreters appropriates to itself the older traditions. The implications of this approach for a deeper appreciation of the dynamics of writing and interpreting are obvious. Translators need to be aware that the new historical or literary frame within which material from other parts of Scripture or from within the tradition is cited is the context in which that terminology and those ideas must be interpreted. The possibility that new meanings are intended despite the echoes of other traditions is to be recognized and taken into account in exegesis and translation. Other notions of intertextuality and their significance for translation are further discussed in section 6.1.2.13

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5.2 Some recent trends in interpreting the Bible The following material indicates some of the main trends in approaches to Scripture that have emerged in the past few decades.

5.2.1 Reader-response criticism14 This approach to the text of Scripture focuses on the role of the reader or hearer of the text. It shifts the primary locus of meaning away from the final form of the text to the readers or hearers in their personal contexts. While the personal context might be viewed as very limited, thus allowing for highly individualistic attribution of meaning to a text, it can be viewed more broadly in terms of the communities to which readers belong or which they can consult in consideration of the meaning of a text.15 Plurality in the theories of reader-response tends to undermine looking to this field of study for practical applications to Bible translation. However, it has provided an important counterbalance to views of meaning and communication associated with the ‘fallacy of the conduit metaphor’ discussed in section 1.2 and the ‘powerful message/powerful effects’ approach mentioned in section 2.1.2.2.

5.2.2 Feminist approaches16 Feminist interpretation of Scripture, though not being labelled until late last century, has a long history. Its roots go back to seventeenth-century struggles of European and American

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women to be accepted as preachers and teachers of the Bible. Their resistance to the patriarchal assumption that they are subordinate and so must defer to men in theological as well as domestic matters made them precursors to the modern feminist. They pointed out that some of the key biblical passages used by males to subjugate women could be re-interpreted to show that there was an equality between men and women (e.g. ‘adam was a generic human, sexually un-differentiated). They pointed to other biblical texts that were in support of women’s role within the church, and they noted possible alternative translations of biblical texts. In 1888 Willard noted gender-biased translations of Phoebe’s role as diakonos or prostasis. (We could add that of Priscilla in this discussion). Calling her a ‘deaconess’ rather than ‘deacon’ or ‘elder’ made her role seem far less significant than it was. Discovering that the Bible is often silent about the women and their roles in events, yet that they play a key part in those stories and situations, such scholars rightly insisted that the women in Scripture be made more ‘visible’. One way this could be done was by using inclusive language, at least in those languages where there is specific linguistic distinction of gender. Perhaps the most obvious development prompted by the increased awareness of the use of masculine forms in the biblical languages was the recognition that in many instances the reference is to people in a general sense. Thus most good translations today would use inclusive (gender neutral) language where the original languages refer to ‘people’, not just males. The movement for women’s rights has been reflected in biblical studies. In recent decades, feminist interpretations of Scriptures have received increasing attention. Two directions 272

are noted: in one, scholars such as Trible (e.g. 1978) and Russell (e.g. 1974) argued that biblical material did make a point of the equality under God shared by both men and women, Genesis 1.26-27, of the creation account, being an important text. However, this has been obscured by a male-dominated tradition of interpretation from early times up to the present. They have tended to focus on the textually marginalized women such as Hagar, Deborah, Michal, Martha, Chloe, and others. Feminist interpreters have asked about these women and their actual roles in events and sought to apply women’s experiences to further enlighten the sub-text. A second group saw the Bible as hopelessly lacking in its portrayal of women’s place and role and thus moved towards declaring the Bible irrelevant to their modern concerns. Feminist studies have helped to increase exegetes’ awareness of the social background and cultural values enshrined within the ancient texts, especially with regard to ancient Israel’s domination by patriarchal values, and the background and values influencing their own interpretation of the ancient texts. While attempting to represent the ancient cultures reflected in the biblical record, translators need to remain conscious of the issues feminists have raised. The full participation of women in all aspects of the translation task should allow these concerns to be satisfactorily addressed.17

5.2.3 Cross-cultural biblical indigenous approaches

interpretation:

Interpreters of the biblical text belong to specific cultural contexts, sharing the worldview(s) of those contexts. Despite

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the continuing and overwhelming dominance of European scholarship in the field, Asian, Latin American and African theologies and approaches to the biblical text are beginning to play a more significant role in the global exegetical enterprise. Cross-cultural readings of Scripture seek to employ a reader’s own cultural resources and social experiences to make links to the biblical text across the cultural divides between the original text and the modern reader. Advocates of this approach emphasize that it is not a new development but one that has been at the heart of all exegetical work since time immemorial: every exegete approaches the text with his or her cultural baggage, whether overtly or subconsciously. Those employing this approach seek to identify concepts in the reader’s own tradition that are parallel to those of the biblical world. They may also make use of those narratives or folktales in the tradition that demonstrate a similar theme to those in the narratives of the Bible and draw on them as a source of further reflection and insight. A third area of concern is that of rituals and practices in the reader’s world that serve functions similar to those of the biblical cultures. This approach has the advantage of recovering points of contact with Scripture, and affirming the God-givenness of all cultures. It helps overcome the ‘foreignness’ of Christian faith in many non-Western contexts. It is unfortunate that so much indigenous theological and biblical reflection is not available in international languages such as English, Spanish or French, and that most ‘Western’ exegetes cannot read and appreciate what is written in many national languages. Scholars from non-Western contexts have 274

not received sufficient attention in the West and thus their important contributions are generally neglected. The increasing number of translation scholars from non-Western countries should result in increasing insights into the issues at hand.

5.2.4 Post-colonial studies18 Post-colonial criticism is a relatively recent approach to reading the Bible, though the imperatives and underlying emotions that it expresses are as old as the Bible itself. Minority groups, colonized peoples, marginalized communities and the like all know from sometimes bitter experience what impact a dominant culture can have on their sense of identity as well as on their personal and cultural values. ‘Post-colonial’ can be defined historically in terms of the end of European colonizing of the so-called ‘Third World’, or it can be defined politically and transhistorically as ‘opposed to colonization’ such as when it is applied to ancient texts. Defining or describing the essence of the methodology is an extremely complex undertaking since it may also refer to approaches concerned with both what is inside (authors/ editors and their texts) and outside (a reader’s social and political stance, psychology, culture and ethnicity) the biblical text as well as to the interaction between them. Post-colonial criticism wears many faces and is applied almost on an individual basis depending on where the practitioner stands on a number of social, political and historical, not to forget theological, issues. However, it is a methodology that recognizes that within the Bible itself there is material written

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from the colonizer’s point of view as well as from the perspective of the colonized. Reacting against the cultural hegemony of an occupying alien culture, formerly colonized groups are affirming their need to bridge the gap between the cultural world to which they historically belong and that of the so-called ‘Christian West’. While they recognize that the occupying culture has shaped much of their thinking, especially in terms of biblical and theological thought, those urging this approach seek to re-read the biblical text in the light of their own traditional cultural and religious worldviews. There is within this approach a reaction against the pervasive influence of imperialist cultures, especially since in many cases within the Christian missionary movement there was, at least initially, a rejection of local culture and religion(s). The lasting impact of the colonizing culture on the indigenous language(s), literature, and religious values and attitudes is what this approach to Scripture aims to counter. Colonized groups feel strongly that their texts and values have been denigrated, despite the fact that the colonizer generally did not understand them. In the case of biblical studies, the post-colonial reader especially reacts against the imposition of the colonizers’ interpretations of the Bible, along with other values and perspectives that they presented as timeless and universal. Post-colonial readers want to reclaim their traditional texts as being of great value. They also wish to consider the Bible from a perspective consistent with their own traditional values. They point out that colonizers interpreted the biblical text in ways that reinforced the colonizers’ superior attitudes and made the Bible serve their own particular 276

vested interests. For example, Israel’s conquest of Canaan, allegedly under divine command, was taken by some colonizers as valid justification for their own colonizing activities. The New Testament claim that Jesus is ‘the Way, the Truth and the Life’ and that there is no other name by which people can be saved was often interpreted in ways that devalued other religious figures and traditions. The ‘great commission’ of Matthew’s gospel was seen often as a further justification for Western missionary activity in which the colonizers thought of other nations as benighted and in dire need of bringing into the fold. Early missionary histories and biographies are full of evidence that ‘civilizing’ was an essential component of the gospel package they carried with them. And of course the ‘civilization’ they brought was none other than their own culture, religious and denominational traditions, and political and economic systems. Generally speaking, post-colonial readers of the Bible claim that their own religious and cultural traditions are of equal value with those of ancient Israel and of the New Testament world. Some claim their own ancient traditions to be the equivalent of the Old Testament, as a preparation for the New Testament in their own languages, placing their own traditional stories alongside those of Scripture (e.g. Song 1999). Whether the post-colonial reader is living in a newly independent or post-colonial situation, or reads Scripture as an immigrant or refugee now living in an alien culture, the issues are much the same: the attempt to reclaim or to hold onto one’s own traditions rather than accept uncritically the perspective of the dominant culture or colonizer. The increasing ease of communication between scholars from 277

almost every culture has enabled the limitations inherent in a ‘Western’ exegesis to be more readily addressed by insights from another. Cultural and religious values, practices, concepts and worldviews from non-Western cultures can correct misunderstandings as well as supplement and complement incomplete understandings of biblical thought that continue to predominate in most ‘Western’ exegesis.

