Ancient authors discussed how translation should be done. Cicero, commenting on the translation of Greek orators Demosthenes and Aeschines, said, “And I have not translated them as a literal interpreter, but as an orator giving the same ideas in the same form and mould, as it were, in words conformable to our manners; in doing which I did not consider it necessary to give word for word, but I have preserved the character and energy of the language throughout” (De optimo genere oratorum 14).
Cicero’s concern to translation the ideas of the original and not give a word-for-word literal translation is echoed by Jerome (AD 347–420). He even noted that a literal translation may obscure the sense since the goal is to “look for the meaning” (Letter 57.6). Jerome quotes extensively from Cicero as his authority, affirming his statement, “If all that I have written is not to be found in Greek, I have at any rate striven to make it correspond with it” (Letter 57.5).
The New Testament in Antiquity, 452.
B”H
It doesn’t matter who gives this advice, it’s *bad* advice. If translations aren’t fairly literal, then the reader will in many cases be fed a wrong understanding of the text. That’s because we should never trust the translation committee to understand the text perfectly.
Let me give an example. In 1 Cor 12:28, Paul refers to a number of “gifts” found in the Corinthians church. He begins with three “offices”: “apostles, prophets, and teachers”. So far so good. But then he refers to things like “miracles”, “helps”, “tongues”, etc. In the name of “dynamic translation”, most recent translations (starting at least with the NIV) have decided that Paul’s reference to “miracles” really refers, not to the miracles themselves, but rather to the *worker* of miracles. Thus the reader of the NIV would believe that Paul’s list consists entirely of persons, and does not include references to manifestations within the congregation *per se*.
But is that what Paul is really talking about? Is it not possible that when he says “miracles” he really means “miracles” and *not* “workers of miracles”?
James Dunn, for one, has argued that “miracles”, “helps”, etc. should be rendered simply as “miracles”, “helps”, etc., because that’s what Paul meant. He was *not* referring to a person given a sort of abiding gift, but rather to the particular instantiations of those supernatural workings within the community during its worship gatherings.
Is Dunn right? I believe he is. But that’s beside the point. The reader should be allowed to read the text as it stands. What if Dunn *is* right? How can the reader ever get back to what Paul meant on the basis of a dynamic translation, which twists Paul’s words from a reference to “miracles” to a reference to “workers of miracles”?
Translations following the Nida/Louw philosophy are essentially exiling the reader from the actual wording of the text. I realize that all translation is a matter of interpretation, but there are degrees of that, and it should be kept to a minimum–all the more so with a text as important as the Bible.
John: No doubt the example you cite required an exegetical decision on the part of the translators. Yes, it’s possible that Paul means miracles in and of themselves. It’s also possible that Paul meant workers of miracles since the context is speaking of the ‘members’ of the body (vs. 12ff.). The issue with such examples is that the actual wording leaves the meaning ambiguous. This is where such exegetical decisions come into play in a translation where the philosophy is to convey the meaning of the text rather than the form.
But when you say the reader should be able to read the text as it stands then we’re really left with no choice but to read it in Greek, which of course is preferable, but not possible for all. Some literal translations are hardly helpful and actually serve to muddy the meaning. Take the Concordant Literal New Testament for example, which says:
That is technically the text as it stands according to a strict formal translation philosophy but it doesn’t make someone whose native language is English understand what Paul is saying, does it?
I’m a bit confused…how can we have “workers of miracles” et al…without the miracles?
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Nancy: We can’t of course! But the question is whether or not the miracles in and of themselves are the gifts that God gives or if the people who work the miracles are the gift.
Take the Concordant Literal New Testament for example, which says:
That is technically the text as it stands according to a strict formal translation philosophy but it doesn’t make someone whose native language is English understand what Paul is saying, does it?
Wow.
And even this, of course, is not the text as it stands. In Greek we find (as we frequently do), “…placed the god…,” not “…God placed….”
