Fascinated by Languages
Fascinated by Languages
Eugene A. Nida
John Benjamins Publishing Company Amsterdam/Phil...
44 downloads
705 Views
1MB Size
Report
This content was uploaded by our users and we assume good faith they have the permission to share this book. If you own the copyright to this book and it is wrongfully on our website, we offer a simple DMCA procedure to remove your content from our site. Start by pressing the button below!
Report copyright / DMCA form
Fascinated by Languages
Fascinated by Languages
Eugene A. Nida
John Benjamins Publishing Company Amsterdam/Philadelphia
8
TM
The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of American National Standard for Information Sciences – Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials, ansi z39.48-1984.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Nida, Eugene Albert, 1914Fascinated by languages / Eugene A. Nida. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and indexes. 1. Bible--Translating. 2. Nida, Eugene Albert, 1914- I. Title. BS449. N52 2003 418’02-dc21 isbn 90 272 2601 6 (Eur.) / 1 58811 408 2 (US) (Hb; alk. paper)
2003051907
© 2003 – John Benjamins B.V. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form, by print, photoprint, microfilm, or any other means, without written permission from the publisher. John Benjamins Publishing Co. · P.O. Box 36224 · 1020 me Amsterdam · The Netherlands John Benjamins North America · P.O. Box 27519 · Philadelphia pa 19118-0519 · usa
Contents Fascinated by languages The American Bible Society The United Bible Societies
1 2 4
PART I: IN MORE THAN NINETY COUNTRIES
9
Travel surprises Africa South of the Sahara Typical problems of Bible translation in sub-Saharan Africa Asia To Asia with Wilfred Bradnock Lebanon India Burma/Myanmar Thailand Taiwan Japan China The Philippines Papua New Guinea Indonesia The PaciWc Island world Latin America Revision of the Reina-Valera Bible in Spanish Indian Languages of Latin America North America Eastern Europe Russia Georgia Armenia Western Europe The Czech Republic Hungary Romania
11 13 16 25 25 25 26 27 27 29 31 33 41 41 43 44 46 47 49 53 58 58 60 60 62 62 63 64
vi
Contents
Lithuania PART II: BIBLE TRANSLATION, TEXTS AND INTERPRETATIONS
65 67
Bible translation Meeting the need through translation consultants Training translators Fidelity to the text Success and failure Bible as literary genre The literary character of the Bible Language learning and literature Literature and theology Texts and interpretations Faith and faithfulness in the Scriptures The Contents of Holy Scriptures Some problem passages in the Hebrew and Greek Texts Vatican Council II The Ecumenical French translation of the Bible The Greek Text of the New Testament A textual commentary on the Hebrew Bible The Greek-English lexicon of the New Testament SpeciWc Bible translation problems Quoting scripture parallels PersoniWcation of abstracts Idioms Technical meaning of words Parables
69 69 75 78 80 81 81 81 82 87 87 88 90 95 98 99 104 109 117 117 118 119 121 129
PART III: A PERSONAL TOUCH
133
Who am I? Lecturing and writing An eclectic and a pragmatist
135 137 140
Selective bibliography
145
Index
153
Fascinated by languages
Fascinated by languages
As a small boy I was thrilled to have my grandmother Nida speak to me in German. And I wished so much that I could grow up speaking four languages as our closest neighbors did. In that family, the father, mother, maid, and daughter all spoke German, French, Dutch, and English. How I wished I could be a part of a family like that! Our family attended a Methodist church, where, as a small boy, I had one of the most meaningful experiences of my life. One Sunday a visiting preacher used the thirteenth chapter of the book of Revelation to prove conclusively that Mussolini was the Anti-Christ, but a week later another visiting preacher used the same passage to prove that Mussolini could not be the Anti-Christ. At Wrst, I did not understand just how the Bible could be used in such a contradictory manner. But my father helped me understand by saying, “In life it is even more important to be able to doubt than to believe, because too many people love the unbelievable.” Bugs and bees were so much more interesting to me than baseball, and as a result my younger brother was convinced that I was mentally deWcient, because I preferred making collections of Xowers, leaves, wood, sea shells, always labelled with their technical names. I was especially interested in the behavior of animals, and particularly of whales, because we saw so many of them each summer when we vacationed in Newport, Oregon. The fact that whales were actually mammals that had become aquatic millions of years ago seemed astounding, and the realization that dinosaurs once dominated the earth and left fossils of their bones and eggs seemed almost incredible, but obviously true. Even more amazing was the existence of millions of galaxies hundreds of light-years across. The ScientiWc American (my favorite magazine) and the accounts in Genesis 1 and 2 made sense only as two quite diVerent ways of understanding texts: literally and Wguratively. But in Genesis 6 the Bible also says that God himself was sorry for having created people. This I could readily believe because truly good people seem to be so scarce. Latin and German were the only languages taught in the high school, but at the University of California at Los Angeles, I added French and majored in
1
2
Fascinated by languages
Classical Greek. I also had the exciting advantage of studying the books of leading linguists: BloomWeld, Sapir, and Malinowski. And I was especially interested in the distribution of languages and relations between languages and between dialects. All my other courses, however, were in science: physics, botany, biology, and geology. At the time of graduation in 1936 a friend urged me to consider attending the Summer Institute of Linguistics, held in a farmhouse near Siloam Springs, Arkansas. The students were all keenly interested in doing Bible translating in one or more of the Indian languages of Mexico. I went to the Tarahumara area of northern Mexico, but had scarcely analysed a dozen texts, when I had serious health problems. Nevertheless, I taught each summer in the program of the SIL until 1952. At the University of Southern California I also Wnished a master’s degree in patristics, the writings of the early church Fathers. This proved immensely useful to me in later contacts with Orthodox and Roman Catholic scholars. It was especially signiWcant to recognize the manner in which Platonists and Stoics had inXuenced so signiWcantly the language of the creeds and had interpreted the sayings of Jesus as exalted philosophy rather than Good News. Note, for example, the name of the cathedral in Constantinople named Santa Sophia, “Holy Wisdom,” a tribute to the inXuence of the Platonists and the Stoics in early Christianity.
The American Bible Society Problems of correctly understanding biblical texts are particularly numerous in translations made by people who have not mastered either the corresponding Greek or Hebrew texts nor the lexical and grammatical structures of the local languages. But similar complaints about poor translations had come from speakers of Japanese, Chinese, Hindi, Arabic, and Russian. Accordingly, in 1943 Dr. Eric M. North, president of the American Bible Society, decided that perhaps a linguist could explain why so many copies of the Scriptures were simply not read or understood, and I was asked to help Wnd some of the answers to a crucial set of problems. My Wrst task was to evaluate a recently submitted manuscript of the Gospel of Mark from Gabon, West Africa. It was evidently a Bantu language in view of its complex gender preWxes occurring on nouns, adjectives, and pro-
Fascinated by languages
nouns, both free and aYxed to verbs. The translator had carefully Wlled out the forms listing the principal occurrences of key words and parallel passages, so as to highlight the consistency with which the translator had rendered the text of Mark. But I was immediately suspicious because it is rare that key Greek words can or should always be translated in the same way. In fact, key words are very likely to have quite diVerent meanings in diverse contexts. Furthermore, the translated text seemed to follow too closely the wording of the literal American Standard Version in English, although at other points it appeared to depend too much on the Louis Segond French Version, a translation used by most theologically conservative missionaries in French-speaking areas of West Africa. Because I thought that perhaps Columbia University library might have a grammar or text of a Bantu language spoken in the Gabon, I arranged for an interlibrary loan of a grammar that turned out to be rather closely related to the language of the biblical manuscript. It did not take more than a few hours to recognize the tendency of the translator to be quite literal in some passages and quite free in others. And so I wrote up an eight-page report in which I pointed out a number of problems, especially in those passages in which the translator assumed that he had to be carefully consistent. The real issue is that translators can be consistently wrong as well as consistently right. What one needs to look for are the consistent inconsistencies. In my report I indicated that the translator obviously had a good grasp of the language because he had used some highly intelligent expressions, especially in those passages that had not been listed as requiring consistency in rendering. It would not be fair, however, to rate the eVorts of the translator without sitting down with him and going carefully over major portions of the text. This would mean going to Minneapolis, where the translator was living at that time during World War II. The translator had been seriously misled by being told that he should follow the American Standard Version of 1901, a text that was an important advance in terms of Greek textual evidence and exegesis, but terribly literal in wording. In fact, in many ways it was more literal and old-fashioned that even the King James Version of 1611. As soon as the translator understood that it was not the speciWc words but the meaning of the Greek text that was important, he proceeded to revise the translation so that it would speak meaningfully in the local Yipounou language. But this was only the Wrst of many such experiences in helping transla-
3
4
Fascinated by languages
tors see through and beyond the words to the meaning of the text. In my work for the American Bible Society I was particularly encouraged by James Oscar Boyd, my predecessor in the translations program, who introduced me to New Testament Studies, The Journal of Biblical Literature, Interpretation, and the Hebrew language, as well as to a number of commentaries, as a way of helping me make up for my lack of formal seminary training. But even more important than these academic matters was the kind advice he gave me as we often had lunch together. I particularly appreciated his insistence that judgment is even more important than knowledge and that God never asks people to believe what they know is not true. I was also very fortunate to be able to work closely with Margaret T. Hills, librarian of the society. She was an expert in the history of printed Bibles in America and an excellent administrator. Later, the administrative work of the department was handled by Eleanore Dohle, and then Leila Wright, a welltrained administrative assistant educated in Jamaica, guided the administrative aspects of the Translations Department for more than thirty years. In the preparation of the Greek-English Lexicon Karen Munson was my indispensable colleague for several years. My Wrst wife, Althea Lucille Sprague, who earned advanced degrees in both theology and commercial science, was a loyal companion in work and travel for almost Wfty years, and in this book most references to we, us, our represent her help and encouragement.
The United Bible Societies Shortly after hostilities ceased in Western Europe, Herman C. Rutgers of the Netherlands Bible Society visited the United States for discussions concerning plans for the establishment of the United Bible Societies. Because of a long history of sending out linguists to do translating of the Scriptures into a number of major languages in Indonesia, the Netherlands Bible Society was especially concerned about arrangements for future Bible translating. Since many Indonesians had excellent theological training and were competent in both Greek and Hebrew, it seemed unwise to think in terms of sending out Dutch linguists to do the actual translating, because the time required to master the languages and the distinctive cultures would be entirely too long if the needs of the churches were to be met. Rutgers wisely believed that the Bible Societies should pay more attention to linguistics and cultural
Fascinated by languages
anthropology, and he proposed that the Netherlands Bible Society sponsor an international conference of Bible translators in 1947, following the establishment of the United Bible Societies, scheduled for a founding meeting in England in 1946. For the meeting of translators and linguists in 1947 it would be important to have a document, perhaps even a book, that would outline the various problems and provide a series of recommendations about future possibilities. In order to respond to this need, I wrote a book called simply Bible Translating, published in 1947 by the American Bible Society. All my other books, however, have been published commercially because this usually meant a wider distribution, and the income from royalties could go directly to the American Bible Society. The founding meeting of the United Bible Societies was held in May 1946 in Haywards Heath, England, and was attended by sixty-one participants from thirteen countries. Several of us from the American Bible Society Xew together to London, but we were completely unprepared for what we saw: whole blocks of houses blown to bits and vast areas of nothing but rubble. We had read about the bombing and had seen pictures of the devastation, but the shock of what we witnessed formed a striking backdrop for the necessity of combining all of our resources in money and people to meet the severe needs of a shocked world. What unnerved me most, however, was the chilling scream of a small child during a theatrical performance in which toy bombs were exploded. The representative of the Norwegian Bible Society described how the Nazi police entered the Bible depot in Oslo and demanded that he turn over all books written by Jews. But he replied, “All the books here were written by Jews.” The police, however, did not know what to do because their orders were to take only certain books, and so they left without taking any. This brave Bible Society director and former chaplain in the Norwegian army, had received each day detailed information about German troop movements, military Xights, and the sailing of vessels, which he reported each night by telephone through Sweden to the Allied headquarters in London. All this was done without writing down a single word so that others could not be implicated. Bishop Eivind Berggrav of Norway, who had been under house arrest by the Gestapo for months, was a Wrm and congenial host with his long-stemmed
5
6
Fascinated by languages
pipe which he used for rapping on the table from time to time. He explained his need for the long stem as being the result of his mother’s admonition to stay as far away as possible from tobacco. The arrival of Bishop Hanns Lilje from Germany was the emotional high point of the meeting. He had been delayed because of visa diYculties, but when he Wnally showed up at the door, Bishop Berggrave, his good friend and colleague for many years, rushed to meet him. And there in the middle of the room the two men met with tears running down their cheeks. Most of the discussions were led by Eric North, who had prepared a document on principles and procedures for a new epoch of cooperation, and Gilbert Darlington, treasurer of the American Bible Society, showed how the program could be Wnancially underwritten. They also had the full support of their British opposite numbers, Arthur Wilkinson and John Temple, as well as the enthusiastic approval of all the other delegates. A key person in the formation of the United Bible Societies was Olivier Béguin, a trilingual Swiss, who had accomplished the impossible in printing and distributing Scriptures to prisoners of war on both sides of the conXict. The rules of the societies prevented the Bible Societies from printing less than a complete book of the Bible, but Gilbert Darlington felt that this was a serious mistake, especially during the crucial period of the war, and so he personally paid for hundreds of thousands of copies of the Sermon on the Mount to be published in a number of languages and distributed widely. The profound appreciation for this farsighted act prepared the way for millions of Scripture selections to be distributed in scores of languages all over the world. As a coordinating organizer for the work of the United Bible Societies and as a creative guide for various aspects of the Bible Societies, Béguin was a genius. Even as an interpreter between German, French, and English speakers, he had the unique ability to interpret severe arguments in such a way that everyone involved was convinced of Béguin’s sympathetic integrity. We soon became close colleagues and friends. The meeting in Haywards Heath was only the beginning, but it laid the foundation for an organization, that now consists of more than one hundred national Bible societies that beneWt from joint budgets and from shared plans for meaningful translations into large and small languages. This was a very opportune time because during the following Wfty years at least some books of the Holy Scriptures were published by the Bible Societies and other organiza-
Fascinated by languages
tions into more new languages than during the entire preceding centuries of Christianity. In October 16 to 22, 1948, the Netherlands Bible Society hosted the Wrst international conference of Bible translators in Woudschoten, Holland. The focus of the discussions was not on Greek or Hebrew texts or on new exegetical insights, but on the application of linguistics and anthropology to the problems of communicating the message of the Scriptures in both new and old languages. Participants discussed the various techniques for determining dialect distinctions between geographical and socio-economic dialects, and how best to evaluate dialect diVerences in view of the religious and linguistic needs of the churches. One of the major themes was a new approach to helping translators. Instead of depending on correspondence about issues that society-based secretaries would never be able to deal with adequately, the shift was toward Weld surveys by technically-trained people and translation consultants who would live and work in diVerent parts of the world. In this way they could give almost immediate help on hundreds of major and minor matters. This would also mean constant Weld visits by translation secretaries as a way of determining how best to serve the entire constituency and especially the numerous “new” languages in what were previously colonies. Trips, however, would not be enough. A journal published by the United Bible Societies for translators was crucial for keeping these new concepts alive and showing people how they work. Some persons, however, were so skeptical about such a journal that they voted for it only because they were sure that it could not be continued for more than six months. But that is when I became a proliWc ghost-writer. In checking manuscripts with translators, I frequently encountered fascinating solutions to widespread problems, but the local translators often did not have the time or thought that they did not have the experience to write about such matters. Accordingly, I asked them to tell me as much as they could about what they or we had discovered, and then I would write an article if they would permit the use of their names as authors. The following sections dealing with travel and the study of typical problems in languages throughout the world represent the highlights of more than two hundred trips that I made during some forty years to diVerent parts of the world in order to learn about problems of linguistic and cultural diVerences
7
8
Fascinated by languages
that prove to be so crucial for proper interlingual understanding. In fact, I was normally traveling between seven and eight months a year and once we traveled for a year and a half without returning home. Additional types of problems are also discussed in later sections that focus on typical problems faced by translation consultants.
Fascinated by languages
Part I: In more than ninety countries
9
10
Fascinated by languages
Africa South of the Sahara
Travel surprises
By traveling and working in more than ninety countries, I have also had some fascinating and completely unexpected surprises. On one occasion I was riding a slow train that went once a week from Chihuahua City to Creel in northern Mexico. In fact it was so slow that a man on horseback, who had missed the train at the last stop, caught up with the train on horseback and swung onto the last coach. The train was so desperately slow and the day so warm that I fell asleep, and about an hour or so later I woke up and looked out to see what appeared to be Kansas. The farm houses were neat dwellings with fences, grass, and huge barns, something I had never seen in Mexico. The Welds of corn were being harvested just as in mid America. I thought I must be dreaming, and like so many other people in similar circumstances I pinched myself to see whether I was awake or sleeping. But then the train limped slowly into a little town where all the signs were in German. I was convinced that I must be losing my mind. And there at the door to the coach were people talking in German. I immediately broke in and said, “Wo bin ich? Where am I,” and they immediately told me that I was in a Mennonite colony of German-speaking people who wanted nothing to do with war and had come to Mexico to live out the implications of their faith. On another occasion our Xight from Juba in the Sudan to Nairobi in Kenya was canceled, and we had to go by boat and train, but what a marvelous trip: elephants trumpeting in tropical grasslands, hippos gathered along swampy river banks, vast herds of gazelles and zebras, crouching lions moving in for a kill, and Xocks of birds that darkened the sky. But as the sun was setting, a man rushed into our railroad coach shouting, “Dr. Nida! Dr. Nida!” I was startled, but the man immediately urged me to get oV the train and to accompany him to his home high in a nearby mountain. He insisted that he must have help in correcting the proofs of a New Testament text that he had just received from the American Bible Society. How he knew I was on the train, I never learned, but I rushed out with him and rode with him up a narrow mountain road along which eight persons had been murdered the night before.
11
12
Fascinated by languages
When we Wnally arrived at his home, his wife had a lovely meal prepared, but I insisted on looking at the manuscript Wrst. There were scores of problems with his way of marking corrections, and I had to show him what he had to do to correct his own and the printers’ mistakes. But just as we Wnished, we heard the train coming around the mountain. So we dashed out of the house, jumped back in the car, and rushed down the mountain to catch the train. And we managed to cross the tracks a few yards ahead of the engine. Like most air travelers I have also had my baggage go oV without me. We deplaned in Guam, but our luggage, including my new set of lectures on sociolinguistic factors in translating, ended up in Hong Kong because President Johnson was on an oYcial trip to the Orient and security measures prevented our plane from unloading baggage. But we were scheduled to leave the next morning for Truk and then the following day for Ponape. To make matters worse, Barclay Newman’s Xight from an island near Truk was delayed, and there I was in Ponape with more than forty translators waiting to hear the lectures. I furiously redrafted my ideas and decided to rearrange the order of concepts so as to make them easier to grasp. In fact, the new outline was so much better than my previous notes, that I followed the revised material in a new book. Two days later Barclay arrived to rescue me, and a week later my baggage showed up.