5.2.5 Region-centric studies19 Within Latin America, Liberation Theology arose and very quickly had a global impact on the theological enterprise. Social justice concerns similar to those expressed by Israel’s prophets found echoes around the world. In East Asia, Chinese folktales have been set alongside biblical narratives, and the Exodus theme has been used as a model for considering national history. South Asian theologians have drawn on their traditional texts, including the Bhagavadgita, to understand the book of Job, for example. African theologians and biblical scholars from all parts of the continent have also researched their own traditions and practices as a means of better relating to the biblical text. Many exegetes using indigenous perspectives to enter more dynamically into the world of the biblical texts are fully aware of the cultural values operating in their exegetical process while striving to resist imposing their own values on the biblical culture. Translators who are encouraged to actively locate their exegesis in local perspectives could well have more linguistic and conceptual terms available to them since they may feel more at liberty to draw from those

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resources. The challenge is always that of ensuring that local or regional terms and concepts are consistent with those of the Bible, to enable the otherness of the biblical texts to be appreciated as well as their similarities.

5.2.6 Ideology and exegesis20 “Ideological criticism examines ideology at work in three variables of biblical interpretation: the author, the text, and the reader” (Yee 1999:534). A definition of ‘ideology’ proves to be somewhat slippery. It is a term that can be used pejoratively as in Karl Marx, for whom ‘ideology’ was what the dominant social class demonstrated in its pursuit of its own interests. It has generally been regarded as a ‘political’ term and this has influenced many with a political agenda or a politico-theological agenda to apply it to biblical studies. Indeed, according to Penchansky (1995:11), the ideological critic recognizes that the act of interpretation is a political act and that ‘those who have controlled the reins of interpretation wield much power’. With the rise of Liberation Theology and its hermeneutic, there developed a new interest in the particular ideology of the one doing the interpreting and what their social location was. On the other hand, there are those who use the term in a less ‘political’ sense. For them, ideology is about ideas, about who holds those ideas and why, about the influence of those ideas upon the texts they produce and their interpretations of texts. In biblical studies it refers to the ideas held by the biblical author/redactor and the communities that preserved their ideas.

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One branch of Ideological Criticism looks closely at the structure of a biblical text’s social context. It seeks to understand how groups generating a text use that text to legitimate their own power and place in society. It seeks to study the attitude of an author to the prevailing or dominant ideology of his/her time – whether they are promoting or critiquing it. It also tries to identify the way in which a text has encoded socio-economic conditions and values of the period. It presupposes that the text is endeavouring to advocate a certain ideology and to use its rhetoric to that end. Another branch puts more focus on contemporary concerns and how the text may be read and translated from a particular ideological perspective. Ideological interpretations have underscored the fact that readers of a text cannot avoid bringing to it their cultural, political, theological and other biases. Since there is no such thing as a neutral, value-free or totally objective interpretation, each interpreter consciously or unconsciously adopts an ‘ideological’ approach. The linguistic and cultural gap that separates modern exegetes from the world of the original texts is a reality that cannot be bridged by any one individual or group. A variety of approaches and experiences will contribute to minimize the biased interpretation that is almost inevitable from any one source. However, the articles in Semeia 75 (1996b) raise serious questions as to the degree to which it is possible for translators, especially if they are white, middle-class, etc. to achieve even this minimal goal of objectivity. Noting that translators, like all other readers, bring to their task an unconscious ideological bias, this volume makes the point that issues of race and class are also part of the preconceptions that one inevitably brings to interpretation and thus to translation. It calls translators to 280

submit their motives, goals and intentions to critical self-examination in an attempt to become more aware of those personal, social, ideational and theological factors impinging on their work. Being more aware of our individual frames of reference and those of the world of the text will go some way towards enabling the translator to faithfully represent the world of the text, assuming that this is an agreed translation goal. Furthermore, the globalizing of the exegetical and translational tasks will mean the enrichment of exegetical understanding and hermeneutical application as insights from different perspectives are offered to the whole.

5.2.7 Sociological approaches Bridging the cultural gap between a modern reader and the individuals and communities behind the biblical texts is one of the great challenges for biblical exegetes. The social sciences can sometimes aid our study of an author’s world by providing analogies from the study of modern human communities. At the linguistic level, studies of oral traditions and the genres they generate may aid the biblical scholar in identifying and appreciating similar phenomena in the biblical text. At the cultural level also social scientific studies, especially anthropology, offer us the possibility of greater awareness of cultural institutions and their function in the everyday life of communities. Macro-theoretical social models are applied to a study of the biblical text to illuminate the social conditions which they reflected. Social theory has, for example, been applied to texts dealing with the settlement of the Israelites in Canaan.

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Reacting to earlier views that a conflict between nomadic and agricultural cultures was reflected, Mendenhall (1973) suggested that the incoming Israelites provided a catalyst for disaffected Canaanite serfs to rebel. The conquest was thus a peasant revolt.21 Saul’s establishment of a monarchy is thought to have been assisted by a breakdown of family and tribal rule and by the need for military defence as well as trade. The impetus for the rise of Israel as a nation-state, previously attributed to political and military pressure from the Philistines, has more recently been viewed as the result of economic and environmental factors as well (see Finkelstein 1989). An example of sociological theory applied to the Gospels is Theissen’s work (1978) suggesting that Jesus was a wandering charismatic who gathered sympathizers in local communities, and that the disciples continued in this role. Greco-Roman communities have been studied by Schmeller (1990) and others and compared with the communities founded by Paul. His research suggests that hierarchical and egalitarian elements combined to forge a strong sense of solidarity among all members regardless of social status. Bruce Malina has produced social-science commentaries on Revelation, on the Gospel of John, and on the Synoptics.22 The sociological approach in biblical studies provides an important cross-disciplinary supplement to more traditional methodologies and tools for exegesis. Its insights, when drawn upon judiciously, can enhance the interpreter’s awareness of those social factors operating within the text and in the exegete’s consciousness.

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5.3 Conclusion What has emerged in these more recent approaches to biblical studies, be they feminist, liberationist, post-colonial or other, is the awareness that there are various vested interests concealed in the institutions and practices of biblical exegesis. Exegetes’ social location, gender, race, class and historical context will be evident in their approach to and treatment of the biblical text. As the exegetical endeavour is more globalized, the hermeneutical challenge begins to engage with the expanded theological, moral and political issues of contemporary life. These will influence our understanding, study and discussion of what it means to faithfully render what the church over the centuries has determined to be sacred text and how best to use exegetical tools for meaningful translation in service of the church.

Notes 1

I would like to thank several of my UBS colleagues for their helpful comments on this chapter during its development. Among them are Paul Ellingworth, David Clark, Philip Towner and Roger Omanson. 2

Paratext was developed mainly by the brothers Reinier and Kees de Blois, consultants for the United Bible Societies. Translator’s Workplace was developed by technicians and translation consultants for the Summer Institute of Linguistics. The programs are available only to those directly involved with Bible translation, due to copyright restrictions.

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Along with its exegetical and translation functions, Paratext is also used for the preparation and checking of manuscripts. 3

In the remaining paragraphs of this section, including the footnotes, we follow Paul Ellingworth’s suggestions on what to mention as basic biblical Greek materials, and include his comments. We thank him for this contribution. 4

Fuller but older, and perhaps less user-friendly, is the four-volume Grammar of New Testament Greek by J.H. Moulton, 3rd ed. (1908); vol. 2, Accidence and Word-Formation, by Moulton and Howard (1929); vol. 3, Syntax, by Turner (1963); vol. 4, Style, by Turner (1976). Vol. 3 is perhaps the most useful for translators; vol. 4 has been criticized for finding too many Hebraisms in New Testament Greek. For the Septuagint, there are the small Grammar of Septuagint Greek by Conybeare and Stock (1988/1905) and A Greek-English Lexicon of the Septuagint, by J. Lust et al. (1996). In Conybeare and Stock’s work, the grammar itself occupies only pages 25-100, the rest of the book consisting of an introduction and selected, annotated readings from the Septuagint. 5

Now available in electronic form.