Joel: Thanks for pointing that out (see what I get for not looking at the GNT first?!!). Even the most stringent ‘literal’ translations aren’t exactly literal.
Nick,
If “the actual wording leaves the meaning ambiguous”, as you say, then wouldn’t the best translation be one that does likewise? That’s my point. A translation that does otherwise is misleading the reader. Why would you want a translation that disambiguates at the risk of being dreadfully wrong?
Of course the best solution is for everyone to learn Greek, but in a world where even preachers don’t learn Greek, there’s little chance of that happening. The next best thing is a wooden translation.
BTW, I actually like the translation you cited.
John: That would depend upon the translation philosophy being employed. And I can’t fathom how you could possibly like that translation!
Translations following the Nida/Louw philosophy are essentially exiling the reader from the actual wording of the text.
It’s a lack of knowing Hebrew and Gk. that exiles the reader from the actual wording. Once in English, its not the actual wording. This sounds like Ryken’s propoganda.
If “the actual wording leaves the meaning ambiguous”, as you say, then wouldn’t the best translation be one that does likewise?
This way of doing things isn’t generally employed with any other translation work.
The next best thing is a wooden translation.
A translation that doesn’t translate wouldn’t seem to be very useful.
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I’m not sure why you guys think my translation philosophy “wouldn’t seem to be very useful”. The philosophy that I am defending is basically the philosophy of the original translators of the King James Version. They understood that the reader could be given access, so to speak, to the Hebrew and Greek by being somewhat wooden in the translation. They even employed a somewhat artificial pronoun system so that their translation would differentiate between the second-person singular and the second-person plural.
If my call to keep ambiguities ambiguous “isn’t generally employed with any other translation work”, there’s a good reason for that: other works *aren’t the Bible*. It’s the overriding importance of *accurately* understanding *this* text that makes the practice of dynamic-equivalent translating so horrible.
Why would anyone want a translation that valued readability more than accuracy? Has the importance of correctly understanding Scripture faded that much from the believer’s value system?
John: I don’t think that. I’m of the mind that both formal equivalency and functional (= dynamic) equivalency have their place in translation. I’m an advocate of using multiple translations when studying the Bible and comparing them with the original languages where/when you can. What I don’t think is very useful is a false dichotomy that says one or the other translation philosophy must be employed. I don’t find it useful to say that translating the sense of the passage is invalid while translating the form is not. The fact of the matter is that all translations employ both methods at some point or another, but some emphasize one more than the other.
And I don’t think that any English translation preserves the ambiguity in Paul’s Greek for the passage you cited. The translation either leaves the reader to think that Paul was speaking of miracles themselves or workers of miracles. Neither of those options is ambiguous in English, but one makes better sense in the context of what Paul is saying. I’ll leave it to the exegete to decide which.
But I find this idea that accuracy is sacrificed for readability in functional translations to be ridiculous. Are you really of the mind that a reader of the (T)NIV or NLT is going to come away with a distorted understanding of the Bible while a reader of the KJV or NASB is not? Do you find that the varying translational decisions have a great effect on the overall message of Scripture? Can you point to major doctrines that are affected by functional translations that are not affected by formal ones, and if so do you think that someone who favors functional translation over formal translation could not do the same with other doctrines?
And for what it’s worth, I highly doubt that the KJV would have been considered wooden in the 17th century.
John: I don’t think you fully understand the KJV. And a readable translation have never been proven inaccurate. If its not readable, its not understandable, and that could lead to inaccurate understanding in my view.
ESV: Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called sons of God.
KJV: Blessed are the peacemakers: for they shall be called the children of God.
TNIV: Blessed are the peacemakers, for they will be called children of God.
A.Admin:
I agree. I can’t see how something can be accurately understood if it can’t be read in the first place.
Nick:
@ work portions of our website is translated into Spanish, Korean, Vietnamese, Russian and Chinese. I couldn’t fathom applying a wooden translation philosophy there or anywhere else where translation work is done. I realize the Bible is unique but wait until you try an Asian language!