Africa South of the Sahara
Africa South of the Sahara
The Wrst extended trip by any translations secretary of the Bible Societies was made to Africa south of the Sahara, where Canon Noel D. Coleman of the British and Foreign Bible Society and I planned to investigate what was actually being done about Bible translating in the various countries in East Africa and the Congo and how the United Bible Societies could better serve the needs of people in countries that were in transition from being colonies to becoming independent states. Because Noel Coleman could not get away from his administrative responsibilities for several months, I spent some time intensively studying tonal distinctions in several languages in the northwest part of the Belgian Congo, where I had been invited to help work out alphabets for some complex tonal languages. But one of the missionaries in northern Congo completely denied the existence of tones despite the fact that in a sample list of words he mispronounced fully 90 % of them. Nevertheless, he argued that in preaching he no doubt used the tones correctly because the local people enjoyed so much listening to his sermons. Members of the congregations did enjoy the sermons enormously. After church services when the missionary spoke, many in the congregation huddled in the native quarters of the mission and howled in laughter at his many mistakes. In fact, this was the high point of the week’s entertainment and some mistakes became prime examples of what not to say. At that time in the development of the linguistic theory of “item and arrangement” some linguists assumed that a person could analyze a language totally on the basis of the formal features of texts, for example, the order and arrangement of diVerent grammatical classes: nouns, verbs, adjectives, adverbs, and conjunctions. Accordingly, one young linguist had sold the British Colonial OYce in the Sudan on the idea that he could combine three highly diverse dialects of Dinka into a single form of the language and thus save considerable money in publishing textbooks. As a data base he intended to use three existing translations of parts of the New Testament. But all three translations were excessively literal and in no sense represented accurately the three
13
14
Fascinated by languages
dialects. In response to questions from government authorities it did not take long to explain how ridiculous such a procedure would be. Travel in equatorial Africa has always been a fascinating nightmare. In order to arrive at an airport to get a plane that Xew only once a week to the Sudan, we sincerely hoped that the last violent storm would not have crossed our road, but it had, and a four-foot thick trunk of a massive tree blocked our way. We Wrst thought we would never be able to pass, and the 250-mile detour would make us lose our Xight. But we took a closer look and Wgured that we could pass by cutting oV some of the massive roots and rolling away some of the huge stones, and we were soon speeding down the road. A few miles further, however, we encountered a yelling, frantic crowd of people trying to extricate a drunk woman from a bridge, where her leg was caught between two huge logs and could not be pulled free. The only solution was to chisel out a wide enough area so that the frightened woman could be rescued, and we could be on our way. Fortunately, we had a hammer and chisel in the truck, and I startled chopping out a large section of a rock-hard tropical beam, as I had to lie down Xat beside this terriWed, drunken woman. That experience, however, was really nothing compared to driving by compass from the Nile to Ethiopia, where a missionary and I were caught in a Wfty-foot high wall of blazing elephant grass, with hawks and eagles dashing ahead of the Wre to catch Xeeing rats and mice and with buzzards and storks swooping down to eat the half-cooked animals on the other side of the Wre. We prepared several buckets of sand and dirt to throw onto the car the moment we had dashed through the blaze. In the Sudan we Wnally met up with Canon Coleman on our way countryby-country to South Africa. We spent considerable time with translators working on the Shilluk New Testament, because we wanted to study the relations between language and culture in the Nilotic area. The expression for “forgiveness,” literally “to spit on the ground in front of someone,” was particularly important because of its close tie with the culture. Whenever a plaintiV and a defendant were brought into a native court, the case was judged by a chief. The Wnes were paid, and the guilty party was punished on the spot. Then both the plaintiV and the defendant had to spit on the ground in front of each other to show that the oVense had been judged, the Wnes or punishment meted out, and the complaints could never be brought into court again. Christians began to use such an expression because it seemed to them to indicate so vividly God’s forgiveness of sins. Furthermore, spitting
Africa South of the Sahara
was thought to be a very important positive symbol. For example, in order to bless a person it was customary to spit on the top of a person’s head. For Noel, who was a remarkable Greek and Hebrew scholar in the best British tradition and a very good friend, such an expression seemed completely unacceptable. But in Uganda we encountered some insights that were more in line with Noel’s tradition. We had the opportunity to meet with a leading seminary teacher and famous preacher in the capital, and I took the opportunity to check with him the Wrst part of Romans. I asked him to tell us the meanings of the words, and he responded quickly and seemingly in a very meaningful manner, but the order was suspiciously like the English Bible. Then I asked him to take one of the sentences and simply give me the meaning in English, but he said that he could not do that. So I asked him why he had such diYculty and how could he prepare a sermon or lecture based on the Bible, if he could not understand combinations of words. To this he immediately replied, “I always read the Bible Wrst in English so that I will know what it means in my language.” The words were apparently adequate but the grammar was so artiWcial and awkward that he simply could not understand the meaning of a text in his own language. As we visited translators and church leaders in six other countries we discovered that something very similar existed in a number of Bible translations. The issue of race was something that could not be avoided, but Africans were able to understand the issues of race much better than Whites. In one case, for example, they called an African-American woman missionary from Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, a “black white woman,” because they argued, “She talks like a white woman, she eats like a white woman, she thinks like a white woman, she walks like a white woman. Therefore, she is a white woman who just happens to be black.” Some white missionaries we met in South Africa had refused to accept the color barrier and accordingly had treated their African colleagues as true friends. When one of the missionaries was given a farewell dinner, his African host declared, “His skin may be white, but his heart is as black as any of ours.” The election of 1948 was crucial for South Africa. Those who favored Apartheid won, but one Afrikaner said to me as we visited one of the restricted areas, “We are buying peace at a terrible price.” One of the most important religious developments in Africa has been the numerous nativistic and messianic congregations, often with unusual names such as the Seraphim and Cherubim Church in Nigeria, but the most success-
15
16
Fascinated by languages
ful of more than 500 such African churches is the Kimbangist movement with more than six million members by the end of the century. As a young boy Simon Kimbangu was helped by the British Baptist Missionary Society, and in 1921 he had a crucial religious experience followed by an evident power to heal sick people. But the rapid growth of the Kimbangist churches was interpreted by the Belgian colonial government as being subversive, and after a few months Simon Kimbangu was condemned to death, but his sentence was commuted to life imprisonment by the king of Belgium. Six months of preaching and thirty years of imprisonment simply enhanced his reputation as God’s prophet to Africans. The Bible in Kituba, the major trade language of the Lower Congo, became more than a mere fetish; it was a manual for church members who refused to drink alcoholic beverages and who substituted corn bread and bananas in the Communion Service. Women were forbidden to use cosmetics or to straighten their hair. Nevertheless, this rapidly expanding church has now been accepted into the World Council of Churches with the creedal declaration “In the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit by the prophet Simon Kimbangu.” In sub-Saharan Africa religion plays a far more signiWcant role than in any other major area of the world. The opportunity to visit so many countries and churches in East Africa, South Africa, and the Congo meant a great deal to Canon Coleman and to me. I learned to appreciate more the many distinctive features of British society and especially the close relation between churches and the colonies. We often discussed the rapid changes taking place in Africa and in India, the jewel of the British Empire, because we both knew that our work with translators and churches would rapidly change. But we never dreamed that our relationship would be cut oV so tragically by Noel’s death on his Xight home to England. In fact, the plane crashed in a strong down-draft just a short distance from the mission station that we had visited some few months before.
Typical problems of Bible translation in sub-Saharan Africa The problems of translation in sub-Saharan African languages are of four major types: cultural, linguistic, theological, and administrative, something that is also true of most attempts to produce the meaning of the Bible in the hundreds of languages spoken throughout the world. But there are particu-
Africa South of the Sahara
larly diYcult issues aVecting translation work in Africa, where cultural issues are so crucial, because they are often deceptively similar to those in biblical accounts. For example, in the Bible sheep are generally regarded as being particularly valuable, and goats are often symbols of what is bad, as in the description of the Wnal judgment in Matthew 25.32, where the righteous are likened to sheep and the sinners are called goats. But in most of sub-Saharan Africa, goats are prized for their resourcefulness, and sheep are often regarded as Wlthy scavengers. It is clear that Bible translators cannot make the sheep into goats and the goats into sheep, but in many texts it is important to have a footnote to explain the cultural values associated with these two closely related kinds of domesticated animals. In Jesus’ triumphal entrance into Jerusalem, crowds greeted him by putting branches in his path, but in many parts of Africa this is precisely a device for showing contempt for an oYcial or chief. Although the biblical account cannot be altered, it is essential to explain in a footnote the diVerent values associated with such behavior. A more subtle cultural problem exists in the arguments by the Sadducees concerning the resurrection of the dead. In order to catch Jesus in an inconsistency about life after death, they spoke about a woman who was married successively to seven brothers, all of whom died without the wife producing any oVspring. Therefore, the Sadducees, who did not believe in life after death, asked Jesus, “Whose wife will she be in the resurrection of the dead?” But for many Africans such a question is simply stupid, because no one would want to be married, even in heaven, to someone who was obviously a witch and had caused the death of seven brothers. In some parts of Africa the practice of fasting as a form of religious devotion is thought to be insulting to God. If God has made food available and people refuse to eat it, this is nothing other than insulting the Almighty, even as a man who refuses to accept a gift from a chief is insulting the chief. Africans are generally more likely to grasp the signiWcance of symbolic accounts than are people in the Western World. For example, when local people learned that the Hebrew name Adam means “ground, dirt” and that the name Eve means “life,” they quickly realized that at this point the Bible was not speaking about two people but about everyone. Such an etymology immediately Wt their patterns of mythic interpretation.
17
18
Fascinated by languages
The Kaka people of eastern French Cameroon regarded the story of Hagar and Ishmael as being an exceptionally important account of the grace of God rather than a seemingly bizarre tale of how Sarah, the wife of Abraham, gave her Egyptian slave Hagar to Abraham in order for Hagar to bear a child, who would be considered the child of Sarah. Because of the tension between the child Ishmael and Sarah’s own son Isaac, Hagar and Ishmael were forced to start back to Egypt through the desert, where the angel of the Lord found and rescued them. The Kaka people, however, believe that their god Njambie never spoke to anyone, and certainly not to a woman, and particularly not to a slave. The fact that the God of the Bible promised to make Ishmael the father of a great nation was interpreted by the Kaka people as clear evidence of the unmerited goodness and grace of God. Some of the ways in which Africans have spoken about the Holy Spirit as the “paraclete” (in traditional English translations the “Comforter”) are also culturally insightful. In one of the languages of West Africa the Holy Spirit is called, “the one who falls down beside us.” This idiom is a direct reference to a person who stops to rescue an exhausted carrier who has fallen beside the path and is likely to be killed and eaten by hyenas unless he somehow reaches the safety of the next village. Some problems, however, are essentially orthographic. For example, one missionary seriously failed to mark tone in an African language and as a result “This cup of blessing do we bless,” an often quoted expression in the liturgy, actually meant to the people “This cup of poison do we bless.” The proper tones were not marked or pronounced correctly by the missionary. Furthermore, in the case of any suspicious death the people living nearby were forced to drink a poison cup in order to prove their innocence. Accordingly, the local people concluded that each week the church members demonstrated their innocence by drinking the communion wine. Translators have often not accurately understood the literal English translation of an idiom in the Greek text of Hebrews 6.14, which literally declares “blessing I will bless.” In a number of languages this is merely an emphatic way to talk about the reality of blessing, but when translated word for word, it was understood to mean “I will bless you if you bless me.” Some translators do not pay suYcient attention to contexts, and so they translated literally in Genesis 31.5-9 “your father,” in speaking about Laban, the father of Rachel and Leah, Jacob’s two wives. But the use of “your father”
Africa South of the Sahara
would mean that Jacob had already divorced his two wives. The translation should have been the local equivalent of “my father-in-law.” Certain constructions that involve the preposition of are seriously misinterpreted by some translators. For example, the phrases holy of holies, king of kings, and song of songs are simply superlatives referring to “the most holy,” “the greatest king,” and “the best song.” Rather than a lack of words in a target or receptor language, most translators Wnd that there are plenty of words, and some words have seemingly too many meanings. For example, in one language the word yiey may refer to “truth, belief, obedience, love, respect, agreement, and acceptance,” and the proper meaning always depends on the context. In another language the word meaning “kill” is also used in such phrases as “kill a hole” meaning “to Wll a hole,” “kill a marriage” meaning “to get a divorce,” and “to kill a law” meaning “to break a law” or “not to keep a promise.” Many people assume that tribal languages in Africa are so primitive that they cannot possibly have enough words for translating the Bible, but this is entirely false. For example, there are at least 90,000 words in the Zulu dictionary if the words are counted in the same way as they are in English. In the Greek New Testament there are only about 5,000 diVerent words and in the Hebrew Old Testament about 8,000 diVerent words, of which about ten percent occur only once. Some languages, however, do seem linguistically impoverished, especially in words for color. For example Gbeapo and Bambara, languages of West Africa, have only three basic words for color, namely, red, black, and white, but they can make hundreds of distinctions by likening the color of something to the color of a particular bird or Xower. No translator should ever translate without thoroughly understanding the meaning of a text. In one language in Africa a literal rendering of the phrase “inherit the kingdom of heaven” meant taking God’s place as king, but the proper rendering would be “take you place in the kingdom of God,” or even better, “be happy to have God rule over you.” Helping translators translate the Scriptures involves much more than linguistics and theology. For example, we arrived at a mission station on the southwest border of Ethiopia just as the rainy season was beginning, but the local generator simply could not produce the electricity we needed for lights at night and for a computer that contained the text we needed to study. Before we arrived, the generator had worked Wne, but we were terribly handicapped
19
20
Fascinated by languages
by being without access to the text. The only thing we could do was to try to Wnd out what was wrong in the muggy weather. We Wrst checked out the generator and the contacts were evidently good, but when we turned on the gasoline motor, the generator immediately stopped, because some place there was a short. We had to check out one house after another and Wnally determined that the short was in the very house in which we were staying. Then we had to check each outlet, and we Wnally determined that the problem must be in a gooseneck lamp, but we could not Wgure out why there was no trouble in previous days. We took the lamp apart and discovered that termites had eaten the insulation around the socket and had packed the area with dirt. This was all right during the dry season, but with the coming of the rains, the humidity caused the damp earth to produce a short. So many such experiences had convinced me to buy a very strong set of small tools that I could use in repairing a good many things that can go wrong in isolated areas. In fact, I suspect that I may have been appreciated more for being a repairman than for being a linguist. Many people think of Africa as simply a land of big animals, intertribal wars, and strange beliefs in witches that can turn themselves into lions. But there is also another side of African life, for example, the prayers of hunters who oVer a token sacriWce to the spirits of the animals that they are going out to kill. They ask for forgiveness for slaying an animal so that their own children may live, something hunters in the West would never dream of doing. In an interesting and very practical manner many tribal people solve the problem of banks and investments. In one village in the Sudan I asked who was the richest man in the area, and his house was quickly pointed out, but it did not seem to diVer from any other dwelling. I then asked how one could tell who was the richest, and they explained that it was always the man who had given most away. In a part of the world where there are no banks and no way to store goods in the tropical environment, the only way to prepare for an old age is to give food and clothing away and in this manner to make many people indebted to you and therefore obliged to pay you back in times of old age or illness. In some areas people want to have toilets that will not attract hordes of Xies, and so they construct a thatch building in which people must follow a narrow inside passage two times around the inside of the thatched building
Africa South of the Sahara
before reaching the dark central hole for defecation. At this point, the light is so dim that Xies never reach it. Many people assume that Africans are inferior in intellectual capacity, and therefore it is important not to expect too much of them. But I was greatly impressed by one bright ten-year-old Shilluk boy in Doleib Hill in the Sudan. Like almost everyone else, he went naked most of the time, but at school he wore a small sheet tied over one shoulder. He was also a particularly keen translation helper. About twenty years later, however, I had a telephone call from the Sudan Embassy near the United Nations, and I was invited to have lunch with my young friend from Doleib Hill. The keenest minded translators that I have ever worked with were Wve Bushmen in the Kalahari Desert. I was astounded by the speed with which they caught on to what I was trying to Wnd out about their language. I had never before worked with such astonishingly bright men, who spoke an extraordinarily complex language with numerous clicks, complex tonal patterns, and hundreds of ways to imitate and to refer to the movements, size, shape, and noises made by large as well as tiny creatures. They are also clever in tracking prey and can follow an animal until it collapses from fatigue. Polygamy is a serious issue for some Bible translators. For most Africans, however, there are simply two kinds of polygamy: the simultaneous polygamy practiced in Africa and the serial polygamy practiced in countries where some people marry and divorce repeatedly! In fact, many Africans insist that simultaneous polygamy is much better for children than the serial type in the Western World. As I traveled extensively in both French and English colonies, I was much impressed to Wnd that in French colonies the Africans spoke French quite well, but in English colonies the Africans spoke English rather poorly. I brought up this matter in conversation with a widely traveled member of the British colonial service, and he agreed that my observations were correct. But I wanted to know the evident reasons for such a diVerence, and my friend explained, “If an African comes into the oYce of a French oYcial and speaks Parisian French, the oYcial is very pleased, but if an African enters the oYce of a British oYcial and speaks Oxford English, the oYcial is very likely to be oVended.” Sociolinguistic values play a highly complex role in many aspects of language. On several occasions I have been asked to visit a program for teaching new missionaries the local language. In one such program in Central Africa I was
21
22
Fascinated by languages
told that one bright young woman would have to be sent home to the United States because she simply could not pass the language examination that required new missionaries to list all the preWxial classes for singular and plural nouns. This seemed to me to be a strange reason for terminating a career, and so I asked if the woman could speak the local language at least to a limited extent, and the teacher immediately told me, “She actually speaks the language better than all the other new missionaries.” Then I asked, “What are you teaching: the grammar or the language? If she speaks the language satisfactorily, why are you worried about the grammar? She will undoubtedly continue to use and improve her facility in language for the rest of her life.” The administrative aspects of Bible translating are essentially the same for people throughout the world, but there have been some special aspects of translation in the past that need to be carefully reconsidered. For example, the missionary who was primarily responsible for the translation of the Bible into one of the major languages of West Africa went back to England after the Bibles had been printed and distributed. But during his time on furlough he decided to take some courses in African languages and linguistics. He soon realized how many mistakes he had made in guiding the work of the local Africans. In fact, he stayed in England another year in order to obtain more training in linguistics. Upon his return to the Weld he petitioned the committee on Bible translations to have the opportunity to correct some of the more striking mistakes in the Bible for which he was responsible, but his request was refused because the committee did not want anyone “tampering with the Word of God.” In some programs, however, there may be subtle problems of understanding that need to be carefully dealt with. On one occasion a local African bishop and I worked out a plan for paying the translators of a new Bible project the same amount as the more experienced pastors were receiving. We agreed that the translators should not be paid more than the others or jealousy would prejudice the acceptance of the Bible text. Six months later, however, I received a letter from the bishop that the Bible Societies would have to double the pay for the translators. I was very surprised and wrote back indicating how such payments would seriously harm the acceptance of the new text, and unless there were factors that the bishop had not mentioned, I could not justify such a radical change in the costs of the project. Then the bishop replied that if we did not agree to double
Africa South of the Sahara
the salaries, he would write to the churches in the United States who were subsidizing the program of the mission. I could not see any other solution than to write again to the bishop reminding him of our agreement. I sent a copy of my letter to the oYce of the supporting churches, which acknowledged my letter with special thanks because they were themselves afraid to alienate the bishop. Six months later, however, I had to be back in that part of Africa, and I was wondering just how the bishop would react. But the Wrst person to rush out to the plane was the bishop himself, who gave me one of the most warm-hearted hugs that I had ever received. I was totally surprised, but I learned from others that the bishop was so thankful to be treated in the same way that he knew I would treat any white man. He was so pleased Wnally to be treated like the man he truly was rather than being paternalized because of his race. Reaching agreement on translation principles for major languages involving a number of major churches is often a major task. On one occasion, however, I was urged to be present for the Wnal meeting of a sponsoring committee. I arrived at the mission station in the afternoon and never expected to encounter an agenda that included such items as the name for God, a list of key theological terms, problems of direct and indirect discourse, singulars and plurals, and exegetical notes. In fact, almost everything that one could imagine. But when I asked how many days they had set aside for the discussions, I was told that the representatives could only be there for one day. In my judgment an agenda of that type could never be adequately reviewed in less than a week. Furthermore, the representatives of the various churches included Anglicans, Pentecostals, Quakers, Danish Baptists, and Seventh Day Adventists. So I spent until midnight trying to learn more about the various issues. After a brief devotional period led by the Anglican representative, the Wrst person to speak was the Pentecostal, who surprised everyone by saying that he thought that he and others of his church were wrong about some of their recommendations. But this frank questioning of past points of view created an incredibly open atmosphere for dealing with item after item on the agenda. By late afternoon the agenda had been fully discussed, and creative decisions had been made.