6

Published by the United Bible Societies.

7

For overviews of textual criticism, see Tov (1992), on the Hebrew Bible. On the text of the New Testament, the standard work is Aland and Aland (1989). Still very useful, and possibly more readable, is Metzger’s (1992). Metzger is also the author of A Textual Commentary on the Greek New Testament, of which it is essential to have the 2nd edition, 284

published in 1994, a companion to the 4th edition of the UBS Greek New Testament. 8

A catalog of all United Bible Societies’ scholarly publications may be obtained by writing: United Bible Societies, World Service Center Reading Bridge House, Reading RG1 8PJ, England. 9

For an English translation of the Dead Sea Scrolls along with introductory material, see Abegg et al. (1999). 10

For general studies, see A. Mazar (1990) and Stern (2001).

11

For a more detailed introduction to redaction criticism, see Perrin (1969), somewhat dated but well written for those who are not biblical scholars. Better still would be Marshall (1977). 12

See Charlesworth’s (1983-85) The Old Testament Pseudepigrapha. 13

A more detailed treatment of critical studies can be found in Haynes and McKenzie (1999). 14

For some examples and/or discussions of reader-response criticism with regard to biblical literature, see: Culley (1985), Moore (1989), Detweiler (1985), McKnight (1989). 15

Fish’s (1980) book from a reader-response perspective is a standard work on the importance of community in guiding the interpretation of texts.

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16

For an introduction to this area of study, see Collins (1985). 17

A useful guide to biblical exegesis from a feminist perspective can be found in Newsom and Ringe (1998). 18

For introductory discussions see: Donaldson (1996), Lee (1999), Sugirtharajah (1999). 19

For bibliography, see R. S. Sugirtharajah (1999:233). Also see, for example: Lan (1989), Mbiti (1986), Yorke (2000). 20

For discussions, see: Jobling and Pippin (1992), Pippin (1996), Jameson (1981). For a discussion of ideology with regard to particular Bible translation problems, see Ogden (2001). 21

So also Norman Gottwald (1979).

22

2000 (with Pilch), 1998 (with Rohrbaugh) and 1992, respectively. Also see: Semeia 35 (1986), dedicated to social-scientific criticism of the New Testament and its social setting.

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6. A Literary Approach to Biblical Text Analysis and Translation ERNST WENDLAND1 The Bible is literature, that kind of writing which attends to beauty, power and memorability as well as to exposition. It is like a rich chord compared to a single note. …The Bible requires profound attention to style when it is translated … [W]hen the original is beautiful, its beauty must shine through the translation; when it is stylistically ordinary, this must be apparent. (Hargreaves 1993: 137-138) Over the past few decades, a wide array of studies have supported the claim in the above quote: the Bible is literature.2 Far less attention has been given to translating the Bible as literature.3 This chapter is offered as an encouragement to translators to work at having the literary nature of biblical texts ‘shine through the translation’. Our focus in this chapter is on identifying prominent stylistic and rhetorical features of biblical literature, with occasional suggestions of how they might be represented in a translation aiming for functional equivalence. The assumption is that an

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in-depth appreciation of the source text’s features contributing to its literary quality needs to precede the attempt to produce a literary translation, especially in an approach such as functional equivalence where ‘faithfulness’ to the source text is viewed as a primary goal. Even if translators are not aiming for a literary translation, some knowledge of the techniques of literary analysis is still necessary in order to carry out an adequate study of the biblical text to be translated.4 We do not attempt to provide models or analyses of literary Bible translations in English, although it is hoped that this chapter might be an encouragement for others to do so. Our presentation of stylistic features is organized in terms of three sets: • unity, diversity, rhetoricity (6.1 – 6.3) • structure, patterning, foregrounding (6.4 – 6.6) • imagery, phonicity, dramatics (6.7 – 6.9) The first set includes factors that are general and foundational in nature; they are thus presupposed to varying degrees by all of the others. The second set pertains largely to the macrostructure of a text, while the third is associated more with the microstructure of literary discourse. These perspectives are of course complementary and closely interrelated, even overlapping on occasion with respect to their manifestation in the diverse texts of the Bible. Other features could have been selected for discussion of course. But these nine are especially prominent in the biblical literature and will therefore have to be dealt with by translators both in their analysis of the original text and also when deciding how to handle them in the target language. We 288

will especially look to the book of Jonah for illustration of these literary features, but also to other parts of the Bible.

6.1 Unity A multifaceted unity is perhaps the most important characteristic of literature. Such compositional integrity is established in particular by a significant recursion of form and content. This fundamental feature is highlighted by most literary analysts who approach biblical texts from a holistic perspective, preferring to treat a given document or pericope as a complete whole rather than as a patchwork of parts of disparate compositional origin. They do not discount the possible presence of structural and thematic differences or the importance of diachronic and source critical studies of the text and its formation. However, apparent formal or semantic disparities are interpreted from a unified perspective, while historical concerns assume relatively minor importance within the hermeneutical enterprise and its application in an actual translation. The biblical text as it has been canonically received (and transmitted via various critical editions) is the basis of analysis, interpretation, and evaluation.5 Three basic contributors to literary unity are: connectivity, intertextuality, and archetypes.

6.1.1 Connectivity Discourse connectivity, or ‘intratextuality’, may be analyzed in terms of form and/or meaning, which normally operate together in good literature. Cohesion refers to the formal 289

component of such textual integration. It may be manifested by phonological, lexical, or syntactic means within a text, usually involving some sort of recursion – for example, certain reiterated sound motifs, the repetition of key words, lexical substitution, ellipsis, or the use of preferred grammatical constructions. Cross-referential devices, such as anaphora (back reference), cataphora (forward reference), and deictic words (spatial and temporal indicators), are other prominent promoters of connectivity. These serve to clarify the logical relationships of references to participants and events, thus organizing a work’s larger discourse structure. Equally important are literary techniques like flashback, anticipation, and intertextuality. All of these features are realized at some point or other in the book of Jonah. This is most evident in the parallel verse panels that begin each of the two halves of the text: 1.1-3a and 3.1-3a. Within such obvious patterns of recursion, it is the differences that naturally stand out (cf. 6.2): e.g. “And Jonah arose to flee to Tarshish…” (1.3a) – “And Jonah arose and he went to Nineveh…” (3.3a). Coherence refers to the underlying semantic and pragmatic aspects of textual connectivity. It complements cohesion in that it is normally, but not always, a product of the manifestation of the various ties of linguistic cohesion within a literary work.6 A primary contributor to the coherence of a literary text is the grouping of its essential content into a number of key semantic ‘fields’, which may extend either throughout the work as a whole or within an included section. These areas of conventionally related meaning function to evoke certain familiar dramatic scenes, socio-religious settings, and interpersonal situations in the minds of the intended audience and thus facilitate the task of interpretation – for example, that of a ship being tossed about on a stormy 290

sea (Jonah 1); the man of God in fervent prayer (ch. 2); a demonstration of communal penitence before YHWH (ch. 3); the passionate irrationality of ethnic prejudice (ch. 4). Such evocation is not often so automatically or extensively triggered in the minds of people who are unfamiliar with the biblical background of different documents that comprise the Scriptures. In such cases, translators can create at least a partial context for facilitating interpretation by means of footnotes, sectional headings, or descriptive illustrations.

