Using the Right Bible Translation? A professional translator’s perspective on translation choice, by Jonathan Downie
4 This neat theological formation, based presumably upon Matthew 4:4, seems very persuasive upon first reading. However, given that all translation requires reordering of words, its full and logical application would devalue and threaten the legitimacy of any translation of the Bible under any form. As can be seen by the example from 1 Kings 2:10, it is also the case that a literal rendering can actually distort the original meaning on occasion. Therefore, even if this view is accepted, its application to Bible translation is by no means as clear as the NKJV scholars would have us believe.
5 Most professional translators would agree with Zhu (1999) that the second of these is where most translation problems are solved. This perspective is underlined by the fact that most of the software aimed at helping translators by finding and pre-translating repetitive phrases and inserting these into the translation cuts the full text into individual sentences by default.
6 According to Prof Christiane Nord (2003: 34), she and her husband translated the New Testament into German using this approach, producing the DNT translation in 1999.
7 “Within the framework of the functionalist approaches, I have suggested the concept of Loyalty. It was first introduced into Skopostheorie in 1989 … in order to account for the culture-specificity of translation concepts, setting an ethical limitation to the otherwise unlimited range of possible skopoi for the translation of one particular source text. It was argued that the translator, in their role as mediator between two cultures, has a special responsibility with regard to their partners, i.e. the source-text author, the client or commissioner of the translation, and the target-text receivers, precisely in those cases where there are discrepant views as to what a “good” translation is or should be. As an interpersonal relationship, loyalty was supposed to replace the traditional intertextual relationship of “faithfulness” or “fidelity”, concepts that usually refer to a linguistic or stylistic similarity between the source and the target texts, regardless of the communicative intentions and/or expectations involved.” (Nord 2002: 32)
8 I have previously (Downie 2007) discussed the effect of interpreting these and other cohesive devices between French and English and how this could affect the flow of an argument in spoken language.
9 I am indebted to Trevor Martindale of International Christian College in Glasgow for the Greek analysis of this passage and the comparisons between the Greek and the ESV.
10 The version of the NLT quoted here is the most recent, 2004 edition of the NLT, as it appeared in The Essential Evangelical Parallel Bible.
11 Fee and Strauss (2007: 56-7) make a similar point regarding translations of 1 Corinthians 3:10, Luke 13:19-20 and Mark 1. The key point here is that, if we follow the argument of skopos theory, we cannot classify decisions taken in these cases as errors or missed meanings but as a result of the translators’ decisions to prioritise one quality [or standard of excellence following (Fee and Strauss 2007: 36-41)] over another due to the purpose of the translation.
Bibliography
Kenneth W. Collins (2008) Bible Translations Into English [Internet], McLean, Virginia, USA. Available from: http://www.kencollins.com/bible-t2.htm#msg [Last accessed 19th December, 2008]
Jonathan Downie, Cohesion in Short Intervention Consecutive and Simultaneous Interpreting: a Contrastive Analysis, unpublished MSc dissertation, Heriot-Watt University, Edinburgh, Scotland, 2007.
Gordon D. Fee and Mark L. Strauss, How to Choose a Translation for all its Worth, Zondervan 2007.
Category: Biblical Studies, Pneuma Review, Summer 2009
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