23
24
Fascinated by languages
I was so astonished with the outcome that I asked how such an agreement could be made so rapidly and eVectively. Some dramatic changes had obviously taken place in the relations between diVerent missions and churches and especially in the relations between Africans and missionaries. Reconciliations had completely altered interpersonal relations and had indirectly formed the basis for cultural and linguistic insights.
Africa South of the Sahara
Asia
To Asia with Wilfred Bradnock After the death of Canon Coleman it was some time before the British and Foreign Bible Society appointed the Reverend Wilfred Bradnock as Secretary of Translations. Bradnock’s experience in India and his studies at Oxford made him a very acceptable Secretary of Translations, and he tried hard to represent the interests of the British Society and to improve contacts between translators in the Weld and oYce secretaries in London who were responsible for correspondence about translation problems, composition, and proofreading. On this particular trip to Asia Wilfred Bradnock was only able to go as far as Thailand. Experiences in a number of diVerent parts of the world are here presented as though they were part of a seemingly endless trip to most of the world, but experiences with translators are frequently quite similar and accordingly they are here presented as a single series although the insights represent scores of trips to many parts of the world.
Lebanon Our Wrst stop was in Lebanon where we explored the possibility of a revision of the Arabic Bible so that the text would be more on the level of acceptable newspaper editorials rather than in the more traditional Koranic form of language. But we immediately faced the issue of diVerent sociolinguistic levels expressed so well by the common adage, “No Arab will admit that another Arab knows how to write Arabic.” The rivalry between Lebanon and Egypt about these matters delayed progress for a number of years, and only a highly competent translation consultant was able to resolve the issues. We were also surprised to learn that many of the Protestant pastors greatly preferred Arabic Bibles that did not contain the diacritical marks indicating the classical pronunciation of the words. This seemed to be a serious contradiction, because the pointing of the text would seem to make it easier to be read correctly. But most pastors preferred not to read the text in the tradi-
25
26
Fascinated by languages
tional form because it seemed so old-fashioned and grammatically strange. Accordingly, they wanted to have Bibles without the pronunciation marks so that they could read the text in a more colloquial and understandable manner without being criticized for mispronunciations. On our one free day we decided to visit the Syrian town of Banyas in order to see the headwaters of the Jordan River as it Xows out from the base of Mount Hermon, but this meant talking our way through well patrolled and guarded frontiers between Lebanon and Israel and between Israel and Syria. We were a mixed tourist assortment: one British, two Americans, one German (working with the local Bible Society), and the Lebanese chauVeur. Nevertheless, we talked our way through two “hermetically sealed frontiers.” But as soon as we began taking pictures of the headwaters of the Jordan, we were arrested by a sergeant, who turned us over to a captain, who then called in the Syrian secret service, who held us incommunicado for several hours as we gave up hope of getting back to Beirut in time to get our 5:00 A.M. Xight to India. Finally we were released to go back through no-man’s-land where we hoped to pass unchallenged by Israeli or Syrian soldiers, and we did make our Calcutta-bound plane.
India We had never seen a city like Calcutta with more than 500,000 people living in the streets: one woman and two small children squatted under a table used for displaying cloth near a shop door, and others huddled on sidewalks with chalk marks indicating their living space. Several millions in the nearby state of Bengal were suVering from a severe famine, while local oYcials refused to distribute free grain provided by Canada and Australia because this would reduce the proWts of merchants who had hoarded grain in large warehouses. Later the Bible Society of India sponsored two diVerent conferences for Bible translators, which people from Northeast India attended enthusiastically and made major contributions to a new day in church leadership. Some of us were invited to the home of a prosperous retired army oYcer educated in England. This cultured man spent much of his time at his country club and at the racetrack, while servants supplied his Wfty or more Hindu gods with daily gifts of food. Each morning the steps of his home were ceremonially sprinkled with the ashes of cow dung, and the dishes were rinsed in water
Asia
containing fresh manure. Like so many other educated Indians, this man felt completely at home in two quite diVerent cultures.
Burma/Myanmar In Burma the people from the Hill Tribes were the dynamic innovators of meaningful translations. Students had to struggle to get an education, and leaders who were not Burmese were constantly harassed. In fact, it was not easy to make contact with many of the inXuential people because foreigners were generally suspected of having hidden motives. Fortunately, one local leader from the Chin Hills was able to obtain further training in the United States, and he has been able to visit Burma from time to time to give crucial advice to people translating the Scriptures into a number of tribal languages spoken in the northern part of the country.
Thailand Our visit to Thailand was much more encouraging. Despite the opposition of some very conservative missionaries who were opposed to a Bible revision in Thai, most of the church leaders, including both Roman Catholic and Protestant, were strongly in favor of a more meaningful text with notes, section headings, and introductions, because many Buddhists have serious diYculties in understanding various passages of the Bible. One devout Buddhist priest, who had heard that Jesus was a famous religious teacher, went to the Bible House in Bangkok to buy a New Testament because he wanted to know more about a person that Christians called “the Son of God.” A month later the priest returned and exclaimed, “This man Jesus must have been one of the greatest gurus that has ever lived, because he was born and died, born and died, born and died, and born and died, and in only four reincarnations he attained nirvana.” For this Buddhist priest the four Gospel accounts were interpreted as four reincarnations, and what made Jesus so remarkable was the fact that he reached the bliss of nothingness by means of only four births and deaths, while according to Buddhist tradition Gautama, the founder of Buddhism, is said to have required a thousand reincarnations before attaining nirvana.
27
28
Fascinated by languages
Many Buddhists have even greater diYculty in understanding verse 3.16 in the Gospel of John, “For God so loved the world that he sent his only begotten Son so that whosoever believes in him will not perish but have everlasting life.” Although this verse is often quoted by Christians as being the essence of their faith, it seems completely nonsensical to most informed Buddhists. For example, the phrase “God so loved the world” is regarded by most Buddhists as being completely incompatible with supernatural revelation, because “love of the world” is thought to be the basis of all human deception and sin. The following statement about God “giving his only begotten Son” is equally strange. How could God, as the spiritual force of the universe, possibly have a Son? Who was God’s wife? Furthermore, the English word begotten is practically never used in English except in the Bible or in books about the Bible, and accordingly it is an empty symbol for most people. The Greek word actually means “only, unique, one of a kind,” but early translators of the New Testament into Latin mistook the meaning of the Greek word and used the Latin word unigenitus, which can mean “only begotten.” Unfortunately this mistake by Latin translators has produced serious confusion for many centuries. The last part of this verse is, however, even more disturbing for Buddhists, because it declares that believers in Jesus “shall not perish but have everlasting life.” For devout Buddhists “everlasting life” would be the worst of all punishments. Such people would never be able to escape into the oblivion of nirvana, but would be eternally chained to the inexorable wheel of inWnite rebirths and deaths. Several years later, William Smalley and Herbert Grether organized an important conference on Bible translating, which was attended by both Protestant and Roman Catholic translators from several parts of the Orient. The location of the conference in the lush tropics of southern Thailand was idyllic, if only there had not been those huge cockroaches to zoom in on us in the evening, the mosquito choirs to sing us to sleep, and the gorgeous magpies to scream us awake each morning. The Roman Catholic Archbishop of Thailand, the Most Reverend George Phimphisan, became an ardent supporter of Bible translating and served for a number of years on the council of the United Bible Societies. This conference in Thailand was one of several in which Althea developed typing lessons for translation helpers, but the process of teaching often in-
Asia
volved three sets of interpreters, as in Thailand: English to Southern Thai, Southern Thai to Northern Thai, and Northern Thai to the local tribal language. Most of the translation helpers practiced at least four and Wve hours a day in order to return home with the prestigious honor of being able to type, the indigenous equivalent of a Ph.D degree. And at this point on our trip to Asia, Bradnock needed to return to London.
Taiwan In Taiwan there were three quite diVerent types of problems: (1) translations into local indigenous languages, related linguistically to the languages of the northern part of the Philippines, (2) a translation into Taiwanese (a dialect of Chinese used in Taiwan and opposed by the Kuomintang government), and (3) the insistence of the Kuomintang government that publications in Chinese should employ the traditional form of Chinese characters rather than the simpliWed characters adopted by the government on the mainland. Due to the resourcefulness of I-jin Loh, the translation consultant for Taiwan as well as for the People’s Republic of China, two strategic conferences were held and the foundation was laid for full cooperation with Roman Catholic scholars in producing Wrst a joint translation of the New Testament in popular Chinese and later an entire Bible. One of the most diYcult tasks for translation consultants in Asia is the formulation of an appropriate orthography for some of the smaller, indigenous languages. Too often, missionaries want to employ only the Roman alphabet rather than adapt an orthography to the system of existing national languages. And many try to simplify the orthography so that the diVerent sounds can be indicated by the keys of a standard typewriter. At the same time, some missionaries have not suYciently analyzed the distinctive sounds, and as a result they overlook crucial distinctions in vowels and consonants, as well as diVerences of tone. In one case, missionaries simply could not agree as to what system to employ so they decided to solve the problems in a spiritual manner by having an all-night prayer meeting with the conWdence that God would reveal to them a satisfactory alphabet. And at 3:00 A.M. some participants insisted that God had shown them the right way to write the local language. What they really needed was an accurate knowledge of the phonetics (the diverse vocal
29
30
Fascinated by languages
sounds of the language), phonemics (the distinctive contrasts in sounds that make diVerences in the meaning of words), and graphemics (a system for adapting the symbols of the local languages to the usage of a dominant language). As always, the meanings of particular terms depend so much on context. For example, the act of carrying some object may be expressed by a number of diVerent verbs depending on what and how something is carried, for example, in the hands, on the top of the head, in a basket, on the shoulders, on the ends of a pole, on the back. And in a number of languages there are numerical classes, based on the shape and size of objects: long, thin, round, lumpy, square, oblong, rectangular, and hollow, and in many contexts of the Bible it is not possible to know precisely the shape and size of objects. Words also may diVer on the basis of a plural or singular reference. A word referring to sin may always be plural in form, even though the biblical reference is to a single bad action. A number of languages also have several modal particles to indicate probability, certainty, uncertainty, success, and failure. In the case of Luke 4.29, rendered in the New Revised Standard Version as “They got up, drove him out of town, and led him to the brow of the hill on which their town was built, so that they might hurl him oV the cliV,” there are a number of spatial uncertainties. If he was “out of the town,” then how could he have been led to the brow of a hill on which the town was built? Their purpose was obviously to throw him down the cliV, but in the next verse Jesus passes through the hostile crowd. Were they inside or outside of the town? The Greek text does not specify clearly the locations of the events, but some languages require greater speciWcation and accordingly translators have to represent a reasonable sequence of events and locations. In John 2.4 the Greek text has the word gunai, literally “woman” in a response by Jesus to his mother, who had urged him to provide wine for the guests at a marriage feast in Cana. A literal translation of the Greek term seems not only harsh, but even disrespectful, and in many languages of the Orient this type of response would be regarded as completely insulting. In koine Greek, however, the term gunai often occurs in polite papyri letters written by schoolboys requesting help from their parents. Accordingly the New English Bible and most other translations into modern languages have terms that are equivalent to English “mother.”
Asia
Japan Because the translation committee responsible for a revision of the Bible into a more understandable form of Japanese had spent more than 40 % of the budget and had completed only 13 % of the work, I was asked to visit Japan in order to determine what seemed to preclude more eVective progress in the work. I read everything I could on Japanese culture and language, but I was totally unprepared for what actually took place. As is customary, I was invited to dine with members of the translations committee the evening of my arrival, and toward the end of the meal I was asked to share with the committee the reasons for my visit. They, of course, already knew, or certainly suspected, the reasons for my visit, because Dr. North had already sent a letter explaining his concerns about the slow progress in revising a text that was extremely diYcult for young people to comprehend. In response to their request I indicated my concern that the money expended was so much greater than the results. In addition, I explained some of the basic principles of revision for a youth audience, and I was concerned about the manner in which the committee had apparently misinterpreted the principles for the revision recommended by Dr. North. When I was asked about the age of translators responsible for a revision being prepared primarily for young people, I explained that generally we had found that some of the most creative work had been done by teams consisting of persons between thirty-Wve and forty-Wve years of age, because such persons would probably be able to make a more creative revision for the intended audience. Unfortunately, I had not been told that only two of the committee members were in their sixties, and the rest were in their seventies and eighties. Nevertheless, the chairman of the revision committee expressed great satisfaction with my presentation and asked one member of the committee to make a record of what I had said. Then the committee voted unanimously to accept the recommendations. As we left, however, I asked the missionary who had arranged for my visit, “Why was it necessary for me to have come. I could have sent a letter concerning all the issues.” I was then told, “This evening didn’t happen, and you can be certain that what you said and how they responded will never be mentioned again. They were only being typically polite.” In other words, this was what
31
32
Fascinated by languages
anthropologists call “a zero event,” a signiWcant absence of something. And that is precisely what happened. During the next two months I sat with the committee for about thirty minutes each day, during which I shared information about some recent developments in biblical studies. The committee members were extremely interested in new developments in Greek and Hebrew textual studies and in new insights in theology because they had been largely cut oV from theological journals and commentaries during the war years. In one session I tried to explain the application of principles of translation and revision for passages such as Romans 1.17, which in the King James Version speaks of “the righteousness of God revealed from faith to faith,” while the Revised Standard Version has “the righteousness of God is revealed through faith for faith,” and the New English Bible speaks about “God’s way of righting wrong, a way that starts from faith and ends in faith.” Clearly the phrase “righteousness of God” should not be understood as God’s own personal righteousness, but as the way in which God puts people right with himself or the manner in which God rights wrong. Furthermore, “from faith to faith” should be understood primarily as an idiom indicating a continuous process of faith and conWdence in God. The Japanese translators were not, however, impressed with the task of making the text more meaningful, because, as they said, “If the Bible becomes that clear, what will the preachers have to preach about?” I tried to assure the committee that preaching was not a process of explaining the meaning of the Greek or Hebrew text, but of applying the meaning to the circumstances of people’s lives. Revision of the Japanese New Testament was further complicated by the multiple Japanese orthographic system that employed three systems of writing: the kanji characters borrowed from Chinese, the syllabic system of katakana used for both words and aYxes, and the furigana symbols often used alongside the kanji and katakana symbols to indicate the pronunciation of words, a device often used in texts requiring explanations. I strongly urged the use of furigana symbols in particular contexts of the revision because such symbols would make the text much more useful for young people. At Wrst, the members of the committee rejected the idea because the page would not appear so aesthetically acceptable. Furthermore, if such symbols were employed in a Bible for young people, such a Bible would be more popular
Asia
than the standard text for adults. In the end, however, all three orthographies were employed. Some years later the Bible Society of Japan sponsored an outstanding conference of Bible translators working in Japan, Korea, Taiwan, and the Philippines. More than sixty participants met in excellent facilities on the outskirts of Tokyo. At the end of the Wrst week, however, the Japanese professor who was responsible for the program told me that the Korean, Chinese, and Filipino delegates were very happy with my lectures, but the Japanese felt that my lectures were so clear that I was evidently not a scholar. Therefore, the director said that it was absolutely necessary for me to give a lecture that participants would not understand, even though such a lecture would be completely contrary to my constant desire to be as clear as possible regardless of the complications in terminology and grammar. At last I agreed to give a lecture that people would not understand, and so I chose to talk about some important mathematical concepts relating to communication, namely, graph theory, dimension theory, information theory, and isomorphs, that I had been discussing with some friends working in advanced mathematics. After the lecture several Japanese participants came up to congratulate me, and the director of the program assured me that from then on the Japanese participants would accept my lectures as representing a scholarly approach to crucial problems of interpretation and translation.