6.1.2 Intertextuality The unified nature of the Scriptures as a diverse but interrelated collection of sacred texts is enhanced by the large amount of intertextuality that it features. Any given book typically contains many quotations, allusions, echoes, and motifs of religious texts that were composed earlier in time, especially texts that were more or less canonized.7 In works like Jonah, such textual reflection plays a major role in developing the intended message of the author, who could expect his original audience to be familiar with the earlier texts. Several outstanding instances of intertextual connectivity occur in Jonah 4, for example, to reveal him as the antithesis of how a true prophet of YHWH ought to think, speak, and behave. The seemingly wonderful outcome of an entire city repenting in sackcloth was such a scandalous experience for Jonah that it left him longing for death at the hands of YHWH (4.3). This is exactly what the prophet Elijah felt (1 Kings 19.4), but – ironically – for just the opposite reason: Jonah desired divine extermination because of the tremendous success of his

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proclamation; Elijah because of an apparent lack of success (1 Kings 19.10). Such literary allusion manifests itself in greater or lesser clarity and density throughout the Bible, though it is often one of the least appreciated or used factors of interpretation. This feature not only adds semantic richness, thematic depth, plus a certain hermeneutical authority to any biblical text, especially where a ‘chain’ of intertextual references is involved, but it also serves to underscore the overall unity and connectivity of the Scripture canon as a whole.8 We see this, for example, in the succession of passages that Jonah cites or paraphrases from the Psalms in his prayer of thanksgiving to YHWH (ch. 2; cf. Psa 42.8; 31.23; 5.8; 18.5; 69.2; 30.4; 22.26; 3.9; 50.14; 116.16-18). The heavy web of intertextuality in this case serves to heighten the ironic thread that runs through the entire book of Jonah: there is no doubt that Jonah knew well the form and content of Scripture; it was the application and implications that he had trouble with. A crucial feature of intertextuality are the cues that signal its presence in a given discourse: “These are elements of text which trigger the process of intertextual search, setting in motion the act of semiotic processing” (Hatim and Mason 1990:133). In this connection, the analyst needs to determine the degree of salience or relevance of any instance of inter-textuality to the current message being conveyed. In other words, how much meaning does the pre-text actually contribute to the text and of what type (thematic, topical, emotive, affective, associative)? How difficult would it be for the audience, either the original or the contemporary one, to recognize the presence of this literary device in the text? This

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is a major concern for the translator of an ancient document like the Bible. In the case of relatively important occurrences where the target audience is unlikely to detect the pertinent markers in the text, what can be done to clue them in to the intertextual significance? At present, footnotes are the most common, although less than ideal, method of indicating intertextuality. Crucial pre-texts could be quoted in these notes for easy access. Another extratextual method of revealing the presence of such allusive artistry is to indicate pertinent cross-references alongside the text in the vertical margin, close to the point where they actually apply. Some languages, like many in the Bantu group, have a demonstrative particle or similar device that unobtrusively signals the presence of a ‘known’ quotation or allusion.

6.1.3 Archetypes Another closely related aspect of the unity of the Scriptures involves the recurrent themes, character types, images, and symbols that appear within the various books and larger groupings (the Pentateuch, wisdom literature, prophets, gospels, apocalypses, and epistles). A dramatic example is the recursion in the Bible’s last two chapters of images found in its first two: Revelation 21–22 Genesis 1–2 a new heaven and a new … God created the heavens and the earth (21.1) earth (1.1)

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Revelation 21–22 sun … moon … light (21.23; 22.5) the river of the water of life (22.1) the tree of life (22.2) I am … the beginning and the end (22.13)

Genesis 1–2 light… greater light/sun… lesser light/moon (1.3–5,14–18) a river watering the garden flowed from Eden (2.10) the tree of life (2.9) In the beginning God … (1.1)

Also, ‘the Lamb’ in the canon’s vivid visionary conclusion (e.g. 21.9, 22; 22.1,3) is linked to pastoral images frequently occurring in the Bible to depict the covenantal relationship between God and his people (e.g. Exodus 12; Psalm 23; Isaiah 40.11; 53.6; John 1.29). However, the referential unity of the Scriptures goes far beyond this vital text-internal harmony. It concerns the added conceptual, emotional, and sensory resonance that the books of the Bible have with other works of world literature, both religious and secular. The term archetypes refers to significant symbols, images, or figures that occur in the literary traditions and verbal lore of cultures around the world or within a large region and epoch, such as the Mediterranean Middle East at the time of Christ: for example, sun, moon, light, darkness, angel, demon, lion, lamb, purification, pollution, prodigal, prince, mountain, and valley.9 “These master images are the building blocks of the literary imagination – the forms to which the imagination gravitates when it organizes reality and human experience” (Ryken 1992:26). The primary relevance of such archetypal study for translators lies in its potential to unlock the disparate localized connotative overtones and symbolic

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values as well as the actual literal significance of much of the imagery of the Scriptures.10 The problem is to determine the degree to which this semantic grid of connections corresponds between the two language-cultures concerned and to consider how gaps of denotation and connotation that inevitably appear might be bridged, whether within the translation or by supplementary materials. Symbolic archetypes (i.e. conventional images of expanded denotative and connotative significance) are frequently paired in a dialectical pattern of contrasts that presents a graphic depiction of human nature and behaviour in the world, reflecting either an ideal or its corrupt antithesis.11 It is important to investigate the positive and negative connotations and associations of biblical images in the context of a given contemporary culture to determine where attitudinal mismatches might occur. For example, are all traditional ‘prophet-figures’ viewed positively, or does such an evaluation depend upon the social circumstances? And what about ‘foreign (ethnically alien) authority-figures’ (such as captains and kings) – are they typically regarded as being ‘bad’, dangerous, or at least untrust-worthy? The answers to questions such as these are important when exploring the significance and implications of a provocative book like Jonah, for example, in which conventional character expectations and stereotypes are continually upset. In addition to this sort of general topical imagery, we also find literary archetypes in the form of typical characters, plot elements, event sequences, settings, and situations. For example: [T]he suffering servant, the outcast, the refuser of festivities (usually in the form of the … Pharisees), master and servant, 295

and the pilgrim are recurrent figures in the New Testament. Among plot motifs, images of journey, quest, initiation, the lost and found, death and resurrection are prominent. (Ryken 1992:364) The parables of Christ are especially important in terms of their archetypal constitution and significance, particularly with respect to the contrastive personages that people them: for example, the older/younger brother, rich man/poor beggar, faithful/foolish manager, religious paragon/outcast. This wealth of cross-culturally relevant symbolism undoubtedly contributes to their worldwide popularity, even in translation where their succinct, vivid, and incisive style contributes to the effect and thus needs to be duplicated if at all possible. The Hebrew poets provide another rich lode of ancient Near Eastern archetypes found in religious literature. For example, the imagery of YHWH’s self manifestation (theophany) in the face of the psalmist’s enemies combines the familiar powerful phenomena of nature with those of fierce battle scenes to heighten an overall aura of great hope and assurance for the faithful (e.g. Psa 18.6-15). The short prophecy of Joel, on the other hand, presents a complex combination of graphic but traditional images to underscore its message of warning and comfort: destructive locusts, drunkenness, drought, fasting, military siege and conquest, a darkening of sun and moon, a solemn penitential assembly, life-giving rains and abundant harvest, the inspiration of dreams and prophecy, celestial portents, and finally, eschatological judgement and its outcome – a fertile holy land as opposed to a desolate wilderness. This may be compared with the fantastic archetypal imagery that is typical of apocalyptic literature, for example in Revelation 12, where we view in succession: a 296

semi-divine pregnant woman giving birth, a malevolent dragon-like creature bent on oppression and destruction, spectacular heavenly calamities that mirror deep spiritual antagonism, a stark wilderness sanctuary, a cosmic battle pitting angelic against demonic forces, a defeated serpentine foe seeking vengeance upon the earth via a cataclysmic flood.12 A detailed investigation, in both the source and target languages, of the denotative content of such poetic images must be carried out in order to assess the most likely impression that will be evoked in the minds of the target audience.13 One will have to decide how to deal with significant referential mismatches: for example, in the main text, by footnotes, or by some other reader’s aid? This procedure needs to be complemented by a corresponding examination of the images’ respective connotative associations. ‘Connotation’ refers to the diverse emotions, attitudes, values, and other implications that tend to be conventionally connected with certain words and phrases, especially those bearing a special symbolic import. Such resonant connotative overlays may be positive or negative in nature (e.g. angel – demon) as perceived in relation to a given book, corpus, or literary tradition. Both the denotation and the connotation of such terms are culturally defined and hence not always easy to convey in another language. For example, in some languages of Africa, ‘demons’ or ‘evil spirits’ have been rendered by the closest local cultural equivalent – a ‘spirit of possession’. The problem is that to be ‘entered’ or ‘grabbed’ by such an ancestral spirit often turns out to be a desirable experience: rather than making a person ritually ‘unclean’, as in the Scriptures, it enables the ‘owner’ 297

to perform various acts of divination by means of her/his familiar spirit. Similarly, the mythological ‘Leviathan’ (a dangerous, serpentine sea creature) has a rather close cultural analogue in a traditional Chewa mythic setting – namely, the mysterious napolo monster that is believed to cause great natural disasters (floods, mudslides, earthquakes), especially during the annual rainy season. However, the translation team felt that this reference could not be used in the Bible due to its close association with ancient ancestral religion, to which most contemporary Christian churches do not wish to accommodate. Even in the Bible itself, the connotation of a particular image may vary from one text to another. There is certainly a difference, for example, between the divine ‘shepherd’ of Psalm 23 and Isaiah 40.11 in contrast to the royal ‘shepherds’ referred to in certain passages of Ezekiel and Jeremiah (e.g. Jeremiah 25.34; Ezekiel 34.2). The connotative force of a term tends to be communicatively stronger than its denotation, a linguistic feature that is especially obvious in the case of euphemisms: for example, those that replace references to the deity, such as ‘heaven’ for God (Matthew 13.11,24,31). It is the culturally-conditioned emotive overlay of connotation, in this case negative, that prevents the indigenous term for ‘shepherd’ (literally, ‘herdsman/boy’) being used as a translation for ‘pastor’ in some Bantu languages. Likewise the associative colouring of ancient ancestral worship disqualifies a number of ancient religious expressions from being used in a contemporary Bible translation to render terms such as ‘Holy Spirit’, ‘priest’, ‘sacrifice’, ‘prophet’, or even the word ‘worship’ itself.