Nick,
I believe that, in principle, the text should be allowed to show through the translation. This means that if the original text is ambiguous, then the translation should be as well. Having said that, I perhaps should not have implied that 1 Cor 12:28 is ambiguous. It’s only the way translators have misread this passage that makes it look ambiguous, but if you read it literally, you’ll see that it’s not ambiguous: it says “miracles”. What is the source of the suggestion that Paul really meant “workers of miracles”? That source comes from somewhere outside of Scripture. Part of the reason (I believe) that people want to believe that it refers to persons rather than manifestations is that people read the words “church” and “body” in 1 Corinthians as denoting the universal church, rather than the local church. If one assumes that “body” refers to the universal church, then one could easily assume that “miracles” must refer to persons, and that it is therefore shorthand for “workers of miracles”.
Yes, I do believe that a reader of the (T)NIV or NLT will have a “distorted understanding”, as compared with readers of the KJV or NASB. But you’re twisting the issue to try to turn this question into one about the “effect on the overall message of Scripture”. As my remarks so far have made clear, I think the problems are all localized in particular passages. It is the minutiae that suffers from these loose translations. To ask whether “major doctrines” are affected is to miss the point, as there is a lot more to the benefit of reading Scripture than being steered right on “major doctrines”.
You write, “And for what it’s worth, I highly doubt that the KJV would have been considered wooden in the 17th century”. So let me supply the footnotes, so to speak, for my comments on the KJV. Adam Nicolson writes about the striking difference, in the early seventeenth century, in translation policies between translators of Scripture and translators of other works. Translators of secular works, “taking their cue from Cicero and a couple of words of Horace, would despise the literalist as a plodding, and scarcely civilised pedant” (*God’s Secretaries*, p. 184). But the translation of Scripture was seen as something altogether different, and different rules applied—rules derived from the overwhelming religious importance of the text. According to Nicolson, “Secretaryship is one of the great shaping forces behind the King James Bible. There is no authorship involved here. Authorship is egotistical, an assumption that you might have something new worth saying. You don’t. Every iota of the Bible counts but without it you count for nothing. . . . [B]iblical translation, like royal service, could only be utterly faithful . Without faithfulness, it became meaningless.” Consumers of translated texts in seventeenth-century England would have seen a big difference between how Scripture was translated, and how other works were translated. And they would have understood immediately why that was so. The fact that a somewhat antiquated pronoun system was chosen, just to allow the differentiation between “you” and “you all” show through, is proof enough that the KJV would have been viewed as “wooden” to some degree. But no one would have thought anything wrong with that.
As a follow-up to my citations from Nicolson on the KJV, I should revisit A.Admin’s complaint that my translation philosophy for the Bible “isn’t generally employed with any other translation work.” Along with the KJV translators, I would ask, “So what?” A difference in how these two categories are translated is actually part of the goal!
John: If your only point is that functional translations present “problems in localized passages” then I say “so what?” The same is true for formal translations.
Also, I’m not sure how the source for the translation “workers of miracles” comes from outside of Scripture. As I see it it’s an exegetical decision based upon the context. You seem to recognize this even though you draw a different exegetical conclusion.
And I think that if more functional translations were good enough for the early church (e.g., much of LXX Isaiah is more functional than formal) then they’re good enough for the modern church.
The KJV is the #1 translation used by cults. It’s for a reason. Cult groups use of the TNIV and NLT to my knowledge is “0″.
A.Admin: You can’t fault the KJV for who uses it. That has nothing to do with how it stands as a translation. But cults use all kinds of translations. The JWs have their NWT and KIT. Mormons use the Joseph Smith translation in addition to the KJV. Many Universalists use the CLNT that I quoted above.
I wasn’t faulting the KJV directly, but the ambiguity of the foreign English I think you can.