China Shortly after the Cultural Revolution in China, I shared with my colleagues in the American Bible Society that I had received an invitation to give a series of lectures in a language institute in Guangzhou, China, and they urged me to accept the opportunity. They also suggested that I stop oV in Nanjing in order to speak with Bishop Ding and his colleagues, who were giving leadership to the churches that had been recognize by the government and had received the church buildings conWscated during the Cultural Revolution. Althea was also very interested in going with me because she had for a number of years been associated with a program for funding higher education in Asia. The linguistics program of the Guangzhou Language Institute was excellent, but the library of the school was pathetically inadequate. Imagine having some 600 students and a library of less than 600 books! During the Cultural
33
34
Fascinated by languages
Revolution the library had been burned down and consequently both students and staV were working against incredible odds. But they also worked with unusual intensity, and the openness of staV and students to new ideas and techniques was greater than I had ever experienced in the scores of schools and universities in which I had lectured. Students actually learned to speak the languages they were studying as I learned from talking with them in English, German, Spanish, and French. In fact, no other country in the world has invested as much time, money, and energy in eVective language learning. The series of lectures led to one opportunity after another to visit and lecture in China thirteen diVerent times — the richest intellectual challenge that I have ever experienced. The stop-oV in Nanjing on our way to Beijing also proved to be the beginning of numerous contacts with one of the most dynamic people’s movements in the Orient. When the Communists took power in 1949 there were only about 700,000 Protestant Christians and a similar number of Roman Catholics, but despite the persecution, or perhaps because of it, there are now more than 10,000,000 Protestants and a similar number of Roman Catholics. When we met with Bishop Ding and his colleagues in the oYce of the new seminary, we were graciously welcomed in typical Chinese fashion. But despite the outward warmth there was an underlying sense of suspicion and apprehension, even though Bishop Ding had met leaders of the American Bible Society in New York some months before. While in Hong Kong I had been disturbed to learn that the United Bible Societies had been sponsoring a program in Bible reading on a local radio station that beamed the program to mainland China. But this program was immediately followed by a rabble-rousing preacher who not only denounced the government of China but also spoke against the churches in China. I had also learned about the eVorts of fund-raisers to smuggle Scriptures into China, but as I had seen, most of these poorly printed Scriptures ended up in garages and warehouses because they simply could not be smuggled. The sponsors of such programs greatly underestimated the competence of the Chinese secret police. Some people in Hong Kong had also told me that one member of the United Bible Societies had published some denunciations of the Chinese government that resulted in great diYculty for some of the churches in China. Accordingly, I apologized to Bishop Ding and his colleagues for what
Asia
some members of the United Bible Societies had done, and I expressed my sincere hope that we could change those practices that hurt rather than helped local Christians. I quickly noted a change in the facial expressions of my hosts, and I was immediately asked, “Do you think that you can do anything about these matters?” And I assured them that I would do my best, because I was conWdent that the leadership in New York would be sympathetic and would change the damaging practices, for example, selling New Testaments to people who pasted a picture of Chiang Kai-shek on the back cover of New Testaments being sent by balloons into China. I indicated that we wanted to be helpful and that we would try to work out arrangements that would increase the role of the Chinese churches, including the printing of Scriptures within China. I realized that I was overstepping my administrative authority, but I was conWdent of the position my colleagues would take. At any rate, this conversation and the resulting changes in the policy of the Bible Societies toward China opened the way for building one of the most modern printing plants in China with the full cooperation of the city authorities in Nanjing. By the end of the century this printing plant had put out more than 20,000,000 copies of the Bible and New Testaments but still could not supply the demand. In Beijing we saw the Imperial Palace, the Temple of Heaven, and the Great Wall (the largest construction in the history of the world), but we were far more interested in visiting lace factories, watching craftsmen make intricately carved lacquer ware, and seeing exquisitely carved pieces of jade worth several hundred thousand dollars. In one jade factory a carver and his boss were discussing how to shape a ten-pound piece of raw jade into an attractive sculptured piece. Through an interpreter I broke in to ask how much time it would take to make the proposed sculpture, and we were told, “At least a year.” Imagine spending ten hours a day for an entire year carefully carving a piece of jade kept constantly under a small jet of water to keep the jade from cracking because of heat from friction! The next year we spent almost a complete fall semester at Peking University, where I gave a series of lectures, some of which were Wlmed because the university wanted to show students and teachers new ways of illustrating the meaning of words and grammar. But the most interesting part of our stay was the opportunity to host groups of students during the evenings. We soon
35
36
Fascinated by languages
learned that it was necessary to urge students at least three times to accept more cookies or beverage. Otherwise, they would politely refuse and return to their rooms. A couple of years later I lectured at the Beijing Institute for Translators and Interpreters, which had responsibility for training people to work at the United Nations in New York. This program was incredibly intensive, but exceptionally eVective. The school oVered instruction in somewhat more than twenty languages, but always with an informant who spoke the language as his or her own mother tongue. When I later lectured in Nanjing, we got to know the Ding family very well. Althea and the bishop’s wife wrote to each other almost every month or so, because they both enjoyed using slang. In fact, Mrs. Ding had written a book on Chinese-American slang, and Althea kept Mrs. Ding’s pocketbook supplied with extra money for the many creative projects that Mrs. Ding sponsored for improvements in health and education of children. Bishop Ding and I were almost the same age and on practically all my visits to Nanjing we discussed at length the basic elements of oriental religions and cultural values. What a privilege to learn from a person who had lived so many fascinating lives during one lifetime. My Wrst visit to Xi’an was a tragicomedy, if ever there was one. In the Wrst place the teachers who were supposed to meet me at the airport did not show up. I looked in every place for them except in a nearby beer tavern. Finally, I decided it would be best to take a taxi to a hotel in town, for I was sure the police would soon know where I was, and the proper university authorities would know where to Wnd me. And sure enough, everything worked out Wne. I found the head of the English program especially thoughtful and sympathetic, a really Wne person who wanted to make me an honorary member of his faculty. And so I went through a very elaborate ceremony involving a number of important faculty and administrative oYcers. Actually there was nothing that I was committed to do in the future, but it was a fascinating way of expressing thanks for what I had done. My visit to the tomb of the Wrst emperor of China was unbelievable. There, lined up row after row, were hundreds of life-sized statues of men and horses, each with a diVerent facial expression and symbol of rank. And by that time local archeologists had discovered an even larger ceramic army ready to join in guaranteeing the eternal welfare of the Wrst strong man to unify China.
Asia
When it was time to make plans to leave for Shanghai and then to Hong Kong, my passport could not be found in the oYces of the Society for ChineseAmerican Friendship. That very night the oYces were robbed, and a considerable amount of money was missing and so was my passport. The police took copious notes about my activities and purpose in visiting Xi’an, and I was Wnally given a special paper permitting me to Xy to Shanghai, where the American Consulate could give me a new passport. But I needed a Chinese guide, and so oV we Xew the next day. In Shanghai we Wrst had to go to the police, and then to one government oYce after another, and Wnally to the American Consulate. But this was only the beginning, because various police authorities had to verify the passport and arrange for my exit permit. There were plenty of taxis, but the one that we hailed refused to take us beyond a particular point because the driver wanted to stop to get something to eat. And so we got out, paid the fare, and walked several blocks to a hotel where we got another taxi. The next day I Xew to Hong Kong and back to the States. And for the next ten years authorities looked twice at my suspicious passport. “What could an American be doing with a passport issued in Shanghai?” My introduction to Chinese teachers of translation was largely through the eVorts of Professor Tan Tsai-xi of Shenzhen University, who wrote a book in Chinese entitled “Nida on Translating.” It received wide acceptance, largely because Professor Tan made my ideas even clearer that I had made them. This also led some Chinese scholars to seek me out in the States and to ask for help in preparing articles and even a book. Later I gave some lectures in an institute in Shanghai, but it was located just south of the Yangtzi river, where during winter no training school is allowed to have heat in dormitories and classrooms regardless of the temperature outside. In order to stay even half-way warm at night, I often slept in my street clothes, my overcoat, and two thin blankets as well as the drapes. Later, I wrote a small book on Language, Culture and Translating for the Shanghai Foreign Language Education Press. In cooperation with Professor Zuanglin Hu of Peking University I also wrote a book on Understanding English, published by the Peking University Press in both English and Chinese. On another visit to Xi’an I was honored by a Wne welcoming banquet and was seated next to the Vice President of the university, who noticed the idiopathic tremor in my right hand, something that is very embarrassing
37
38
Fascinated by languages
when I am asked to sign my name. He immediately told me about his own diYculty, which began when he was less than thirty years of age. We both consoled one another. Toward the end of the meal the Vice President said that as the result of spending a semester in an American University, during which he had lectured on Chinese history and art, he had translated literally into English about Wfty Chinese poems, for which he was given a type of honorary doctorate. But he said that he would very much like to have me read his translations of the poems and tell him whether they could actually be considered poems in English. The next day he gave me a copy of his translations and said that he would talk with me the following day. That evening I studied the poems carefully, and two of them could be considered acceptable in English, but the rest just did not make sense because the elaborate culture-dependent metaphors and similes were so misleading. But what should I say? And in accordance with my usual practice, I decided that if I were in the same situation, I would want to know the truth. And so, I told him that two of his translations could and would be considered poems in English, but the others were really inadequate because he had followed the typical Chinese-to-English tradition of rendering poetry word for word. He then turned to me with a mixed look of disappointment and appreciation, and said, “Thank you for telling me the truth; I had suspected the same.” These are the kind of people I appreciate knowing, and I met an unusual number of such people in China, despite the belief that Chinese are supposed to be masters in masking their thoughts. I was very impressed with the high intelligence of the students and their remarkable capacity for work. But this should not be surprising because young people have to pass exceptionally diYcult examinations before they can enter a university. In fact, university students represent only 2 % of the university-age population. In language learning, however, they also have the advantage of years of practice in memorizing material, because the educational system in China has for centuries been based largely on memorization techniques. Thousands of years of living in accordance with principles based on the Confucian ideals of a state being the reXection of an extended family with authority centered in the male head of a household has made Chinese people open to the ideal of a strong central government, except for the repeated periods in which rival military leaders fought devastating wars. Accordingly,
Asia
all institutions tend to follow the same pattern of hierarchical force and status, and nothing happens without plans and power. But changes can take place very suddenly. For example, one day the central government declared that for the sake of progress in technology students must no longer learn Russian but English, and that is precisely what took place. Teachers of Russian had to start teaching English the following day, even though they knew no English. And now all students from secondary school through graduate work must also study English. If people are to keep up in technology, it is not enough to decide that a particular book needs to be translated into Chinese, then to arrange for someone to translate it, and Wnally to assign a publishing house to print it. This may take two or three years, and by that time the contents may very well be out of date. The amount of translating from English and other European languages into Chinese is simply enormous. In addition to the 40,000 members of the Professional Translators Association of China, a high percentage of professors of foreign languages add considerably to their income by translating books that publishers are anxious to print. In fact, I was asked to address a group of several hundred such translators in Beijing, and as part of the introduction the speaker made statements about me that were certainly accurate, but which I could never have produced on the spot. At least, they knew all about me, even if they did not know all about my ideas on translating. Some Chinese translators have been hampered in their creative attempts to translate Chinese literature into English, and especially poetry, which generally contains a very high level of elite symbolism and multiple meanings. For years Chinese theories about translation have sought to promote literal translating as a way of spreading Chinese culture. But these genuine eVorts have largely failed. Fortunately, however, the Chinese literary journal Renditions is now in the hands of linguistically trained people who are rapidly changing the views of many translators. Although China has generally been politically monolithic, in religion the Chinese have usually been “multi-lithic,” adhering devotedly to multiple ways of relating to supernatural powers and ideals. Confucianism has been the ideal religion of the monolithic state, while most people are also Buddhists in view of their belief in reincarnation, honor for ancestors, and the need to acquire merit so as to be reborn with higher status.
39
40
Fascinated by languages
For those who are alienated with respect to Confucianism and/or Buddhism, there has always been the alternative of Taoism, the individual’s return to nature and withdrawal from the competition of world systems. In fact, many Chinese worship in all three kinds of temples, something Americans would call “spreading one’s liabilities.”
A phone call from a Roman Catholic priest On one visit to Hong Kong I had a telephone call from a local Roman Catholic priest that I had met a year or so before. He and his colleagues were anxious to talk about the possibility of cooperation in translating the Bible into Chinese because the existing text, called the Union Version and inXuenced heavily in exegesis and style by the English Revised Version, was not adequate for either Protestants or Roman Catholics. He then proposed that we meet for a week the next time I was in Hong Kong in order to explore possibilities of cooperation. The week I spent with these Roman Catholic friends was unusually challenging and inspirational, because we very soon found a wide area of mutual concern, and we shared many views about the Scriptures. I was particularly thankful that I had studied patristics and was acquainted with the Wrst four hundred years of Christianity. I had already noted that the libraries of Roman Catholic priests and professors often contained more commentaries written by Protestants than by Roman Catholics, and their scholars were generally better informed about Protestant beliefs than are Protestant scholars informed about beliefs held by Roman Catholic theologians. At the end of the week, however, we all realized that the time was not ripe for extensive collaboration. For one thing, Protestants and Roman Catholics did not agree on a basic Greek or Hebrew text, although the immediate problem for Roman Catholic Chinese was the transliteration of biblical names for persons and places. Protestants had generally used Greek and Hebrew names as a basis for transliteration, and Roman Catholics had used the corresponding Latin names found in the Vulgate produced by Jerome. It became evident that only jointly produced texts of the Greek New Testament and the Hebrew Bible could form the basis for broad collaboration in translating. But working out the implications of this would take a number of years.
Asia
The Philippines Many American churches have had great interest in the Philippines since responsibilities for the islands passed to American forces shortly after the Spanish-American War. Most major American denominations sent missionaries to the Philippines to establish churches, and most of the Protestant leadership was open to friendly relations with Roman Catholic prelates and clergy. Reciprocally, Cardinal Sin has been unusually open to better relations and for cooperation in translation programs. The team of translators for Tagalog, the major language of the Philippines and often called Pilipino, consisted of both Roman Catholic and Protestant translators who participated in a major conference in Baguio and shared their experiences in working on several languages. One evening the participants were asked to tell about their experiences in joint Protestant and Roman Catholic teams, and one young woman said, “When we Wrst met with the Roman Catholic priests on the translation team, we realized they were not devils. We soon discovered that they were sincere Christians, and Wnally we learned they were human beings.” With a rapidly increasing population, a dozen principal languages and some forty smaller languages, a growing number of churches and believers, and an economy supported considerably by millions of Filipinos who work abroad and support their families at home, the Philippines Bible Society has an overwhelming challenge that it is meeting in remarkably creative ways.
Papua New Guinea With no less than 700 distinct languages for a population of approximately two and one-half million persons, Papua New Guinea is an educator’s nightmare and a linguist’s paradise. The two principal reasons for the large numbers of languages in proportion to the population are the rugged mountainous country and the traditional practice of headhunting, which have obviously kept inter-tribal contacts to a minimum. The rapid progress in education and church life in Papua New Guinea has been due in large measure to the productive policies of the Australian government that was successful in pacifying much of the area shortly after World War II. Missionaries and government agencies established schools, intro-
41
42
Fascinated by languages
duced strategic agricultural programs, and set up excellent communication systems based primarily on the use of a local creole called Tokpis, literally “talk-business,” a language in which the entire Bible has now been published due to the creative leadership of Norman Mundhenk, a translation consultant of the United Bible Societies. Some of the local expressions are delightfully descriptive. For example, the word for piano is “you hit him teeth, he squeal.” In one area near the Bayer River the local Christians often spoke of God’s forgiveness of sins as “God doesn’t hang up jawbones.” To outsiders such an expression may seem completely out of bounds in speaking of God, but the local people had a centuries-old practice of dealing with the body of any family member killed by a member of an enemy clan or tribe. Before burial they cut oV the jawbone as the closest permanent symbol of the human voice. They were clearly right in assuming that the voice is the most distinct feature of any person. And to remind each member of the family that the death of such a person needed to be avenged, they hung the jawbone up on the doorpost. This was done to indicate that next month, next year, or even in the next generation someone from that household must kill a member of the enemy tribe or clan. When some local people became Christians, they realized that their new faith prohibited the interminable retaliations of headhunting. They argued that if God forgives people’s sins and so does not hang up jawbones, neither should they. Accordingly, they collected all the jawbones from the believers’ homes and burned them in a powerful ceremony of inter-ethnic forgiveness. In one area the local people built excellent schools, a Wne church, and a clinic and also paid for the training of local people to head up all the accompanying institutions, even though eighty percent of the adult population had practiced cannibalism and continued to wear boar’s tusks and the feathers of birds of paradise in the lobes of their ears. In a region where pigs are the main source of protein for the people and also the principal animals sacriWced to the spirits of the rivers and mountains, it is not strange that people could not understand the biblical objections to eating pork. Furthermore, pigs are often regarded as practically members of the family, and I even saw women nursing newborn piglets. But strange as it may seem, the greatest problem we had during one translation conference was not the multiplicity of languages, but the noise of airplanes. The center for our program was at the end of a long runway built during World War II and increasingly used to transport people and produce between the coast and Port Moresby, the capital.
Asia
When I had any free time, I loved to bird-watch because there is no place in the world that has so many spectacular birds. I soon learned, however, that it did not pay to go looking for the birds in the jungle, because they almost immediately disappeared. I needed to hide in a well concealed part of the jungle and watch the birds come to watch me.
Indonesia On our Wrst visit to Indonesia we were shocked by the economic turmoil. The value of the rupiah had fallen so low that it cost more to ride the bus to collect a monthly pension than the pension was worth. Stealing was rampant and thieves became expert in using Wshing poles to take valuable objects from bedrooms. The level of training in Greek, Hebrew, and theology was, however, extraordinarily high among church members, so that a number of teams of translators were quickly formed. One of these teams consisted of women who were school teachers and excellent communicators, precisely the persons who could produce the kind of New Testament that the people could easily read and readily understand. In fact, the translation was very much better than one produced by a team of men. But the men’s inferior ability and pride kept them from cooperating with the team of women. I later made several trips to Indonesia and on one occasion was asked to give a series of lectures in one of the Muslim universities, where I learned from the president of the university that fully 25 % of the graduating students each year had become non-Koranic Muslims. Modern scientiWc education is increasingly helping Muslims think more realistically about their world. After a few days the secretary of a professional translators association that had invited me to lecture stood up and asked me if they could translate some of my articles and books and then publish them in Jakarta. I urged them to do so, but pled with them not to translate merely my material but to add illustrative data from various Indonesian languages. The secretary stood up again and asked me how much royalty they would have to pay in order to produce the books in Indonesia. When I told him that I was not interested in any royalty, he stood up again and showed me a large volume and said, “Here is your book.” They had already translated selected portions of books and articles and had published them. I accordingly praised
43
44
Fascinated by languages
them for what they had done and wrote a word of congratulations on the Wrst page of the volume.
The PaciWc Island world The Indonesian languages, in contrast with the Melanesian languages of Papua New Guinea, stretch from Madagascar near the East Coast of Africa to Easter Island just oV the coast of Chile, and from New Zealand in the south to the Hawaiian Islands in the north, a wider geographical spread than any other family of languages except for the Indo-European family. Although the population of some Islands in the PaciWc is quite small, their need for the Scriptures may be very real, especially if they have been controlled by one group after another, for example, pirates, whalers, Spain, Japan, and the United Nations. In the case of Kusrae, a New Testament was published despite the fact that there were only 1,500 Kusraens, but Kusrae was the language of the home, society, and the church. Some of these islands are Wnancially rather well oV because of their Wshing Xeets and coconut exports, as well as being a haven for wealthy tourists, but local people are far more likely to be regular in church attendance than are most Americans. In fact, the church is often the center of community life. When local Protestants and Roman Catholic translators met together for the Wrst time on Ponape to talk about producing a joint text of the Bible, the people were delighted that after almost 100 years the two groups of Christians were meeting, worshipping, and working together. Accordingly, they arranged for Wve diVerent feasts to celebrate a long overdue event. Each village group tried to outdo the others in providing as much as ten pounds of food for each guest. There is never a lack of sweet potatoes and yams (some as much as ten feet long), pineapples, bread-fruit, bananas, coconuts (in four stages of growth and ripeness), pandanus, Wsh, octopus, lobsters, clams, served on tables decorated with gorgeous hibiscus Xowers. The orthography of the Marshall Islands is very poor, in fact about as bad as English, but literacy is almost 100 %, and the people write to each other constantly. The Marshallese Bible, however, has some real grammatical problems because the translators never realized that what seemed to be passive constructions were really expressions of state, not activity. As a result, local
Asia
people read the Scriptures in “Bible Marshallese” and explain the text in “Good Marshallese.” In the case of the “rich young ruler” it is necessary to specify whether the riches were in lands, money, or children. And in most of these languages it is necessary to distinguish between inclusive and exclusive Wrst person plural. An inclusive “we” includes the speaker and the audience, and an exclusive “we” includes the speaker and his associates, but excludes the audience. In a number of languages translators made the serious mistake of using the Wrst person inclusive form at the beginning of the Lord’s Prayer, but “our (inclusive) Father” makes no sense because this would mean that the people and God had a joint spiritual father to whom they were praying. It is also diYcult to be speciWc about “false prophets.” Are these simply people who pretend to be prophets of God, but are not? Or are they prophets who speak lies rather than the truth? Or are they both at the same time? The Marshallese are able to navigate over long distances by following the path of the sun, moon, and stars, and even more importantly by sensing the wave patterns, including the major prevailing waves of the PaciWc, the smaller waves created by recent storms, and waves bouncing back from nearby islands and even from sea mounts. One early morning a pilot friend of mine thought he was headed for Jaluit in the Marshall Islands when his Wrst mate came up from below deck and said, “Why did you pass up Jaluit.” This Marshallese assistant had even sensed the wave patterns from inside the hold of the ship.