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6.2 Diversity A wide range of devices creates the diversity necessary to complement the overall unity of literary discourse. Features that mark any sort of a significant difference in the text are needed for aesthetic variety, to distinguish and delineate genre structures, to create discourse patterns, to highlight points of special prominence, and to facilitate memorability or actual memorization. Diversity in terms of form or content naturally accumulates as a text develops – but at a greater or lesser rate, depending on the degree of difficulty or novelty intended, resulting in more or less semantic and formal density as far as the process of interpretation is concerned. The macro-feature of diversity is represented by a number of the literary techniques described in subsequent sections, foregrounding for example, and therefore it does not have to be treated in as much detail here. One important type of diversity is the discourse disjunction that is brought about due to some alteration in expectancy or the termination of a previously established textual pattern. The purpose may be to create a pause or point of transition within the account for the sake of emotive release or simply to begin a new structural-thematic unit in the progressive development of the author’s message (e.g. “And Jonah arose to run away…” [1.3]; “And Jonah arose and he went…” [3.3]). Or the disjunction may be used as a foregrounding technique to distinguish some point of message prominence, such as its thematic peak or emotive climax (cf. 6.6.2), or the opposite, such as a backgrounded explanation or an elaborative digression.14

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The formal means of marking structural or thematic interruptions within the text may be quite regular in terms of literary or linguistic function. In Hebrew narrative, for example, a syntactic element that is advanced to pre-verbal position after a series of wayyiqtol constructions often announces the onset of a new stage in the account (paragraph, episode, ‘chapter’, etc.); for example: “And-YHWH he-sent a-wind a-great-one upon-the-sea…” (Jon 1.4). Similarly, a direct quotation within a psalm is frequently used to call attention to an area of structural and/or thematic importance. In Jonah’s psalm, for instance, such a speech segment, one pronominally emphasized, introduces the central bicolon of the chiasmus according to which this entire thanksgiving to YHWH is organized (cf. Wendland 1996:366), “And-I, I-said…” (2.4a; Hebrews 2.5a). In Chichewa, the structure “So then as for me, I said…” is used for this discourse demarcative function. Literary diversity within a given document, corpus, or tradition may involve different contrasts, emphases, assumptions, and implications with regard to form, content, or function. Normally, these are quite obviously marked stylistically as they appear on the surface of discourse. However, they may also be conveyed by some very subtle linguistic devices in the original text. For example, YHWH first commissions Jonah to “call out against [‘l]” the people of Nineveh – the second time to “call out unto [’l]” them (1.2; 3.2). On the first occasion Jonah ‘arose’ to flee “from before the face of Yahweh” (1.3); later he ‘arose’ to travel “according to the word of Yahweh” (3.3). There are two references to Jonah’s being ‘inside the belly of the fish’, first as a result of his disobedience (1.16), then as a prelude to prayer (2.1). An exclamatory particle (ak ‘nevertheless’, 2.4b) 300

contributes to distinguishing the emotional and thematic turning point of Jonah’s poetic prayer in the fish’s belly. Obviously, it is important for Bible translators to retain as many of these disjunctive features as is meaningfully possible in their language, by means of the appropriate discourse signals according to the literary genres that are available. Sometimes a literary text is constructed in an exceptionally diverse manner; that is, it departs radically from the norms, in order to highlight a point of special salience with regard to the message as a whole or its larger organization.15 For example, the thematic peak of the book of Jonah occurs at the very end of the text in an unusually long didactic-admonitory speech by YHWH, artistically distinguished by poetic parallelism, topical contrast, intratextual recursion (‘Nineveh, that great city’; cf. 1.2; 3.2) figurative language, and pronounced rhetorical phrasing (4.10-11). The various unifying elements of denotative and connotative content within the Scriptures discussed under archetypes (section 6.1.3) must also be investigated in terms of their culturally and religiously specific manifestation where some curious anomaly or conspicuous variation from the norm is concerned. For example, Jonah’s being the negative inverse of what would be expected of the typical prophet of YHWH contributes to the underlying irony of the text. Many Hebrew women depicted in the Old Testament frequently stand out for their drive, determination, and common sense in contrast not only to relatively weaker or duller male personages, but also with respect to contemporary cultural stereotypes.16 Jesus’ ministry and social relationships are depicted as contrasting with

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those of other religious leaders of his time and the message proclaimed by the apostle Paul as contrasting with that of contemporary religious philosophers (cf. 1 Corinthians 1.16; 2.1,4; Acts 18.4,13). Translators must first of all be able to detect these different points of diversity in the biblical text and to determine their relative prominence as well as the purpose for being placed where they are. The next essential step is to faithfully represent these same communicative objectives in their translation, to the extent possible, depending on the formal resources available and the hierarchy of skopos goals that have been determined for the version at hand.

6.3 Rhetoricity Rhetoric may be defined as the faculty of observing in any given case the available means of persuasion … Of the modes of persuasion furnished by the spoken word there are three kinds. The first kind depends on the personal character of the speaker; the second on putting the audience into a certain frame of mind; the third on the proof, or apparent proof, provided by the words of the speech itself. – Aristotle17 Aristotle’s definition is frequently used as the starting point for contemporary discussions of rhetoric, and we will use it to guide this section’s brief discussion of rhetorical features in literature.18 It is especially important that translators recognize and effectively represent strategies and expressions used in the second and third ‘modes of persuasion’ identified in the above quote.19 In one sense, persuasion in the form of an explicit or implicit argument is an objective of all

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discourse. For example, those reciting a psalm of praise desire to persuade YHWH that they need or appreciate his help, as well as to express their feelings about him and their joyful or stressful situations in life. The narratives of Scripture serve the theological purpose of advocating perspectives on the character, will, and plan of God in relation to his creation. Even the seemingly straightforward expositions on how to celebrate a religious festival or perform a sacrifice (e.g. Leviticus 22-23) are in a certain sense efforts to convince the audience that the method prescribed is better than any other way. However, our discussion of the techniques of persuasion will focus on texts that most clearly involve argumentation.20 In other words, they manifest a relatively greater degree of the literary quality of rhetoricity.21 We cannot go into detail about the various strategies for producing deductive and inductive ‘proofs’ in biblical literature.22 We will simply note that three of the basic methods discussed by Aristotle are used throughout the Scriptures: the citation, the enthymeme (or logical syllogism),23 and illustration. The prominence and importance of intertextual quotations in biblical literature have already been discussed (6.1.2), so we will comment here only on the rhetorical use of enthymemes and illustrative examples. An enthymeme is composed of three parts: a major premise (M), a minor premise (m) and a conclusion (C). A key translation problem is that one of the three parts, usually the major premise, is often left implicit.24 Thus while the original audience would probably have understood it, contemporary audiences can be confused or misled because of their lack of background knowledge pertaining to the original situation. 303

For example, when the stricken ship’s sailors ask Jonah, “What shall we do to you, that the sea may quiet down for us” (1.11), they appear to have the following enthymeme in mind: • (M) Punishment of a guilty person can be a means of appeasing God. • (m) Our treatment of Jonah can be punishment of a guilty person. • (C) Our treatment of Jonah can be a means of appeasing God. In some cases, the conclusion of an enthymeme may be left implicit. Jonah 4.2, for example, suggests one that repels Jonah: • (M) Sinners may be beneficiaries of YHWH’s mercy. • (m) Ninevites are sinners. • (C) Ninevites may be beneficiaries of YHWH’s mercy. In other instances, an enthymeme may lie even more deeply buried within the text. For example, the sailors’ fearful question of Jonah in 1.10 (“What is this that you have done?”) suggests the following implicit enthymeme: • (M)Objects of divine punishment are guilty of having offended God. • (m) Jonah, as determined by casting lots (1.6), is an object of divine punishment – thereby endangering the crew. • (C) Jonah is guilty of having offended God.25 Several adaptations of the standard enthymeme may be found in the biblical literature, for example, the ‘hortatory