45
46
Fascinated by languages
Latin America In order to understand the amount and signiWcance of revision and translation of the Scriptures in Latin America, it is important to distinguish between major languages such as Spanish and Brazilian Portuguese and the hundreds of translations that have been made into local indigenous languages such as Aztec, Mayan, Kekchi, Valiente, and Quechua. On one trip to Santiago, Chile, I was urged to attend a Sunday evening service of a church that had more than 10,000 members. I was also told to arrive at the church at least twenty minutes before the start of the service in order to be sure of having a seat. But I could scarcely imagine such a church, because Latin Americans practically never arrive any place on time. As I walked up the steps of a church that appeared to be more of a warehouse than a place of worship, I was met by a man carrying several Bibles for sale. He questioned me in a commanding tone of voice, “Do you have your Bible?” The choir of several hundred people was accompanied by at least a dozen accordion players, thirty guitars, an excellent violinist, and a mammoth electronic organ. They produced some wonderful music, and by the time the service began there were people standing at the back of the church. The sermon was a dramatic performance of the story of Zacchaeus, a short man who had sold himself to the Romans and had become a rich tax collector. As the preacher explained, Zacchaeus had evidently heard that this remarkable man Jesus from Galilee was on his way to Jerusalem and would be going through Jericho. Zacchaeus was so anxious to see Jesus that he ran ahead and climbed a tree so he could see Jesus over the heads of the crowd. Then the preacher turned to the audience and said, “How many of you want to see Jesus tonight? Will you be willing to pray to see him with the eyes of your hearts?” And immediately the thousands of worshippers knelt where they were and prayed earnestly. Then the preacher introduced the second act in the drama and explained how Zacchaeus was not only thrilled to see Jesus, but Jesus saw Zacchaeus and asked to be invited to his house. Imagine what it meant for Jesus to invite himself to eat in the home of a man regarded as an outcast sinner! And then the preacher turned to the audience and asked, “Are you willing to invite Jesus into your life and home?” and again the people knelt to pray.
Latin America
After a few minutes the preacher described the third act in the drama and explained that Zacchaeus recognized that if Jesus were to be his guest, then Zacchaeus must pay the price by being completely honest and by compensating people for any case in which he had collected more tax than was legal. And again the preacher turned to the audience and said, “Are you willing to ask forgiveness for what you have done wrong and to return to people the money you illegally took from them?” Again the people knelt in prayer, but each time the low-volume prayers had quite diVerent contents and emotional overtones. The preacher probably never realized that what he was doing was not very diVerent from what early Greek dramatists did when a single actor told a story and the chorus provided the emotional interpretation of what was happening. This church also had a tremendous program for the care of sick and needy people, and it is no wonder that thousands of people found love and courage to face the trials and uncertainties of living under a dictatorship. One group of lay people in Mexico City decided to start a new church in one of the poorer parts of the city, and so they bought as much land as they thought they would need for building an adequate church that would be open twenty-four hours a day for worship and as a place for women to sew and weave. But soon there were 5,000 members, and since the church could only seat about one thousand people at a time, they had to have Wve services on Sunday. This congregation of ordinary people were of immense value to the Bible Society of Mexico in reviewing carefully a revision of the Reina-Valera Bible. The people knew the language of the streets and factories and could spot immediately and accurately those expressions that would be misunderstood.
Revision of the Reina-Valera Bible in Spanish Early in the twentieth century the Reina-Valera Bible in Spanish was revised by a secretary in the Spanish embassy in London and published in 1909 by the British and Foreign Bible Society, but a close comparison of this revision with earlier editions showed quite clearly that although the revisor was fully competent in Spanish, he was not sensitive to many of the theological issues involved. Furthermore, the Spanish of Latin America had departed signiWcantly from the standards employed in Spain. As a result many words and phrases had little or no meaning for the average Spanish speakers in the western world.
47
48
Fascinated by languages
Believers are usually reluctant to accept a revision of a text that has been used for a number of generations. In fact, the more old-fashioned a text seems to be, the more it appears to be closer to the original events of several thousand years ago. Furthermore, many people believe that their ability to understand a strange form of their own language is evidence that they have received from God a special gift for interpreting God’s mysterious use of words. If the Bible is the very word of God, then it must contain the words of God, and therefore why should anyone change what God has said? Other people, however, are not only frustrated by words they do not know, but they insist that if the words come from God, they should be in the language of the people of God. Was not that the purpose of Christ’s coming into the world? So why hide the meaning in words that do not speak clearly to people today? Even though there may be plenty of linguistic reasons for a revision, most people believe that a revision is justiWed only if the meaning of the text is clearer. But they also want notes, as well as introductions and better indexes in order to help them understand the text better. In addition, the format, including length of lines, size of type, punctuation, and paragraphing should represent important improvements. Accordingly, we went from country to country, visiting the principal cities in Spanish-speaking Latin-America, speaking in churches and with individuals in order to learn what was needed and wanted. But we soon realized that we must have a more direct involvement of people, and so we cut important sections out of existing Bibles and pasted the pages on larger sheets of paper so that individuals and groups could indicate speciWcally what they thought should be changed in the text. The pages were sent to the local Bible Society and then on to me for study. People sent more than 1,700 pages of proposed changes, and on the basis of a careful study of these recommendations a committee consisting of three presidents of seminaries, a specialist in rural churches, and a poet, worked out a set of principles and procedures for dealing with the various types of literature: history, legend, lyric poetry, wisdom sayings, prophecy, Gospel texts, and letters. The mimeographing of the revised text during and after each session was a tremendous task, because there were several hundred pages to be typed, proofread, copied on old-fashioned mimeograph machines, and mailed to
Latin America
reviewers in Latin America and Spain. And at the beginning of each meeting of the revision team, the feedback from reviewers was studied. We purposely arranged for the revision team to hold their sessions in diVerent countries because this greatly helped people understand the international character of this enterprise. Once, however, we encountered a very unusual problem. A professor of Hebrew in one of the countries of South America came on his own initiative and announced that he should be a member of the revision team because all professors of Hebrew recognized him as the outstanding specialist in the Hebrew Bible. But he also told members of the revision team that if they did not accept his judgment on various issues, he was likely to have a heart attack. When members of the team told me about the man’s threat, I simple said, “Let him have an attack.” I had recently read a research article on heart disease indicating that people who threaten a heart attack seldom have one. A couple of days later, our interim member of the team quietly left. In this revision we purposely avoided radical changes, and we compensated for the changes in familiar verses by greater clarity, shorter words, larger type, more eVective paragraphing, and helpful cross-reference notes. We were also delighted to have the help of Peter Denyer, a member of the LatinAmerican Mission, who proofread the texts, developed an exceptional crossreference system, and prepared a Wrst-class concordance published by the mission. The success of this limited revision of the Reina-Valera text resulted in the later selection of an interconfessional committee to produce a completely new text of the Scriptures in Spanish, in which due attention could be given to the style of language, important theological insights, and crucial helps for readers, for example, an index of key terms, notes about distinctive meanings, lists of parallel passages, section headings, and culturally distinctive elements.
Indian Languages of Latin America One of my early assignments was to go to Yucatan, Mexico, in order to help solve some of the problems encountered in translating the New Testament into Mayan, a language with a rich oral literature and ancient pictographic symbols, but also with a very diVerent way of treating active and passive constructions. Moreover, there was also a problem about how to write glottalized vowels.
49
50
Fascinated by languages
There were also a number of problems because the ecology of the Yucatan peninsula is very diVerent from that of Palestine. For example, there are no mountains, and it is rare to Wnd a hill more than twenty-Wve feet high. There are no lakes or rivers because all rainwater almost immediately seeps down through the porous rock and forms underground streams. In some places the roofs of such underground rivers have collapsed, forming small bodies of water a hundred or so yards across. Furthermore, the people know nothing about the planting or cultivation of wheat, so that the parable about the farmer who went out to spread seed on the ground sounds like the actions of a mad man. There is practically no land that can be plowed, and corn is planted only with a sharpened stick that is thrust ten or more inches into the rocky earth. In addition, the Mayans have two calendars, a market calendar based on weeks of Wve days and months of twenty-Wve days, and a ceremonial calendar based on units of thirteen days, which coincides with the secular calendar every Wftytwo years. Translating the Bible into such a language means a good deal of explaining in footnotes. Furthermore, idioms can be easily misunderstood. For example in Mark 12.40 the scribes are denounced for devouring widows’ houses, but poor Mayan widows sometimes live in houses made largely of corn stalks. Accordingly readers of the text assumed the artiWcially constructed Mayan word for scribes must refer to some kind of animals that literally eat the houses of poor widows, rather than to men who cheat widows out of all their money. In an eVort to avoid borrowing Spanish terms, some translators in Latin America had refused to use such a common Spanish word as burro and had substituted a phrase “animal with long ears” in order to refer to the animal on which Jesus road into Jerusalem. When asked exactly what kind of an animal this was, the local people confessed that they did not really know, but it must have been a very large rabbit. On one occasion I was working with a prospective translator into a Mayan language in Guatemala, and for an hour or so I tried to explain to him in detail what the Wrst part of the Epistle to the Romans was trying to communicate. Finally, however, he told me to stop because, as he insisted, “You are robbing me of my religion.” For this man, religion was something that could not and should not be understood, otherwise it would not be divine. In fact, there are many Americans who apparently prefer a text that they do not understand. One Mam Indian in Guatemala once told me that he preferred to read the New Testament in Spanish rather than in his own language, which he could
Latin America
understand much more readily and accurately. But he defended his preference for Spanish by saying, “When I read in Spanish, it sounds so beautiful and I do not have to do what it says.” Unfortunately there are too many people who prefer words rather than meanings. Most of my Wrst two years working for the American Bible Society were spend in southern Mexico and Central America, and except for explosions of rockets Wred into the air to help the souls of dying people reach heaven, everything was tranquil despite the long horseback trips to remote villages and the weeks studying the diVerent ways in which languages construct words. Translators working in languages representing cultures that are very diVerent from those of the Bible usually do not have local words that accurately represent the highly specialized meanings of some biblical passages. For example, Ephraim Alphonse, a Jamaican missionary to the Valiente Indians of Panama, wanted to translate the concept of sanctiWcation in the sense of being made holy, but this was a completely unknown concept for Valientes. Alphonse had noticed how women washed their clothes in a nearby stream, hung the clothes out on bushes to dry, and then carefully placed the folded clothing in large baskets that never contained anything but clean clothes. Accordingly, he suggested rendering the word sanctiWcation as “washed by the Spirit of God and kept clean,” an expression almost immediately accepted by believers. Trying to answer strange questions is always a major means of insight into translation diYculties. For example, people asked why Saint Paul was a brujo, a typical Spanish term for a shaman or sorcerer. When I asked people how they knew that Paul was a person who cast spells on people, they showed me the Wrst verse of Acts 9 that speaks about Paul as “breathing out threats and death against the disciples.” This was exactly what brujos were supposed to do. Some of the diYculties in translating the Scriptures into languages of Latin America are caused by various types of Christo-pagan beliefs and practices that have arisen in places where there has been a long period of coalescence and reinterpretation of the biblical message. For example, in the Aztec village of Tetelcingo, about sixty miles south of Mexico City, the local people used to put the statues of Jesus and the Virgin Mary into the same box for one night, and nine months later they christened a baby doll as the “god of the year.” In this ritual they were simply following the ancient Aztec practice of selecting a young man as god of the year. After being honored and worshipped
51
52
Fascinated by languages
for a year, he had to ascend the steps of the temple pyramid, where his heart was cut out and oVered as a gift to the gods of rain and fertility. This fascinating linguistic area, in combination with research into language structures in other parts of the world, constituted the basis for a book on Morphology, The Descriptive Analysis of Words, published by the University of Michigan and made available for more than thirty years. The publication of such a book was at Wrst regarded as simply impossible in view of the numerous strange diacritics that had to be added above, below, preceding and following letters in various languages. There were no computer programs at that time to deal with such diYculties and no typewriters that could be redesigned, except an IBM electronic typewriter, for which some keys could replace others and several dead keys could be employed for unusual combinations of symbols.
Latin America
North America
Instead of Xying south, as was usually the direction on my trips to coral islands of the PaciWc, the forests of Africa, and the mountains of the Andes, on this occasion I was Xying north to BaYn Land in order to participate in a conference sponsored by the Canadian Bible Society for the revision of the New Testament for some 6,000 Eastern Eskimos, 95 % of whom were active members of the Church of England. It was early February, the best time for overland travel because the snow would be frozen solid, and I was certain that I would see dog sleds and igloos, houses built with blocks of frozen snow, but the plane landed on an excellent runway, not far from a Wne supermarket. Most of the houses were Wve-room, modern constructions, with cellars packed with frozen meat and Wsh, and the school was one of the Wnest I had seen in all of Canada. And instead of dogsleds there were scores of gasoline powered skidoos, and all the homes had television sets. The team of participants in the translation program all possessed degrees from universities and seminaries in the southern part of Canada, and they were uniquely qualiWed to help produce a more understandable text of the New Testament, as well as major parts of the Old Testament. As in so many parts of the world, however, the best known and the least understood portion of the Bible is the Lord’s Prayer, typically rendered in such a literal manner that most Christians simply do not understand its real meaning, whether in Eastern Eskimo or in most other languages. Even a quick informal study of Matthew 6.9-13 soon showed how the many awkwardly literal renderings, similar to the King James Version (1611) and English Revised Version (1895), needed to be revised. Most people did not know that hallowed be is an emphatic passive construction of the verb to hallow in the sense of “to cause to be holy.” But it makes no sense to pray that God will become more holy, when he is regarded as the very essence of holiness. This emphatic passive construction in Greek is not a reference to God’s personal holiness but to the manner in which people should recognize his holiness. Even the phrase his name is misleading, because the reference is to God himself, but in Hebrew the personal name of God, transcribed into Roman
53
54
Fascinated by languages
letters as Jahweh and through Latin as Jehovah, was avoided because the name was thought to be so holy. Therefore substitutes were often employed, for example, name, almighty, the highest, Lord. In fact the third line of this prayer is a sincere request that everyone will recognize that “Our Father in heaven is the one true God.” The request Your kingdom come is awkwardly strange because kingdoms do not come in English but are established or set up. And even the phrase Your will be done can be misleading because the word will is too likely to be regarded as an auxiliary verb indicating future time, or even a document written just before someone dies. The statement give us this day our daily bread involves much more than bread. This is simply a metaphorical way of talking about all that people need in order to survive. But perhaps the most misleading expression occurs in verse 12 in which people ask to have “their debts forgiven.” The Greek text refers to moral failures or wrongs done to others, but not to Wnancial indebtedness. In fact, in the form of the Lord’s Prayer in the Gospel of Luke the Greek text uses the word meaning “sins.” In some languages the Greek term traditionally rendered as “debts” is translated as “trespasses,” but this does not solve the basic problem, because “trespasses” refers merely to being on someone’s property without permission. The following statement “Lead us not into temptation” suggests that God himself tempts people to sin, but this is certainly not the meaning. The reference is to exposing people to trial and testing. Because the Christians were all involved in a subversive movement for which they could be summarily arrested, tried, and executed, this prayer certainly made sense to members of the Christian community. What they evidently feared more than anything else was the possibility that under torture they would deny the Christ in whom they had put their trust. Even the Wnal request to “rescue from evil” is more accurately rendered as “rescue us from the Evil One”, namely, the Devil. And the traditional doxology “For thine is kingdom and the power and the glory forever Amen” occurs only in late manuscripts, and so it is rejected in the Roman Catholic textual tradition. If there can be so many misleading expressions in the English text that has been used and misused for so many years by so many people, it is no wonder that translations representing entirely diVerent kinds of languages and diverse cultures can be so misleading, primarily because early translators have evi-
North America
dently been more concerned with matching words than with representing the meaning of sentences. When North America was Wrst “discovered,” anthropologists estimate that there were probably about 350,000 Indians, representing some Wfty diVerent languages and about ten diVerent language families, but the greatest concentration of Indians was on the West Coast because there was such an abundance of food. Many local people, however, died oV rapidly, but not primarily from the bullets of cowboys and soldiers but from diseases against which the local population had no immunity. Some of these tribes have, however, increased considerably. For example, shortly after the Civil War about 8,000 of the Navajo people were restricted to a reservation in Arizona and New Mexico, on land that most other people thought was useless. The assumption was that local schools and traders would soon cause the tribe and the language to disappear, but there are now more than 150,000 Navajos, and most continue to speak their exceptionally complex language. Although many Navajos, as well as Indians of other tribes, have become Christians and have at least portions of the Bible in their own language, others have put their faith in the American Indian Religion, which is intertribal and makes use of many indigenous symbols: rattles, a winged snake, songs for healing, rain dances, trances, and peyote, which causes worshippers to see vivid displays of light and is regarded by some believers as the power of the Holy Spirit. A widely distributed translation of the New Testament into Navajo contained a particularly complex problem involving the meaning of the phrase “only begotten.” The missionary translators insisted that they had chosen the right Navajo expression, but continual opposition to the term by Navajos became a serious issue. Accordingly, because of a new translation being sponsored by the American Bible Society, it was essential to try to resolve the problem of meaning that some local missionaries stoutly defended but which most Navajos opposed. One of the principal diYculties was that the Navajo term was apparently taboo, and Navajos would not discuss the word openly. Accordingly, the Translations Department of the American Bible Society arranged for a consultation about this issue and invited Navajos from a number of areas to attend a feast of roast lamb, something that would certainly result in a good turnout of Navajos from various regions.