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enthymeme’26 in paraenetic discourse, which features an imperative ‘exhortation’ instead of a conclusion: for example, “Watch out that you are not led astray…” (Luke 21.8).27 It may be necessary for translators to render such covert reasoning more explicitly in the text so that their audience does not arrive at the wrong conclusion or miss the fact that a specific singular or compound conclusion is being made. Alternatively, in the case of probable misunderstanding, a fuller explanation may be given in a footnote. The same tactics may be employed in the case of a complex logical argument, which so often occurs in the epistles (e.g. six interlocked instances of the explanatory particle gar in Romans 1.16-20). In some cases, the use of a special typographical format may help the reader see how the argument at hand has been arranged in the original text, as Peng (forthcoming) shows in his discussion of the rhetorical structure of Romans 12.9-21.28 The use of life-related examples in inductive argumentation is well illustrated by Jesus’ frequent use of simple comparisons, similes, and parables, often one after the other (Matthew 6; Luke 15-16), to support his point. Paul piles up instances of human wickedness to support his argument that “God gave [those who by their wickedness suppress the truth] up to a debased mind and to things that should not be done” (Romans 1.23-31). He cites cases from secular life to underscore his claim that he deserves material support (1 Corinthians 9.1-14) and examples of his personal qualifications, sufferings, divine revelations, and mighty works to demonstrate his right to boast as a genuine apostle of Jesus Christ (2 Corinthians 11.16ff). The prophets referred to common instances of sociopolitical injustice to argue that God’s punishment was 305

deserved (e.g. Isaiah 1.21-23), or to examples of national affliction to argue that it was even now being realized (e.g. Isaiah 1.6-8). The ‘second mode’ of persuasion that Aristotle identified was putting the audience into a certain frame of mind, through appeals to their emotions and basic values. This tactic is of course found in many passages of the Scriptures: for example, the psalmists’ invoking God’s righteousness in persuading him to show mercy and defend them; YHWH’s interrogative reminders to Job of his surpassing wisdom and power to defend his refusal to enter into debate concerning divine justice; Jesus’ frequent citations of Torah and the Prophets, viewed as authoritative by his audience, to support his claims; YHWH’s verbal and non-verbal efforts to disabuse Jonah of his rank prejudice against the people of Nineveh (Jonah 4). Also relevant here are the varied politeness strategies used in dialogues throughout the Scriptures (cf. 6.9; 4.6). In Chichewa, for example, the appropriate pronominal references must be used in direct speech to indicate varied degrees of respect, formality/familiarity, social status, and the exigencies of the current interpersonal circumstances. Thus when the ship captain first addresses Jonah, peacefully sleeping away in the hold, the translation has him employing ‘familiar’ second person singular forms (minus respect, superior to inferior) to express irritation with his seemingly untroubled passenger (1.6). Later, however, when Jonah is revealed to be a devotee of the God who has caused the storm that has befallen them, the sailors show their deference to him by using ‘honorific’ (+ respect) second plural pronouns (1.10-11). A still higher level of esteem may be indicated through use of third person plural forms (‘they’), as when 306

Paul addresses various rulers in Acts 23—26 (except for Ananias, the Jewish high priest, 23.3!). Speakers of the different Bantu languages of Zambia adopt varied honorific strategies also when offering their prayers to the supreme deity, whether traditional or Christian: one is not going to persuade a superior, including God, of anything if one does not speak to him or her in socially and emotively suitable terms. Translations of the Bible that do not take this seemingly minor politeness factor into consideration may sound offensive, at best strangely unnatural, to speakers of the language (see section 4.5 for further discussion of this aspect of translation). Aristotle observed in his third book on rhetoric that “It is not enough to know what we ought to say; we must also say it as we ought … producing the right impression of a speech.” Some of the favoured stylistic devices used to emphasize as well as to embellish the key aspects of biblical argumentation are: • Rhetorical question: perhaps the rhetorical device most discussed in Bible translation literature,29 but still frequently missed by translators in terms of its context-specific impact and implications (e.g. Jon 4.4,9). • Irony: “In verbal irony … one meaning is stated and a different, usually antithetical, meaning is intended … Dramatic irony is a plot device according to which (a) the spectators know more than the protagonist; (b) the character reacts in a way contrary to that which is appropriate or wise; (c) characters or situations are compared or contrasted for ironic effects, such as parody; or (d) there 307

is a marked contrast between what the character understands about his acts and what the play demonstrates about them” (Preminger 1993:635). An ironic contrast is evident in YHWH’s concluding argument with Jonah: “You are concerned about the bush … And should I not be concerned about Nineveh …?” (4.10-11). Jesus was a master of irony in his disputations with the religious leaders of his day (e.g. Mat 7.4; 15.5-6). Irony can be generated between someone’s words and the situation in which they are uttered, like Jonah’s pious confession of the merciful attributes of YHWH although he is upset by YHWH’s display of these attributes (4.2-3). • Sarcasm: the barbed brother of irony, used either in personal ridicule or rebuke, is less discussed and often misrepresented in translation. There are many instances of sarcasm in Paul’s defence of himself in 2 Corinthians 10-13 (e.g. 10.1).30 One can also detect a note of sarcasm in YHWH’s rhetorical question to Jonah: “Is it right for you to be angry about the bush?” (4.9). • Enigma: may be local, i.e., deliberate verbal ambiguity, or global, i.e. thematic in nature; it may also be total or partial, affecting only a part of the audience – either those inside or outside of the biblical account. This rhetorical device serves to raise hermeneutical questions in the listener’s mind.31 The speeches of Christ as recorded by John are filled with such double meanings: for example, the ‘bread-of-life’ discourse (John 6.26-51; note the outcome: vv. 41-42,52). The story of Jonah illustrates thematic enigma: for example, the prophet tried to run away from God once (1.1-3) → will he try it 308

• •

•

•

again? (3.1-2); YHWH spared the pagan sailors on account of Jonah’s action (1.12,15) → will he do it again for the Ninevites? (3.3-4).32 Paradox: an apparent contradiction: “Whoever finds his life will lose it, and whoever loses his life for my sake will find it” (Matthew 10.39). Hyperbole: deliberate overstatement. This occurs throughout the conversations recorded in the Scriptures. Jonah, for example, was clearly very upset, but was he actually ‘angry enough to die’ (4.9)? Many commentators see an element of hyperbole in the reference to Nineveh’s great size, i.e. ‘a three days’ walk across’ (3.3, New Revised Standard Version (NRSV)). The city was indeed large, but it certainly would not take a healthy adult male that long to traverse it. Proverb: a maxim, commonplace, or any ‘wise saying’ supported by oral or literary tradition, whether secular or religious. Jonah appears to cite such an authoritative ‘Scriptural’ saying in defence of his person in 1.9 and his plan to elude God in 4.2. Oxymoron: a figure in which seemingly incongruous or contradictory terms are combined in a way that highlights, emphasizes, or enhances the sense of the utterance as a whole. Paul was especially fond of this device (e.g. 1 Corinthians 1.25; 2 Corinthians 6.8-10). From a local religious perspective, there may be an oxymoron present in the Ninevite king’s appeal to a god, Jonah’s God, whose ‘compassion’ can negate his ‘fierce anger’ (3.9).

Each of these rhetorical features, which often occur together as shown above, may present difficulties for translators. To 309

begin with, they must be recognized in the biblical text and their contextual import clearly discerned. There is normally some kind of contrast or contradiction involved – namely, literal versus non-literal meaning; alternatively, one may be dealing with a deeper level of semantic or pragmatic significance. In any case, they cannot simply be ignored or rendered in literal fashion if it seems likely that people will misunderstand the translation. Potential problems in this regard need to be handled either textually or extra-textually so that the rhetoricity of the original message is somehow preserved. As a general rule then, “[a] better study of rhetorical means ought to help translators produce a text with better rhetorical focus for its readers [or hearers]” (Sim 2000:59). There are of course many other discourse strategies and stylistic devices used in argumentation to evoke the appropriate attitudes and to convey the right impact in keeping with the type of persuasion required. But these frequently occur in other types of speech as well, and have largely to do with the so-called poetic function of communication, “enhancing aesthetic appreciation of language use” (1.2.1), which is exemplified in the different literary techniques that follow.