55
56
Fascinated by languages
About Wfty Indians came to the meeting and they were seated in chairs around the walls of a relatively large room. The missionaries who had responsibility for the terminology of the Navajo translation sat together at a table in the center of the room and vigorously defended their choice of the term. In fact, one missionary insisted that the term they chose was supported by a recently published Navajo dictionary, which he had written. But when each Navajo was asked whether the word in the translation was good, they all insisted that it was not good. The last Navajo to be questioned about the term had been a member of the committee that had actually prepared the text of the New Testament. Accordingly, we asked, “How is it possible that all the Navajos here insist that the word is not good, when you yourself were a member of the committee?” And his reply was convincing, “I was only one Navajo and there were two missionaries.” Later study of the problem showed that the term suggested a serious violation of sexual taboos, and no Navajo wished to be embarrassed by even mentioning the word. With the help of a member of the Summer Institute of Linguistics, Hopi Christians produced the text of the New Testament in their own language, and I had the opportunity to go over the translation and speak extensively with educated Hopis, who were well acquainted with Whorf’s celebrated idea that the Hopi language was structurally deWcient to the point of not being able to express certain concepts. His views had been widely accepted by those who held the traditional view that people think the way they think because of the language that they speak. Despite the popularity of such an idea, promoted by many diVerent students of language through the centuries, most professional linguists have simply not been able to verify Whorf’s claims. I also spent considerable time going over parts of the Hopi New Testament before it was printed, and I did not Wnd the kind of conceptually unique limitations that Whorf claimed, nor did several other linguists who had also analyzed the Hopi language. The grammatical and terminological structure of a language can certainly facilitate certain ways of expressing particular ideas, but the structures of a language do not prevent people from having quite diVerent ways of organizing information. Languages do not control thought, although certain languages seem to be especially eVective in channeling certain types of information. When one missionary in the Southwest United States Wnished his draft of the New Testament in a local language, he sent the manuscript to the Transla-
North America
tions Department of the American Bible Society with a request for the publication of at least Wve times the number of speakers of the language, which was already on the list of endangered languages. The insistence on such a large stock of New Testaments suggested that I should look into the situation, and so I visited the area on my next trip to the Southwest. The missionary produced such an exaggerated Wgure for printing because he realized that the number of speakers would no doubt be fewer in the future, but by the use of actuarial tables he wanted the Bible Society to print suYcient copies of the New Testament so that there would be available at least one copy for the last speaker of the language. But my diYculty was that I simply could not Wnd any speaker of the language that could read the translation and tell me what it meant. Even the missionary’s principal translation helper could not read a short paragraph in one of the Epistles and explain its meaning. And the missionary was almost equally at a loss to explain to me a passage from the Epistle to the Romans.
57
58
Fascinated by languages
Eastern Europe Russia Christians in Russia and many who migrated to Western Europe and America had complained that the Russian Bibles distributed by the Bible Societies were awkward in grammar and very old-fashioned in vocabulary. Accordingly, when I received an invitation to write an encyclopedia article on theories and practice of translating in the Western World, I realized that I would need to investigate some of the important developments in Russia and the East Block. At the same time I might be able to follow up contacts with a linguist in Saint Petersburg who was also concerned about the antiquated text being used by both Orthodox and Protestant Christians. Visiting Russia and arranging for contacts with some of the leaders in the Linguistic Institute could only be done through some person with political connections, and this developed through correspondence with a distinguished teacher of English who was an important Wgure in the intellectual and political hierarchy. The visa was Wnally arranged, and I arrived by plane from Paris, but at the immigration desk there was a long hold-up due to some problem with my visa, which was carried to one oYcial after another. Finally I got through the line and met a young Estonian student who had been sent to meet me. When I tried to check in at the hotel, I was asked where my companion was, and I insisted that I had no such companion. Then they told me that there must be two persons: Nida Eugene and Albert Linquist, because they had misread my name and professional identiWcation: “Nida, Eugene Albert; Linguist” as referring to two persons. Finally I was taken to my room, a large apartment with two huge beds. My status as two persons did help later when I wanted to take my guide to the Bolshoi theater because he was so interested in dancing, but he didn’t have the status necessary to buy a ticket, even if he had the money. I could enter Russia only on the provision that I not lecture in any university in Moscow, and so my sponsor arranged a delightful evening for me to talk with some of the leading linguists in the country, and I had access to precisely the information I needed. I was, however, surprised that most of the
Eastern Europe
linguists were well acquainted with my books and articles, and I asked how they were able to obtain such materials. They then explained that a number of my publications had been translated into Russian and published. I was particularly intrigued by what my hostess said after the other guests had left. She wanted very much to explain to me the purposes of the recent Russian invasion into the Czech Republic, and she described it to me in religious terms by saying that sometimes even countries “back-slide, and therefore they need to be brought to repentance.” (Her theological terminology was very pointed.) But she wanted to assure me that ultimately Communism would win because, as she declared, “We shall never hesitate to shoot anyone who stands in our way.” After visiting some of the marvelous museums and libraries in Moscow, I Xew two days later to St. Petersburg, but when I arrived at the hotel, there was no reservation in the name of Eugene Nida. So I asked to see the register, and there I was: Albert Linquist, and so I said, “That’s me, right there.” The seminary of the Russian Orthodox Church honored me with a remarkable banquet elegantly served. Church authorities in Russia fared very well during at least that part of the revolution. But my problems were more immediate, namely, how to lecture on textual studies of the Greek New Testament with an interpreter who knew only Russian and French and had a tendency to stutter. I had heard that some people who stutter improve as they drink more liquor, but the more vodka he drank the more he stuttered. Evidently, however, the scholars had understood my interpreted presentation because they began to challenge me on text types and distribution of evidence, but the most distinguished of the scholars Wnally concluded by saying, “But why do you waste so much time and money trying to decide what is the correct text. Our Holy Father in Moscow has already told us what is the right text to follow.” And of course this was the traditional Byzantine text, the least satisfactory of all. My other visits to Russia were, however, much more pleasant. On a Fulbright award I was at the Maurice Thorez Institute for one month to lecture to students and staV on theories and practice of translating and interpreting. At Wrst the dean of the program suggested that I make a tour of leading universities in Russia with one lecture in each place. But I objected because one lecture is usually only a show, and not a sharing process. Furthermore, I wanted to know more about what linguists were doing in Russia, and I
59
60
Fascinated by languages
also wanted to be helpful to students. I was certainly not interested in making an academic splash. Russian students worked hard, but for the most part teachers were too “relaxed.” I, however, had the good fortune to made the acquaintance of several young professors and some very bright students, and occasionally I met with them in the evening. We often talked about religion and politics, and one evening I posed a question, “How is it that the Communist government of Russia, which is oYcially atheist, has paid the salaries of almost 50,000 priests during all the time it was been in power?” And the immediate response by one of the young professors was surprisingly blunt, “It was cheaper to buy the church than to persecute it.” At that time most of the stores were short of food, and I found most of what I wanted to eat at the small stalls located near the subway exits, but the controlled rate of exchange made my time in Russia exceptionally expensive. In general people were very kind and even old women would oVer to give me a seat on the underground. My contacts with people at the University of Moscow were exceptionally rewarding.
Georgia My later visit to Tbilisi in the Republic of Georgia was a very diVerent experience. These people were determined to be independent and to catch up with the rest of the world economically and intellectually. Their interpreters were excellent, and their intellectuals were extremely well informed about the rest of the world. The leadership of the Georgian Orthodox Church, which goes back to the Fifth Century, decided to undertake a meaningful revision of the Scriptures in their distinctive Caucasus language.
Armenia Contacts with scholars and church leaders in Etzmiadzine, Armenia, were impossible as long as the wall between East and West symbolized the problems of meaningful contacts with church leaders. A number of Western Armenians, especially in France, had urged the Bible Societies to try to work out some arrangements for help to be given to Orthodox and Protestant
Eastern Europe
scholars who might undertake a revision of the Bible into Armenian. Accordingly, I visited some church leaders at the time of the Easter celebrations in Marseilles, France. I was much impressed with the openness and devotion of these scholars, but we all recognized that any eVective and acceptable revision would have to be undertaken in cooperation with church leaders in Etzmiadzine, and therefore it might be well to wait until such relations could be eVectively established. This did take place some ten years later when a Bible society consultant was able to work out eVective plans for a major revision to serve both eastern and western Armenians. My Protestant host invited me to join him in attending a part of the Easter Mass being celebrated in the Orthodox church in Marseilles. The architecture, banners, vestments, paintings and altar were magniWcent, and we were graciously ushered to the front of the packed congregation and seated on elegant chairs. I could not understand Armenian, but I was deeply impressed with the sincere forms of worship. After two hours my host excused us, and we left with the evident blessing of the people. But when we were outside of the church, I could not refrain from expressing my surprise at the manner in which we had been received. I had never experienced such warm-hearted acceptance in any other interconfessional context. But then my host explained that perhaps one reason for the kindness was that the wife of the Orthodox priest was a member of the Protestant church where my host was the preacher.
61
62
Fascinated by languages
Western Europe The interest in translating and interpreting in Western Europe has never been greater. The fact that the European Union consists of Wfteen countries and eleven languages has produced more that thirty new schools of translating and interpreting, and those who try to anticipate the immediate increase of as many as twenty-Wve members of the Union have readily seen the necessity of far more training programs, especially because programs in language learning tend to concentrate on literature and not on language use. Students who graduate from the average foreign language program of a university normally learn a great deal about the literature of the language but they are often poorly equipped to read, write, speak, and hear the foreign language Institutions that wish to develop realistic programs in translation and interpretation soon discover that they are seriously handicapped in procuring adequately trained personnel, because competent teachers can make much more money translating and interpreting than the schools can aVord to pay them to teach. Competent teachers of English are particularly scarce, so much so that in one school the two teachers of English had picked up their knowledge of English by being sailors on ships where the language of the crew was English. Another serious diYculty is the shift from French to English for international communication within the European Union. Most of the documents coming to the Union are now in English and increasingly the language of informal groups of administrators is English. As a result, people are beginning to talk about “International English.” Almost every school of translation and interpretation publishes a journal and book publishers are doing a brisk business. Schools also compete in sponsoring conferences and often subsidize such programs as a way of attracting students and even teachers.
The Czech Republic An invitation to give some lectures at one of the leading universities in Prague seemed like a strategic opportunity for direct contacts with an important
Western Europe
intellectual center behind the Wall. But those who sponsored the lectures were advised that they needed to invite a prominent local scholar who could assure the government authorities that nothing would be said against government policies. Accordingly, they invited an important professor in the leading university, who was both a television personality and the president of the Union of Communist University Professors. The lectures and discussions progressed well for a couple of days, and there was general approval of what I said about translating the Hebrew Bible, but translators of the New Testament expressed serious opposition to the application of the same principles of semantic equivalence to their rendering of the New Testament. I was frankly surprised at the diVerence of attitudes, but it seemed to reXect a distinctly diVerent understanding of Scripture. Old Testament scholars were perfectly content to deal with the time and place realism of the Old Testament, but the New Testament scholars were so attracted to the reinterpreted existential symbolism of the New Testament that they wanted to retain literal renderings of the text as a basis for their own brand of demythologizing. After rather protracted discussions of these issues, the head of the University Professors Union arose and spoke at considerable length about taking seriously the meaning of the New Testament for the believers in the early church. Therefore, the translation of the text should be realistically applicable to people’s lives. I never dreamed that I would get so much meaningful help from a person in the Communist intellectual hierarchy. Later, however, I learned that he had grown up a Presbyterian.
Hungary My next task was to talk conWdentially with one of the leading oYcials of the Protestant churches in Hungary. Usually such discussions can be arranged by taking a long walk in a park or along the river bank, but on that day a driving wind and rain made it impossible for us to chat conWdentially outside. We therefore had to talk in the hotel, but all the rooms were bugged, and so we used the lobby of the hotel, which no doubt was also bugged. But the Protestant oYcial had mastered a double form of sociolinguistic communication involving simultaneous words and facial gestures.
63
64
Fascinated by languages
I asked my questions about government and church policies in the most generalized and innocent form possible, and the Protestant oYcial provided two answers at the same time. His words followed the party line perfectly, but his facial gestures told a completely contrary message. (We had purposely taken seats where very few people would be able to watch our faces.) I Wnally came to the end of my list of issues, and I indicated that I would explain in detail the results of our talk to the leadership of the United Bible Societies. And after the collapse of the wall, Hungary was the Wrst East Block country to host an important meeting of all the hundred-plus members of the United Bible Societies.
Romania I Wrst met Professor Rodica Dimitriu when I was lecturing at the University of New York, Binghamton, and I was very impressed with her wide knowledge of the literature about translation principles and procedures. A couple of years later she invited me to give some lectures in the University of Iasi, where I met a number of keen-minded young people who were studying intensely to prepare themselves for becoming translators for the European Union, since Romania was one of the leading countries of Eastern Europe scheduled to join the Union. The unfortunate policies of previous governments of Romania had neglected education and schools, as well as teachers, who had to struggle against great odds in order to develop realistic programs, but it was a real pleasure to talk to and with bright, eager students who were much ahead of young people in a number of schools in Western Europe. The university did arrange for some visiting professors to go on a trip to an early frontier of Romania, and there I was fascinated by churches that had biblical scenes painted on the outside of churches, and indeed even Plato was seated near the door to guard against heresy. The reason for the biblical scenes on the outside of churches had a very practical purpose, because the windows of the churches were entirely too narrow to permit suYcient light to enter the interior of buildings that served as fortresses in times of war. I left Iasi with a deep respect for teachers and students who were making the impossible happen.
Western Europe
Lithuania OYcials of the translation program of the European Union invited me to join them in lecturing to a number of translators in North East Europe who were scheduled to translate thousands of pages of essential documents constituting the basis for the European Union. As so often happens the plane was late in arriving in Vilnius, where I was overwhelmed by the sight of a city sparkling with diamonds formed by glowing lights shining on fresh frozen snow. Vilnius is also one the cleanest cities I have ever seen. My opportunities to share with translators some of my concerns for eVective translating created such enthusiasm that I was asked to meet the next morning with local university teachers, and for almost three hours we had one of the most interesting sessions in which I have ever participated. The issues these teachers introduced taught me a great deal about realistic communication and highlighted the issue of Wgurative meanings even in legal texts.
65
66
Fascinated by languages
Western Europe
Part II: Bible translation, texts and interpretations
67
68
Fascinated by languages
Asia
Bible translation
Meeting the need through translation consultants In view of the rapidly increasing need for providing help to translators by publications, personal consultation, and administrative assistance, I soon realized that we had to have the help of a number of highly trained creative people who could serve as translation consultants in strategic places throughout the world. But people to do such work cannot be found by advertising in help-wanted columns. We had to go out and Wnd key people who could do almost anything and everything. William L. Wonderly was the Wrst person to become a full-time translations consultant. For many years he was a member of the joint Summer Institute of Linguistics and WycliVe Bible Translators and had worked among the Zoque Indians of southern Mexico. His Ph.D. on Zoque at the University of Michigan was exceptionally Wne, and his Spanish was admirable. He was also very sensitive to style and discourse structures of texts in the indigenous languages of Mexico. Bill Wonderly was also unique in being a person who could work harmoniously and creatively with other people, and especially with Roman Catholics, despite his own background in a strongly conservative Protestant church. He also did some excellent research in sociolinguistics in Spain and in New Mexico, and wrote a Wrst-rate book in Spanish on Bible translating. Bill’s organizational ability and leadership in the production of the interconfessional Popular Spanish Version of the Bible was a remarkable tribute to his scientiWc insights and his patient character. I enjoyed sitting in on sessions of the team in order to see how Wonderly’s rare brand of humility and wisdom paid oV so richly. And I shall never forget the way Bill so patiently faced certain death from cancer. Robert G. Bratcher had years of experience teaching in Brazil. Bob and I were the Wrst to tackle the task of producing a commentary for translators, but we were not interesting in reciting the history of interpretations or the controversies concerning the text of Mark. What we tried to produce was a book that would provide translators with information about issues of meaning and how
69
70
Fascinated by languages
the various possible meanings could be best expressed. Bob wrote the basic draft, and I provided illustrations of what translators had done in diVerent parts of the world in order to make the text meaningful in diVerent cultural contexts. But I was the one who made the mistake of trying to indicate the particular language involved in each case of linguistic adaptation. This proved confusing, because most people were not interested in the names or the geographical location of the languages. Furthermore, local translators often employed more satisfactory renderings in later versions, and therefore they did not appreciate comments that had become out of date. There was increasing pressure for the American Bible Society to do in English what Wonderly had been able to do with help from outstanding Spanish translators. At this same time the Phillips New Testament in Modern English had been widely and enthusiastically received by many theologically conservative Christians, and a Pentecostal translator in Liberia, West Africa, had produced a very creative translation in Liberian English. In addition to, or because of, all these developments, a leader in the Southern Baptist Convention urged the Bible Society to consider doing something creative in popular American English. Bob Bratcher was obviously the one person we thought could do the job, but he was reluctant because he knew how critical some people can be. Bob was discouraged with his Wrst eVorts, but little by little he got into the swing and came out with some brilliant renderings. In fact, when the New Testament was Wnally published a young lady in Greenwich, Connecticut, exclaimed, “It must not be the Bible; I can understand it!” The New Testament was such a surprising success, that Bob was asked to head up a team to produce the entire Bible in the same style. William D. Reyburn had been doing some very creative research in Latin America, especially by working in Quechua communities to determine the rapidity with which Spanish was winning out over Quechua. He had adjusted quickly to the Indian culture and had learned Ecuadorian Quechua well, but his Quechua colleague constantly called him patron meaning “boss.” Bill did not like this kind of inverted paternalism, so he asked his Quechua friend, “Why do you call me ‘boss’?” To this his friend replied, “Because you wear white men’s clothes.” From then on Bill wore only Quechua garments, but still his helper called him “boss,” and justiWed his use of “boss” by saying, “You always wear shoes, not sandals.” So Bill started wearing only sandals, but his
Bible translation
helper kept on calling him “boss.” At last Bill got angry and declared, “Look! We work together, I speak your language, I wear your clothes and now your sandals, so why do you still call me ‘boss’?” to which his helper replied, “Your mother was not an Indian.” Bill wrote his linguistic dissertation on Cherokee, an Iroquoian language of the Southeast United States, and he was doing some very important research in South America on the relation of culture to translation. This was all very important, but what we desperately needed was a full-time consultant specializing in problems posed by crucial diVerences in culture. I remembered Marie Fetzer, an anthropologist, who at that time was teaching anthropology at Wheaton College, in Wheaton, Illinois. Accordingly, I phoned to inquire about the possibility of her working with us, and she responded by saying, “But I am engaged to be married to Bill Reyburn,” to which I quickly replied, “Then why not both of you?” And we acquired a team of highly intelligent and dedicated people who served as consultants in Latin America, Africa, the Middle East, and later in England, where Bill headed up translation work for the United Bible Societies. Bill and Marie later lived not far from Atlanta, Georgia, where Bill wrote some excellent commentaries to aid translators. William A. Smalley was repeatedly mentioned by people in Southeast Asia because of his wide knowledge of languages in southeast Asia and his proWciency as an anthropologist in studying diVerent tribal groups in that part of the world. As a result, I realized that it would be very important to obtain his help on a full-time basis. Accordingly, I made a note to discuss matters with Bill’s boss the next time I could see him in New York City. But that same evening our plane ran into a violent storm oV the coast of China, and we had to make an emergency landing in the islands just south of Japan, and as we checked into the hotel we spotted Bill’s director, who was likewise there because of the storm. This gave me a wonderful chance to explain the problems we faced in Southeast Asia, and Bill’s director assured me that he would be glad to take up my proposition with the board of the Christian and Missionary Alliance. Bill, who has already been mentioned in connection with an important institute for Bible translators in southern Thailand, did some brilliant Weld work, and he was especially helpful to me when I tried to write a book on animism. In the end the book was published with joint authorship. And later,
71
72
Fascinated by languages
Bill taught anthropology at Bethel College in St. Paul and wrote a remarkable book on the languages of South East Asia Barclay M. Newman was teaching at William Jewel College in Missouri, where I was lecturing for a few days. Barclay was professor of New Testament Greek, with a Ph.D. from Southern Baptist Seminary in Louisville, Kentucky. I was very impressed with his knowledge of Greek, his openness to new ideas, and his delightful sense of humor that he simply could not repress. For some time we had been trying to Wnd someone who could prepare a dictionary of New Testament Greek that could be published together with the Greek New Testament being completed by a committee of outstanding scholars. So I talked with Barclay about the project and got him to help us. The dictionary was designed quite diVerently from most such dictionaries because the diverse meanings of words were not listed in the order of presumed historical development but in terms of their frequency of usage in the New Testament. In addition, the diVerent meanings of a word were grouped into typical sets of contexts, a feature that proved to be especially helpful when we undertook to put out a comprehensive lexicon of the Greek New Testament based on semantic domains. Soon we were able to convince Barclay and his wife Jean to join our family of translation consultants, and they served very creatively in a number of countries, including Thailand, Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines, and at a particularly important conference in Ponape in the PaciWc. Barclay and Jean worked very hard with a team on a new translation of the Bible into English, known as the Contemporary English Version. They were especially creative in poetic passages and in adjusting the length of lines so that there would not be bothersome run-overs. For translators institutes designed to help people understand the principles of Bible translating, Barclay developed a fascinating series of lectures to illustrate the principles of translation that focused on hearing a text rather than merely reading it. Danny Arichea from the Philippines was in the process of Wnishing up his Ph.D. in biblical languages at Duke University in Raleigh, North Carolina. In the Philippines I had heard a great deal about Danny, his wife Ruth, and their remarkably gifted children. In fact, they are all excellent musicians, but people spoke of Danny as being especially competent as a leader, and everything I heard proved entirely true. On our way home from a vacation in Florida, we stopped to see Danny and Ruth. I liked to meet prospective personnel in their own homes and with
Bible translation
their family, because this always reveals so much about how they will relate to people in other parts of the world. I was delighted that Danny and Ruth were interested in helping us, Wrst in the Philippines and then for a number of years in Indonesia and later as the regional translations coordinator for Asia, stationed in Hong Kong, the transportation and communication center of Asia. On one occasion Danny and I made a trip to Bali just at the time the clove trees were in bloom. What a wonderful perfume! We were fascinated by the ornate sculptures, the multicolored temples, the fearsome theatrical performances, and the unbelievable friendliness of people who are besieged by tourists. We had a wonderful time to talk about our common fears and faith and to dream about the future of an island world poised on the edge of senseless killing. Danny’s background in Biblical studies, his wonderful sense of genuine humor, and his genuine concern for others made him an ideal leader as well as a Wne writer of commentaries for translators. Unfortunately for us in the United Bible Societies but fortunately for the Methodists in the Philippines, Danny’s Methodist colleagues urged him to accept the position of being a bishop of the Methodist Church, which he served with great distinction in times of real crisis. Jan de Waard and I collaborated often because he was a specialist in Old Testament. We very much enjoyed preparing a Translator’s Handbook on the Book of Ruth. In a conference in Spain designed especially for Roman Catholic translators, we had a great time walking each day in some neglected grape orchards and picking whatever sugar-rich grapes were still hanging on the vines. On those walks we worked out the basic outline and themes of a new book on Bible translating, entitled From one Language to Another, in which Jan de Waard supplied the material on the Hebrew Bible and I wrote the material on the New Testament. The conference in Spain was actually held at a nunnery that the local nuns had turned into a proWtable Country Club on the edge of Madrid. Except for necklaces with a cross, no one would have guessed that this was not an exclusive club that served magniWcent meals. We also had some excellent opportunities to meet some young Roman Catholic scholars who found themselves in a precarious position with the government that had arrested one priest for quoting in a sermon something from a newspaper published by the government.