6.4 Structure The description of textual organization is a crucial component of any literary analysis. Since it has not been fully appropriated and applied in earlier models or methodologies of Bible translation, especially with regard to higher levels of text structure, we give some attention to this matter here.

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6.4.1 Genres ‘Genre’ may be generally defined as a certain type or class of something, but more specifically as “[a] category of artistic composition … marked by a distinctive style, form, or content” (Soukhanov 1996:656). In the present context we are of course talking about the organization of verbal art in its diverse manifestations – from prose to poetry. ‘Form’ in this case may be seen as denoting the larger structure and/or the rules of arrangement of a particular discourse or even a corpus of texts. A given genre may be described with reference to different levels of specificity (sub-genres) or to particular sociocultural settings in which certain types of text typically appear or are regularly performed. Two different perspectives may be adopted with respect to the study of genre in a given sociocultural context – that of the foreigner or universalistic observer (a generalized etic viewpoint) or that of the indigenous insider (a specific emic view). Due to our relative lack of knowledge about the various emic (sub-)genres recorded in the Bible and how to define them, I have adopted a largely etic perspective in the following discussion. Any audience approaches a given discourse in their language, whether oral or written, with a certain literary (as distinct from linguistic) competence, based on learning and past experience, which enables them to discern and interpret the various stylistic features that are present in the text (Barton 1984:11-19). The more experienced the readers or listeners, the greater is their active, critical competence. The recognition of genre and expectations associated with it are a fundamental part of this competence. Genre refers to a

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cognitive template, an interpretive framework, that facilitates an audience’s processing and evaluation of a text’s form (e.g. poetic devices), content, purpose, and significance. Enjoyable or disconcerting surprise may occur when a genre’s norms are deliberately flouted, altered, or ignored. The diverse codes and conventions associated with different genres “are capable of different kinds of meaning and offer different kinds of information to a reader” (Tate 1991:64). However, such a significant meaning potential exists only in a virtual state until it is actualized by someone who is familiar with the formal system of linguistic and literary signals of the genre and related sub-genres or tropes built into the text by the original author. Alter (1981:46) describes the process thus: A coherent reading of any art work, whatever the medium, requires some detailed awareness of the grid of conventions upon which, and against which, the individual work operates … An elaborate set of tacit agreements about the ordering of the art work is at all times the enabling context in which the complex communication of art occurs. Through our awareness of convention we can recognize significant or simply pleasing patterns of repetition, symmetry, contrast; we can discriminate between the verisimilar and the fabulous, pick up directional clues in a narrative work, see what is innovative and what is deliberately traditional at each nexus of the artistic creation. Knowledge of generic organization and operation can lessen the likelihood of one’s misinterpreting an artistic piece of literature, for example one in which the use of irony or hyperbole is a prominent feature: 312

The genre provides the literary context for a given sentence [text] and, therefore, partly determines what the sentence [text] means and how it should be taken … Genre thus enables the reader to interpret meaning and to recognize what kinds of truth claims are being made in and by a text. (Vanhoozer 1998:50) Ignorance of or disregard for the formal and semantic norms associated with a given genre can lead to what Barr (1963:125) terms a ‘literary category mistake’: Failures to comprehend the literary genre lead to a use of the biblical assertions with a wrong function … Genre mistakes cause the wrong kind of truth values to be attached to biblical sentences. Literary embellishments then come to be regarded as scientifically true assertions. Thus it is clear that special attention devoted to both the generic and the specific literary-rhetorical forms of biblical discourse can direct one more confidently along the path of a meaningful interpretation of such artistically composed theological literature. This is not merely a matter of structural identification, for the conventional form is merely the primary means to a more important end – namely, a better understanding of the author’s message in terms of conceptual content and affective intent (function) as well. It is not surprising that an accomplished secular translator and literary critic concludes: “[R]ecognition of genre and its rules is the translator’s most important task” (Katan 1999:150). Etic genres may be categorized and described with respect to different levels of generality. Most analysts distinguish two 313

basic macro-genres, prose and poetry. In some literary traditions, the difference between these two types is relatively clear-cut and easily specified. This normally occurs in cases where the various kinds of poetry are strictly defined in terms of fixed linguistic/literary categories – most commonly, some combination of the following features: meter, rhyme, line length (syllable count), versification (balanced lines, strophes, stanzas), and are designated by particular technical terms (e.g. ‘sonnet’, ‘choric ode’, ‘epic’). However, in the case of other, perhaps most, world literatures, including biblical Hebrew, the distinction between prose and poetry is quite a bit more flexible and depends more on a particular concentration or combination of what may be termed ‘poetic’, as opposed to ‘prosaic’ stylistic features. Poetry characteristically foregrounds the phonic, or auditory, as well as the imagistic, or visual, dimension of a given language. In the Hebrew corpus of relatively more poetic discourse would be found a greater incidence of devices such as: figurative language; word order variation; word-play; sound-play (alliteration, assonance); condensation (e.g. ellipsis of elements in the second of parallel lines); patterned repetition; exclamation; intensification; rhetorical/deliberative questions; archaic, dialectal, or religious in-group vocabulary; direct speech; and various forms of covert allusion. In addition to a greater frequency, density, and intensity of usage with respect to these characteristics, Hebrew poetry is also distinguished by a significantly reduced occurrence of the so-called ‘prose particles’: the sign of the direct object (’th), the definite article (h-), the relative clause marker (’shr), and the inseparable prepositions (m-, l-, k-, b-).33

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A given text may be classified or interpreted as being more or less poetic on the basis of the relative amounts of such features as well as their distribution in the discourse. Some indeterminacy and hence controversy occurs, for example, in a number of prophetic and wisdom texts (e.g. Jeremiah, Ecclesiastes) as well as in certain epistolary passages (e.g. 1 Corinthians 13, Philippians 2.6-11, Colossians 1.15-20), including those that quote Old Testament/Septuagint poetry, such as Hebrews (e.g. 1.5-13; i.e. how ‘poetic’ are these verses in Greek?). Even in texts that are predominantly narrative in nature, distinctive poetic ‘inserts’ occur for the purposes of highlighting: for example, in many of the crucial speeches of Genesis (e.g. 1.26; 2.23; 3.14-19; 4.23; 8.22; 9.6,25-26; 12.2-3). Here it is not so much the form or classification that is important for interpreters, but rather the function, especially where the poetically heightened style of discourse is being used to foreground or emphasize a particular portion of the text (e.g. the central subject/theme of the three epistles mentioned above).

6.4.2 Prose There are various ways of classifying prose in terms of some etic literary grid. These different schemes are distinct from, and need to be complemented by, more linguistically-based ones, such as Longacre’s differentiation of narrative, predictive, expository, and hortatory discourse in biblical Hebrew by means of diverse systems of verb usage (tense/aspect/mood) and participant (object) reference (1989:59-63, 139-140).

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A literary format tends to be descriptively less rigorous and is formulated more according to purpose and to a lesser extent on content, for example: • • • • • • •

Narrative (historical, fictional), Hortative (prophetic, epistolary), Predictive (revelatory, apocalyptic), Descriptive (scenic, panoramic), Legislative (juridicial, instructional), Explanatory (to clarify, justify, define, etc.), Enumerative (genealogical, listing).