73
74
Fascinated by languages
Much later, Jan and I made a trip to South Africa to participate in a conference sponsored by the Bible Society for a possible Lexicon of the Hebrew Bible based on semantic domains, while in the meantime Jan was working on an adaptation of the notes on Isaiah from the publication of textual problems of the Hebrew Bible. I-jin Loh from Taiwan was one of the most astute persons on our team of consultants. His doctorate in biblical studies at Princeton Seminary gave him a remarkable grasp of the problems in translation, and his openness to cooperation with leading Roman Catholic scholars was nothing less than inspiring. I-jin organized two Wrst-rate translators conferences in Taiwan, one in which the government sent representatives to make certain that nothing political was involved, but the staV provided them with so many refreshments that they never attended any sessions. I-jin was also a key person for contacts with church leaders in mainland China, where his genuine diplomacy was crucial to the development of the Amity printing press paid for by the United Bible Societies and successful in publishing millions of New Testaments and Bibles within the Wrst ten years of operation. And all this I-jin accomplished despite suVering increasingly from severe diabetes. I have never known a more courageous man. At a small conference of Bible translators and linguists in the eastern part of Kenya, I met Musimbi Kanyoro, a brilliant woman with tremendous drive. I urged her to consider studies in linguistics, which she Wnished with high honors at the University of Texas. She became a Wrst-rate translations consultant and was nominated by the leadership of the United Bible Societies to head up the translation work in all of sub-Saharan Africa, but some of the African leadership refused to work under the leadership of a woman. She was simply too intelligent for such men! As a result she became the head of women’s activities in the Baptist World Alliance and later in the World Council of Churches, and after that in the International YWCA. What a shame that gender prejudice should rob African Christians of such leadership! Charles R. Taber, who grew up in Central Africa, co-authored with me a basic book on the Theory and Practice of Translating, one of the most helpful volumes on how to deal with crucial contrasts in the meaning of biblical languages. Jakob Loewen, a Canadian Mennonite with years of experience in latin America, contributed many important insights about Wnding adequate terminology in indigenous cultures.
Bible translation
Louis Dorn was very helpful in the Philippines program and even more helpful in New York as the editor of the series of commentaries written for Bible translators. Harold Fehderau, who received his doctorate in linguistics at Cornell University, worked as a translation consultant in the Lower Congo, where he did some fascinating research on a local, precolonial pidgin language. Later he served as the Translations Secretary for the Canadian Bible Society. Heber Peacock was an eVective translations consultant in West Africa, and then later in England he was the coordinator of translation work for the United Bible Societies Philip Stine, who received his doctorate in linguistics at the University of Michigan, was Wrst a translations consultant in West Africa and then became a coordinator and Wnally an assistant to John Erickson in New York and later in Reading, England, when John Erickson became the General Secretary of the United Bible Societies. Ernst Wendland has been for a number of years an honorary (plenty of work and no pay) translations consultant in Africa and made important contributions to work on translation programs in East Africa and South Africa, as well as in his research on Hebrew poetry. During the last twenty years there have been approximately seventy-Wve persons serving the needs of translators in various parts of the world. They never run out of work and there are no prospects that such will ever happen.
Training translators Training translators is one of the most diYcult tasks in the entire range of pedagogy. In fact, some people insist that translators are born not made, in the sense that without a certain natural ability in verbal communication, people rarely become adequate translators. I have known fully bilingual speakers who are completely inadequate translators despite years of exposure to bilingual contexts. Lectures that include plenty of appropriate examples can communicate a great deal about actual translation principles and practice, but people learn far more from guided practice than from lectures. Accordingly, in the series of major translator-training programs sponsored by the United Bible Societies in many parts of the world, we concentrated on the principles and practice of
75
76
Fascinated by languages
translating in morning lectures, but in the afternoon we always divided people into groups of three or four (never two, so as to avoid direct conXict) and usually gave every group the same text to translate, but we always had available a suYcient number of translation consultants to provide help when there were any problems. These consultants circulated among the translators to answer questions or at times to pose questions with respect to how certain problems had been handled. We usually found that in three or four weeks we could convince people intellectually that a translation needs to make sense in a receptor language, but it usually took at least 30 % more time to convince people emotionally that they should make the translated text so clear that no one would be likely to miss the meaning. This ideological gap between the source text and comprehension by receptors constitutes the greatest stumbling block in Bible translating. Instead of simply lecturing about principles of correspondence between the source text and the translated text, a far better way to teach translating is to sit with a prospective translator and go over a text as a means of discovering potential problems. In fact, this is one of the most important procedures, because a problem accurately recognized is already half solved. This anticipation of diYculties in translating is particularly useful because a translator knows what is coming in the text and can prepare for it. As a result the translating process usually proceeds more rapidly and with fewer errors. The Wnal process involves an oral reading of the translation in order to spot unnatural, awkward, or incorrect renderings. In fact, several oral readings may be necessary and stylistically helpful, because our ears are much better tuned to language than our eyes. A speaker of the receptor language should also read the text out-loud to a group of people, and persons responsible for producing the translation should watch carefully the listeners’ eyes, facial gestures, and especially the movements around the mouth because these unconscious reXexes tell so much about the comprehension of the text and the pleasure experienced in hearing the form of the discourse. The greatest obstacle to eVective translating of religious texts is the prevalence of “word-worship,” the feeling that seemingly important words must always be translated in the same way. Such a practice almost always results in skewing the meaning of the original and making artiWcial the form of the resulting translation.
Bible translation
Translators learn to translate by translating, because the process of translating is essentially a skill and not a content-learning process, as in history. And because translating is a skill, it must be demonstrated, not just talked about. In fact, one of the best ways to learn how to translate is to pay close attention to how an expert translator explains precisely what he or she is doing in the process of transfering the meaning of a source text into a receptor language. Unfortunately, some teachers of translation are so impressed by the diversities of linguistic structures between the source and receptor languages that they tend to translate languages rather than texts. Some of the best translators know practically nothing about linguistics or sociolinguistics, or even sociosemiotics. But they do know how to understand texts both objectively and subjectively, and they produce excellent examples of the closest natural equivalent in meaning and impact. The training of translation consultants for biblical texts is a much more complex task. In the Wrst place they need to have considerable knowledge of the related cultures of the Hebrew Bible and the New Testament, because the worst mistakes result primarily from not knowing the respective cultures rather than from a failure to understand particular words. Words only have meanings in terms of the culture of which they are a part. They also need to know the biblical languages well and be able to use published helps eVectively, but their focus must also be on the texts, not on the language structure. Linguistics can be a help in determining why a particular combination of words has a specialized meaning, but the meaning of words depends on the context of a discourse and the meaning of a discourse depends in large measure on the presuppositions and values of the culture. That is why the phrase “Give glory to God” (Luke 17.18) really means “Swear to tell the truth.” Or why the verb meaning literally “go up” must be translated “go inland,” when going from the shore to land, and conversely, “go up to sea” when moving from the shore to the open ocean. In both circumstances people assume that they are going up. Because the world is round, the sea does appear to be somewhat higher than the land. In addition to a knowledge of languages, linguistics, and cultural anthropology, translation consultants also need to be cheerfully sympathy in order to help others see the problems and to discover valid answers. They especially need to be able to ask leading questions, because their task is not to translate but to help others translate. This capacity to ask relevant questions represents a rare combination of intellectual humility and know-how. The only way to
77
78
Fascinated by languages
communicate such a capacity is through creative imitation, and that is precisely why new translation consultants work closely with experienced ones. All learning is essentially creative imitation. One valuable opportunity for learning such skills has come through the triennial meetings of all the translation consultants for two or three weeks of intensive sharing of new insights and administrative processes. These workshops began in Greenwich, Connecticut, when there were only about a dozen consultants, but now such triennial meetings of all the consultants includes a hundred or more people. For a number of years we put out for translation consultants a set of Relevant Ramblings each few months. This program began because I was constantly coming across interesting bits of information in my reading and research, and I simply extracted the substance of new insights and wrote them up for consultants. Other people helped in this and we all learned how much we needed to share new insights. These were not book reports, but highlights of new discoveries in a wide range of behavioral science. Gradually, however, as more people became engaged, the material turned into a series of evaluations of books and articles. Now one of the most important helps is Tic-Tock, edited by Sarah Lind, who provides crucial information on various types of helps for translators and consultants. For several years the translations department sponsored a small journal entitled Practical Anthropology, because so few schools training missionaries were aware of the strategic importance of knowing more about the culture of people. Failures to understand the presuppositions of a society constitute real obstacles to eVective communication. In addition we responded to requests from various mission boards in the United States and in Canada, and we loaned staV to direct and teach basic skills in learning languages in the Weld.
Fidelity to the text In checking a translation of Genesis into an important Indian language of North America, I discovered that the translator had a real problem with Genesis 6.6 “God was sorry that he had made people because their thoughts were always evil.” The translator was prepared to say that the thoughts of people were always evil but not that “God repented” or “God was sorry.” The
Bible translation
translator insisted that God could not repent, because he was omniscient and would know from the beginning what was going to happen. Accordingly, the translator insisted that the Hebrew could not have meant “repented” or “felt sorry.” But that is precisely what the Hebrew does say, and a translator’s primary responsibility is to reXect accurately the meaning of the text, even though the concept may not Wt some of a translator’s own ideas or the ideas of some biblical scholars. A similar type of problem occurred one day when I was talking with my long-time friend, Kenneth Taylor, translator of the Living Bible. We met at his request at the Bible House in New York, where he and his wife were interested in raising with me some of the issues about the nature of paraphrase. Ken thought that for one reason or another I had strongly criticized his translation for being a paraphrase, but I assured him that I had never criticized the Living Bible for using paraphrase, because technically all translation involves paraphrase. There may, of course, be diVerences of judgment about the extent of paraphrase. I then mentioned a passage in which it seemed to me there was incorrect paraphrase. In Matthew 2.9 the Greek text says “the star they had seen in the east went ahead of them and stopped over the place where the child was.” But I called attention to the fact that the Living Bible has only “They started out again. And look! The star appeared to them again, standing over Bethlehem.” I then asked Ken why he had left out the moving of the star and stopping over the place when the child was. But Ken indicated that the wise men were no doubt both astrologers and astronomers, and they knew that stars do not move from one place to another to mark the location of someone. I insisted, however, that in departing from the text and in this way eliminating a supernatural event, the text was very similar to what the nineteenth-century Bible critics had done in eliminating references to supernatural events. And just then Ken’s wife nudged him and said, “What did I tell you?” As the result of our extended conversation, Ken asked me to undertake a sample revision of several diVerent kinds of passages in the Living Bible. I was happy to do so, and I also accepted his invitation to meet with the committee that had been appointed to revise the Living Bible so as to make it more widely acceptable. But I strongly urged the committee to retain the Wgurative and creative language of the translation.
79
80
Fascinated by languages
Success and failure Translators of the Bible have generally been very receptive to the help that I have tried to give, but some resist strongly any recommendations that are not strictly in line with their own traditions and principles of biblical interpretation. One person was furious because I would not accept his translation of the New Testament and so he screamed at me, “You are not only a fool, but a stupid fool because you think you know.” The reason for my rejecting his translation of the New Testament was that I could not Wnd anyone who could read and understand it. Too many words came from dictionaries printed more than two centuries before, and some of the newly constructed words were completely unknown and unintelligible to present-day people. On another occasion, however, a nurse, who had spend a lifetime in helping an isolated tribe of South American Indians live more healthy lives and in translating the New Testament into their language, asked me to approve her work and to arrange for its publication by the local Bible Society. The translation was rather poor because the missionary thought she had to translate almost word for word. Other missionaries in that area urged me to approve the translation because they realized that there would be no one else who could speak the local language and could revise the text. At the same time there were several hundred people who had become Christians and who had learned to read painstakingly some mimeographed copies of the translation. After learning what some of the Indians had said about the translation, I realized that they too recognized that the translation did not reXect the way the people talked, but they also urged its publication. In such circumstances need outweighs quality, especially when one realizes that in so many cases the lives of people have been singularly blessed by translations that have also been far from intelligible. And so I urged the publication. Some missionaries working in a small language of Africa wanted the publication of the books of Daniel and Revelation as the Wrst and the only books that the missionaries planned to translate. But to publish only these two books seemed to distort too radically the signiWcance of the Good News communicated through the life and death of Jesus Christ. And accordingly I refused to endorse the publication.
Bible translation
Bible as literary genre The literary character of the Bible The fascination of the Bible for both believers and non-believers may be explained to some extent by the remarkable literary character of the texts. One of the earliest literary treasures in the ancient Middle East is the story of Deborah and Barak, and especially the joint song in Judges 5 in which the writer describes the manner in which Jael, the wife of Heber, had driven a tent peg through the head of Sisera, the general of an army attacking Israel. Note the dramatic scene in Judges 5.28-30: Sisera’s mother looked out of the window; she gazed from behind the lattice. “Why is his chariot so late in coming?” she asked. “Why are his horses so slow to return?” Her wisest ladies answered her, and she told herself over and over, “They are only Wnding things to capture and divide, a girl or two for every soldier, rich cloth for Sisera, embroidered pieces for the neck of the queen.”
This is highly sophisticated dramatic poetry, as Wne as Homer produced.
Language learning and literature Many seminaries and Bible schools place very little emphasis on the literature of the Bible because their purpose is primarily to teach the theological and moral truths of the Scriptures. At the same time, the focus of most schools teaching local languages to missionaries is accuracy of pronunciation, vocabulary, and grammar, and very little is done to introduce people to the oral or written literature of the local culture. As a result translators often do not recognize some of the important stylistic features of local languages. For example, a number of Spanish-speaking missionaries in Peru and Bolivia told me how monotonous are the songs of Quechua singers, but eight of the Wrst
81
82
Fascinated by languages
dozen songs I examined had quite diVerent rhythmic patterns. What seemed monotonous was the pentatonic scale employed in the music. A Zulu poet complained about the poor poetry in the Zulu book of Psalms and asked if he could revise the Psalms so that they would be poetically acceptable. This he did with great success. Some of the Zulu poets are extremely skilled in producing praise poems extemporaneously, for which they draw on a long tradition of poetic forms to praise guests and those who accomplish great exploits. The twelve-syllable lines of praise poetry are semantically and rhythmically very complex. Rarely are Bible translators introduced to the rich formal structures of even New Testament literature. For example, the Wrst Wve lines of the Lord’s Prayer contain nine syllables each based on the normal patterns of elision, and the order of the grammatical structures of lines two, three, and four are completely parallel: a passive imperative verb, an article, a noun, and a possessive pronoun. The next Wve lines consist of alternations of Wfteen and twelve syllables in the pattern:15, 12, 15, 12, 12. And the syllabic length of all the ten lines of the prayer are divisible by 3, a typical Semitic chant pattern. The general lack of stylistic sensitivity to the literary forms of a local language has repeatedly impressed me. The problem is especially acute in languages which have only an oral literature, which may be very rich indeed, but is often considered as not worth studying. As one brilliant teacher of philosophy in a University in Ecuador said about missionaries, “These Wne people have learned our language but never our hearts, because they are so unaware of our literature.”
Literature and theology Job’s complaint to God in the third chapter of the book that bears his name is powerful poetry and deeply insightful theology (note the following translation in Today’s English Version): 2-3 O God, put a curse on the day I was born; put a curse on the night when I was conceived! 4 Turn that day into darkness, God. Never again remember that day; never again let light shine on it. 5 Make it a day of gloom and thick darkness; cover it with clouds, and blot out the sun.