As suggested by the terms in parentheses, there are different ways of designating these etic genres and also of subdividing them into more specific categories: for example, ‘biography’, ‘diatribe’, ‘midrash’, ‘aphorism’, ‘admonition’, ‘vision/ dream’, ‘royal decree’. The prophecy of Jonah, for instance, may be more precisely defined (e.g. when searching for a genre equivalent in another language) as a “didactic, typological, tragicomic narrative” (Wendland 1996:198). Similarly, certain pericopes found within the narrative gospels may be analyzed as belonging to one or more of the following form-functional sub-categories: pronouncement stories (of correction, commendation, objection, quest, inquiry), parables, wonder accounts (of exorcism, healing, provision, controversy, rescue, epiphany), promise and commission declarations, genealogy, hymn, prayer, apocalypse, liturgy.34 It is also important to point out that most, if not all, biblical books as well as certain of their larger constituent sections are mixed (compound or complex) in their generic composition. The text of Genesis, for example, includes all of the major kinds of discourse: narrative, genealogy, legislation,

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prediction (poetry!), and exhortation. Any one of the four gospels too will include clear instances of many of the subtypes listed above. Furthermore, one may observe that there is a particular style of discourse that may occur within each of the larger genres – as well as in the various kinds of poetry – namely, direct speech. This important feature, which may in fact comprise most of a given pericope, not only dramatizes and popularizes a text, but it also makes possible a more ready incorporation of other discourse types (such as Jonah’s prayer in ch. 2 of that book). New Testament narrative is frequently composed of smaller units that are distinguished by a particular alternation or mixture of action and speech (cf. Bailey 1995:205-206). The New Testament epistles may often be elucidated with reference to specific generic forms (types and patterns) that go back to the categories of ancient Greco-Roman rhetoric and letter-writing: for example, aspects of argument, diatribe, paraenesis, encomium, topoi, virtue-vice lists, the household code, liturgical fragments, salutation-blessing-doxology, travelogue (Bailey and van der Broek 1992:21-86; Bailey 1995:206). The value of these systems of literary classification lies not in their static use as a means of formal identification (e.g. ‘utterance X is an aphorism’), but in their dynamic application to more adequately reveal the compositional organization, movement, and purpose of a given pericope. Knowing the standard form is also helpful in determining where and why an author modifies an expected typical pattern in order to achieve some special communicative effect: for example, in criticism of the text’s initial addressees as when Isaiah transforms a love song into an oracle of divine judgement (Isaiah 5.1-6), or when Paul omits the opening ‘thanksgiving-and-prayer’ section in 317

his letter to the Galatians (Galatians 1.6ff). Similar effects may accordingly be sought in the language of translation.

6.4.3 Poetry There are four major etic categories of biblical poetry, which are briefly described below: • Lyric: highly expressive and emotive; ‘natural’, realistic imagery (as opposed to apocalyptic images); used to worship and praise, pray and appeal to, thank and commemorate God, the king, or some other focal participant. The Song of Songs is the clearest instance of lyric poetry in the Scriptures. Many of the Psalms would also fall into this category, including those portions found in the New Testament (e.g. Luke 1; Hebrews 1). • Didactic: informative and commemorative in nature; more concrete ‘facts’ than literary ‘figures’; intended to instruct, remind, and enjoin concerning both the God of Scriptures and the godly life. Examples are in Job, Proverbs, Ecclesiastes, and several Psalms (e.g. 1, 119) as well as in major segments of the discourses of Christ and of the New Testament epistles. • Paraenetic: strongly affective, even imperative in force with regard to one’s beliefs and behaviour; intended to encourage (strengthen, comfort, motivate) or to admonish (rebuke, warn, indict) God’s people. Examples are found in most Old Testament prophetic texts and a large proportion of the epistolary literature.

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• Apocalyptic: visionary and evocative; ‘fantastic’, otherworldly imagery and cosmic symbolism; intended to give God’s people a dramatic, inspiring and/or reassuring vision of the future according to his foreordained plan for the world and his coming Kingdom. Examples appear in certain prophetic passages, such as Ezekiel 38-39, Daniel 6-12, Joel 3, and most of Revelation.35 Not only may these four principal classes be combined within a given document, but they are also normally subdivided into a number of more specific form-functional types.36 For example, in the Psalter we find lyric psalms of petition, thanksgiving, praise, instruction, and profession – along with overlapping subcategories of repentance, remembrance, retribution, royalty, and liturgy (Gerstenberger 1988:9-20; Wendland 1998: ch. 2). Prophetic hortatory discourse, which occupies such a prominent place in the Hebrew Scriptures, includes all of the poetic types listed above, along with various more ‘prosaic’ portions of discourse. It may be divided into ‘reports’, ‘prayers’, and the largest category, ‘speeches’.37 The speeches are often distinguished with regard to smaller text units such as: announcement of judgment/reprieve/salvation, disputation, indictment speech, instruction, oracle and oracle fulfilment, paraenesis (admonition, prohibition), prophecy (punishment, deliverance), judgement speech, revelation, and vision report.38 These are typically signalled by distinctive verbal formulas, commonly termed for example: announcement of divine message, attestation, call to attention, commissioning, emissarial self-introduction, messenger, oracle, prophetic word, recognition, and fulfilment.39 319

‘Didactic’ and ‘apocalyptic’ types of poetry are similarly classified, but not usually in as much detail. An awareness of these distinctions enables the literary analyst to carry out text studies that are more precise in terms of form and function. However, taken to an extreme, such attempts at classification tend to become highly subjective and to lead readers astray in the forest of discourse by looking at each and every one of all the different trees. Similarly, the search for possible literary equivalents in a given language of translation can be taken too far, with the result that the text becomes stylistically unnatural, or worse, incoherent due to serious collocational clashes in terms of genre. To close this section, I will mention a general way of classifying the various types of literature in the Old Testament. It offers a broad perspective that also distinguishes the mixed, or overlapping category of ‘prosaic poetry’ (or ‘poetic prose’, i.e., prophecy), which often closely combines or juxtaposes prose and poetry. This scheme is shown in summary form below:40

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By way of comparison, in the New Testament prose is clearly predominant, but important (though debatable) instances of poetry, or ‘poetic prose’, also occur, most often in the form of Septuagintal citations (as in Luke 1), early Christian liturgical or hymnic compositions (e.g. Phil 2.6-11), and highly rhetorical passages of praise or blame (e.g. the seven ‘letters’ of Rev 2-3). The gospels manifest a distinct combination of Christ-focused ‘narrative’ and ‘report’, while the sub-category of ‘law’ is replaced by a great deal of epistolary ‘exhortation’ and doctrinal ‘instruction’ (paraenetic literature). Of course, much finer generic distinctions than these can – and perhaps must – be made, depending on the indigenous literary categories into which a given text of Scripture is being transferred. But the preceding general scheme (modified for the New Testament) may be sufficient to guide translators along the path of initially differentiating the types of literature that they encounter in terms of form, content, and function (the last 321

being often the least apparent but most important feature). This will better prepare them to find correspondences in their language in a reverse order of priority/significance, that is, from the greatest to the least: function → content → form. Thus a comparative functional analysis may indicate that a poetic, accusatory prophecy such as Obadiah may be more effectively rendered as heightened prose in a given target language – or vice-versa, for example, the genealogy of Genesis 5 recast in the form of Bantu ‘praise poetry’. A functional focus in the study of genre is well complemented by a speech act approach to the analysis of texts and text constituents (section 4.4.2), especially where direct discourse is involved, which is the preferred, dramatic mode of biblical composition (6.9).41

6.5 Patterning ‘Patterning’ refers to the basic compositional units and relations that comprise the hierarchy of discourse organization, in any genre. In particular, it deals with the overall balance and symmetry (discourse design) that is created within a text by different types of positioned repetition – phono-logical, syntactic, lexical, and semantic (logical). The result is a manifold textual framework that is typically manifested in a given literary work on both its macro- and micro-levels of structural arrangement. The following is a summary of some of the more common patterns of structural (formal and/or semantic) development that may be observed • in the literature of Scripture:42

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•

•

• •

• • •

Parallelism presents a recurrence of similar or identical elements to form two or more balanced units: [a – b / a’ – b’ / a” – b” /…]. Alternation involves a regular interchange of discourse elements to form a longer pattern of parallel development: [a – b – c…n // a’ – b’ – c’…n’]. Chiasmus is formed by a repetition of significant elements in inverted order past a certain structural midpoint in the sequence: [a – b – c…n // n’…c’ – b’ – a’]. Intercalation refers to the complete insertion of one distinct literary unit within another which thus encloses it: [A – B – A’]. Inclusio is constructed by a reiteration of material (form/content) at the beginning and ending of a given unit of discourse, that is, a ‘frame’ or ‘sandwich’ construction: [a–X–a’]. Note also the important variants of inclusio, namely: repetition at the ending and beginning, the respective beginnings, or the respective endings of different units, termed anadiplosis [X–a/a’–Y], exclusio [X–a /Z/ a’–Y], anaphora [a–X…a’–Y], and epiphora [X–a…Y–a’].43 Contrast combines, usually by juxtaposition, distinct text units that are dissimilar, contrary, or the opposite in meaning and/or functional significance: [A ó B]. Comparison forges an explicit association between two or more text units that are analogous or similar in nature, whether in literal or figurative terms: [A ~ B]. Causation - Substantiation involves an ordering of literary units on the basis of the logical movement cause → effect (causation) or effect → cause (substantiation): [A → B, B → A]. 323

• Climax forms a progressive semantic movement of units from lesser to greater intensity, importance, and/or implications for the message: [a < a’ < a”