Bible as literary genre
6 Blot that night out of the year, and never let it be counted again; 7 make it a barren, joyless night. 8 Tell the sorcerers to curse that day, those who know how to control Leviathan. 9 Keep the morning star from shining; give that night no hope of dawn. 10 Curse that night for letting me be born, for exposing me to trouble and grief. 11 I wish I had died in my mother’s womb or died the moment I was born. 12 Why did my mother hold me on her knees? Why did she feed me at her breast? 13 If I had died then, I would be at rest now, 14 sleeping like the kings and rulers who built ancient palaces. 15 Then I would be sleeping like princes who Wlled their houses with gold and silver, 16 or sleeping like a stillborn child. 17 In the grave wicked people stop their evil, and tired workers Wnd rest at last. 18 Even prisoners enjoy peace, free from shouts and harsh commands. 19 Everyone is there, the famous and the unknown, and slaves at last are free. 20 Why let people go on living in misery? Why give light to those in grief? 21 They wait for death, but it never comes; they prefer a grave to any treasure. 22 They are not happy till they are dead and buried; 23 God keeps their future hidden and hems them in on every side. 24 Instead of eating, I mourn, and I can never stop groaning. 25 Everything I fear and dread comes true. 26 I have no peace, no rest, and my troubles never end.
This book is not simply a series of complaints and arguments between Job and his so-called comforters, nor is it a diatribe against life, but rather an insightful attack on the popular idea that God always rewards goodness and punishes evil, and accordingly if a person enjoys riches, it must be because God has rewarded him, and if he suVers, it is because of open or secret sin — a familiar
83
84
Fascinated by languages
concept among many Christians. But Job pleads his cause and in the end the Lord answers Job in the only way that Wnite man can imagine the creator of the universe. Isaiah 53 is a remarkable tribute to redemptive suVering, and as a result it became a favorite passage of early Christians, who did not hesitate to interpret such a passage as a literary description of their promised Messiah (as in Today’s English Version): 1 The people reply, “Who would have believed what we now report? Who could have seen the Lord’s hand in this? 2 It was the will of the Lord that his servant grow like a plant taking root in dry ground. He had no dignity or beauty to make us take notice of him. There was nothing attractive about him, nothing that would draw us to him. 3 We despised him and rejected him; he endured suVering and pain. No one would even look at him — we ignored him as if he were nothing. 4 But he endured the suVering that should have been ours, the pain that we should have borne. All the while we thought that his suVering was punishment sent by God. 5 But because of our sins he was wounded, beaten because of the evil we did. We are healed by the punishment he suVered, made whole by the blows he received.
For many Christians the book of Ecclesiastes is perhaps the most controversial book in the Hebrew Bible. Some American Christians have even spoken of it as “the best that paganism could produce,” but they have failed to realize that it may very well be an attempt to deal meaningfully with the teachings of Greek skeptics in Hellenistic times. Among Latin Americans, however, this book is very popular and is often published on elegant paper as a poetic response to the realities of Latin life. The author, introduced as the Philosopher, Preacher, or even Lecturer, is portrayed as David’s son, Solomon, considered the wisest man of all times. The attribution of authorship to a distinguished person in the past was a frequent device for emphasizing the importance of the writings. For example, the Psalms are generally attributed to King David although even the headings
Bible as literary genre
make clear that a number of other persons were involved over a relatively long period of time. The initial expressions of Ecclesiastes: “Vanity of vanity, all is vanity” is more Latin than modern English, and so other translators have employed “Life is useless, all useless,” (Today’s English Version) or “Nothing makes sense! Everything is nonsense,” (Contemporary English Version) or “Nothing is worthwhile, everything is futile,” (Living Bible). But Ecclesiastes is not an irreligious document. In fact, God is referred to fully forty times, and despite the injustice in the world what happens depends on the time God chooses. And there is also some useful and unexpected advice, for example, “It is better to have wise people reprimand you than to have stupid people sing your praises” (7.5), “Fast runners do not always win the races” (9.11), and “Collected proverbs are as lasting as Wrmly driven nails” (12.11). The most concentrated series of extreme metaphors in the entire Bible occur in Ecclesiastes 12.2-7, where the trials of old age are graphically portrayed in what seems to be a description of a place, but is in reality a Wgurative portrayal of growing old. The following is the New Revised Standard Version: (2) the sun and the moon and the stars are darkened and the clouds return with the rain; (3) in the day when the guards of the house tremble, and the strong men are bent, and the women who grind cease working because they are few, and those who look through the windows see dimly; (4) when the doors on the street are shut, and the sound of the grinding is low; (5) when one is afraid of heights, and terrors are in the road; the almond tree blossoms, the grasshopper drags itself along and desire fails; because all must go to their eternal home, and the mourners will go about the streets; (6) before the silver cord is snapped, and the golden bowl is broken, and the pitcher is broken at the cistern, and (7) the dust returns to the earth as it was, and the breath returns to God who gave it.
The same text from Today’s English Version provides the meaning of these extreme metaphors: (2) That is when the light of the sun, the moon, and the stars will grow dim for you, and the rain clouds will never pass away. (3) Then your arms, that have protected you, will tremble, and your legs, now strong, will grow weak. Your teeth will be too few to chew your food, and your eyes too dim to see clearly. (4) Your ears will be deaf to the noise of the street. You will barely be able to hear the mill as it grinds or music as it plays, but even the song of a bird will wake you from sleep. (5) You will be afraid of high places, and walking will be dangerous. Your hair will turn white; you will hardly be able to drag yourself along, and all desire will be
85
86
Fascinated by languages
gone. We are going to our Wnal resting place, and then there will be mourning in the streets. (6) The silver chain will snap, and the golden lamp will fall and break; the rope at the well will break, and the water jar will be shattered. (7) Our bodies will return to the dust of the earth, and the breath of life will go back to God, who gave it to us.
The Song of Songs (meaning, “the best of all songs”), also attributed to Solomon, is a collection of wedding songs to exalt sexual love, apparently sung by the bride, the groom, and the wedding guests. One song, sung by the bride ( 2.3-7), is erotically quite explicit in Today’s English Version: 3 Like an apple tree among the trees of the forest, so is my dearest compared to other men. I love to sit in its shadow, And its fruit is sweet to my taste. 4 He brought me to his banquet hall and raised the banner of love over me. 5 Restore my strength with raisins and refresh me with apples! I am weak from passion. 6 His left hand is under my head, and his right hand caresses me. 7 Promise me, women of Jerusalem; swear by the swift deer and the gazelles that you will not interrupt our love.”
As one Bolivian said when he Wrst read this best of all poems, “This is sex without pornography.”
Texts and interpretations
Texts and interpretations Faith and faithfulness in the Scriptures The mention of Samson and Jephthah as heroes of faith in the Epistle to the Hebrews 11.32 seems very strange. In the Wrst place, Samson seems to have been more of an Old Testament Rambo than a man of faith in the New Testament sense of a Wrm believer. But in the Hebrew Bible the sense of faithfulness to the covenant made by his parents for him to live as a nazarite was certainly carried out thoroughly, except for Delilah and his hair. Unfortunately, his attacks on the Philistines were primarily personal attacks, and he was not a “judge” in the usual sense of being a national leader. Jephthah as a hero of faith is even more questionable. Having gathered quite a number of dispossessed people to follow him, Jephthah was asked by the Israelites to lead them in a war against the Ammonites. The fact that Jephthah swore to the Lord that he would sacriWce the Wrst person that he saw on his victorious return to Pisgah is very strange. But this person turned out to be his beloved daughter, who only asked for two months to be with her girl friends before being made a human sacriWce. The fact that Jephthah was faithful to his promise made him really “a person of faithfulness,” that is a person who refused to forswear a commitment.” It is this very fundamental diVerence between faith as a set of beliefs and faithfulness to a covenant that marks one of the most distinctive diVerences between the Greek New Testament and the Hebrew Bible. This distinction is nowhere better expressed than in the diVerent interpretations of a key passage in the Epistle to the Romans 1.17, which contains a quotation from Habakkuk 2.4. The statement in Romans 1.17 is technically ambiguous in that it can mean “the person who is righteous because of faith shall live” or “the one who is righteous shall live because of faith” or “...because of faithfulness.” The New Revised Standard Version renders the Habakkuk passage as “the righteous live by their faith” or as in a footnote “by their faithfulness.” The Josephus Commentary indicates that in Habakkuk 2.4 the Hebrew term is to be understood in this context not as faith in the theological sense of a set of beliefs, but more in the sense of “faithfulness, loyalty, and steadfastness.” Today’s English Version has in the text of Romans 1.17 “The
87
88
Fascinated by languages
person who is put right with God through faith shall live,” but with a footnote, “or put right with God shall live through faith.” In Habakkuk 2.4 the New English Bible has “the righteous man shall live by being faithful,” with a footnote: Or “by his faithfulness” and a reference to Romans 1.17. But in Romans 1.17 the text reads quite diVerently, for example, “here is revealed God’s way of righting wrong, a way that starts from faith and ends in faith: as Scripture says, ‘He shall gain life who is justiWed through faith’.” Many people interpret the term “faith” in the New Testament as adherence to a set of beliefs, while others deWne such faith as “conWdence” or “trust” in God through Jesus Christ. But for many people “faith” is a very nebulous term described by some as “believing what you know isn’t true.” These clearly related passages in the Hebrew Bible and the Greek New Testament are typical of the diYculties that translators have in trying to reXect as best they can the meaning of a text, which because of diVerences in context, is open to diverse interpretations.
The Contents of Holy Scriptures For many people the Holy Scriptures are simply the Old Testament and the New Testament, but for many other people this type of terminology is misleading and culturally slanted. For example, according to Jewish tradition the books of the Old Testament are simply the Hebrew Bible. But prior to about 90 A.D. Jews also regarded a number of other books written originally in Greek as being a part of their Scriptures, and all of these books together with the Greek translation of the Hebrew Bible became a part of the Septuagint text. Some years after the defeat of the Jewish forces by the Romans in 70 A.D., Jewish leaders decided to reject those books that were originally written in Greek and were later called apocryphal by Protestants and deuterocanonical by Roman Catholics. These books, however, need to be distinguished from a number of pseudepigrapha, literally “ false writings,” such as the Gospel of Thomas. The following additional books of the Septuagint include Tobit, Judith, Esther (the Greek text), Wisdom of Solomon, Sirach (also called Ecclesiasticus), Baruch, Letter of Jeremiah, Song of the Three Young Men, Susanna, Bel and the Dragon, 1 Maccabees, and 2 Maccabees. In Jerome’s Vulgate transla-
Texts and interpretations
tion these books were placed in a separate section, and at the time of the Reformation most translations into major languages contained these same books, although they were generally not accepted as a basis for doctrine. Controversies about these books are closely associated with ignorance about their contents. People who strongly reject them usually Wnd it diYcult to name the books they so strongly repudiate, and those who strongly defend them are equally unable to name the books they claim to love. A brief summary of their contents may, therefore, be helpful: – Tobit is the story of a blind Jew, who is faithful to God even in exile and sends his son Tobias to Ecbatana to collect some money deposited there. With the help of the angel Raphael, Tobias gets the money, Wnds a wife, and Tobit’s blindness is cured. – Judith is the account of an ingenious Jewess, who beguiles an enemy commander. – Baruch is a collection of four short discourses attributed to Baruch, the secretary of Jeremiah. They contain primarily a prayer of confession and deliverance, praise of wisdom, and comfort for Jerusalem. – The Letter of Jeremiah claims to have been written by the prophet to Jews who were soon to be taken into exile. It is primarily a denunciation of worshipping idols. – The Three Young Men contains the prayer of Azariah and the song of the three young men when they were thrown into the blazing furnace by King Nebuchadnezzar. – Susanna is the story of an attractive young woman who is accused of adultery by two wicked judges, but is rescued by the wisdom of Daniel. – Bel and the Dragon is essentially an ancient detective story in which Daniel outwits the priests of Bel, kills the dragon, and is rescued from the pit of lions. – 1 Maccabees is the story of the revolt of the Jews under the leadership of the Maccabean family in the middle period of the second century B.C., during which Mattathias and his three sons were killed. – 2 Maccabees is a summary account of tragic events in the history of the Jews from 180 B.C. to 161 B. C. and it parallels some of the events in First Maccabees. The emphasis is on the persecution of the Jews and their loyalty to the law as well as the reward received by those martyred for their faith.
89
90
Fascinated by languages
Additional books not recognized as canonical by the Roman Catholic Church include, 1 Esdras and the Prayer of Manasseh. These, however, were a part of the Septuagint Old Testament, but the book of 2 Esdras may not have been completed until the end of the second century A.D. – 1 Esdras parallels the accounts in 2 Chronicles 35-36 and in Ezra and Nehemiah 6-8. The principal events are the fall of Jerusalem, the return from exile, and the rebuilding of the temple. – 2 Esdras contains a series of visions and revelations that seek to answer questions about suVering, persecution, the end of the world, Wnal judgment, and the new world, themes very similar to those found in the New Testament book of Revelation. – The Prayer of Manasseh is a short prayer of 15 verses, presumed to have been prayed by the repentant wicked king of Judah, named Manasseh, referred to in 2 Chronicles 33. All these apocryphal and deuterocanonical books are important in the sense that they reveal a great deal about what was happening in Judaism between the end of the canonical Hebrew Bible and the writings of the New Testament. Furthermore, in sixty-two verses of the New Testament the Septuagint translation is quoted in contrast to the Hebrew Bible. In a real sense the Septuagint was the Old Testament of the early church, because very few leaders were acquainted with the Hebrew language.
Some problem passages in the Hebrew and Greek Texts Time after time in conferences and institutes for Bible Translators I have been asked to speak about the basic problems of texts in terms of varying degrees of authenticity for alternative manuscript forms of a text. I have also been asked to deal with diVerences between the accounts in diVerent Gospels and discrepancies between 1 and 2 Chronicles and 1 Samuel through 2 Kings. But in many instances it has been almost impossible to get participants to discuss such matters during or after lectures. I have even asked some theologically conservative friends engaged in Bible translating to tell me how they deal with such problems in talking with colleagues and with their lay constituencies. But generally, people seem reluctant to talk about such issues. I was therefore keenly interested in a request from the writers and editors
Texts and interpretations
of a widely read monthly magazine to discuss with them the issue of inerrancy in the Bible. This magazine generally contains articles on Bible interpretation and application from a rather conservative point of view. Because the invitation came through a Weld representative of the American Bible Society and was evidently related to the recent publication of the Fourth Edition of the Greek New Testament, I agreed to chair a proposed discussion of biblical inerrancy. A couple of months later we met in Princeton, New Jersey, for a two-day discussion. Altogether there were about ten persons, including Bruce Metzger, representing the American Bible Society, as well as the Presbyterian Seminary in Princeton. But all the participants were not present for all the sessions. In order to size up the arrangements, I arrived before the others and immediately removed the tape recorder because such an instrument is always a hindrance to free and open communication. People do not want to speak freely if they are likely to be quoted later. I also arranged for a big blackboard because people often want to put items on a blackboard so that everyone can see and speak more pointedly about speciWc issues. Some of the passages discussed were presented by the editors and others were presented by me, but in each case there was plenty of time for discussion, and no one tried to insist on one or another solution. It so happened that some of the easier problems were dealt with Wrst. For example, in Mark 1.5 the number of people who went out to hear John the Baptist is described as “the whole region of Judea” and “all the people in Jerusalem,” but some participants insisted that this can be explained as literary exaggeration, which is no doubt true. Accordingly I wrote on the blackboard, “Inerrancy has nothing to do with literary exaggeration.” But other problems were more complex. For example, the three temptations posed by Satan in Matthew 4.1-11 are in the order of (1) Jesus commanding stones to become bread, (2) casting himself down from the pinnacle of the temple, and (3) being oVered all the kingdoms of earth if only he would worship Satan. In Luke 4.1-13 the wording of the temptations is quite similar, but the order is diVerent: (1) the bread, (2) the kingdoms of the world, and (3) jumping oV of the pinnacle of the Temple. But most participants indicated that the speciWc order of events should not be regarded as a matter of inerrancy, even though there may have been a theological reason for the order in Matthew because Jesus’ role as king is so important, while for Luke a spectacular event in which Jesus was not injured would perhaps have been more
91
92
Fascinated by languages
convincing evidence of Jesus’ relation to God. But the participants insisted that the order of essentially Wgurative events should not be regarded as errancy. And so an appropriate statement was written on the board. The issue of timing in the account of cleansing the Temple seemed to have more immediate relevance. In the Matthew, Mark, and Luke (called Synoptics, because they have essentially the same viewpoint and orientation) the cleansing of the Temple takes place during the last week of Jesus’ life, but in the Gospel of John this action occurs at the very beginning of his ministry (John 2.13-22). But some people insisted that this simply means that Jesus drove out the merchants twice. This is, of course, possible, but is it probable, especially when the wording of the event is so similar? The relative time of cleansing the Temple is only one diVerence between the Synoptic Gospels and the Gospel of John. The Synoptics suggest that Jesus’ ministry was almost exclusively in Galilee, something that induced Pilate to transfer Jesus to King Herod, who was responsible for law and order in Galilee, and there are frequent clashes with the Jewish leaders in Jerusalem, highlighted by some of the remarkable statements that Jesus is quoted as having said about himself, for example, “just as the Father raises the dead and gives them life, so also the Son gives life to whomever he pleases” (John 5.21); “the works that the Father has given me to complete, those very works that I am doing, testify on my behalf that the Father has sent me” (John 5.36), “You are from your father the devil and you choose to do your father’s desires” (John 8.44), “I am the good shepherd. The good shepherd lays down his life for the sheep” (John 10.11), “Whoever keeps my word will never taste death” (John 9.31). In fact, the Gospel of John suggests that Jesus’ primary ministry was in Jerusalem, where he frequently diVered with the Jewish leadership. On the other hand, the Gospel of Mark contains several requests by Jesus not to reveal his true identity. But some of the participants insisted that all of these arguments with the Jews could have taken place on Jesus’ visits to Jerusalem for each Passover. This is, of course, possible, but again not very probable, and so I put on the board that additional statements on some subject do not necessarily imply errancy. In John 13 there is a radical diVerence from the Synoptic description of the Last Supper. According to the Gospel of John the Passover celebration involves Jesus’ washing the disciples feet, and this is followed by a long discourse in Chapters 14, 15, and 16, and a prayer in Chapter17. And in John
Texts and interpretations
6.54 Jesus declares “Those who eat my Xesh and drink my blood have eternal life.” This statement and other related events seem to be very diVerent from the Synoptic description of the bread and the wine at the Last Supper as being representative of Jesus’ death. But some of the participants who realized that the Gospel of John was written much later than the Synoptics preferred to understand the sayings in the Gospel of John as simply extensions of the implied meanings of the Last Supper in the Synoptic Gospels. And again the blackboard contained a statement about inerrancy having nothing to do with quite diVerent ways of talking about the same spiritual symbols. Problems relating to the burial and resurrection accounts seemed to be even more of a problem. We discussed diVerences of the time of day or night when the visitations took place, the number of women and angelic persons, and the form of the interior of the tomb, as well as reference to the guards. Some of the participants insisted, however, that some scholars had been able to Wt all of the diVerences into a single consistent sequence of events. Accordingly, it seemed best not to proceed with further discussions of these matters because the issues appeared to be too sensitive. The verbal diVerences apparently did impress early scribes who introduced a proportionately large number of diVerent readings so as to reduce the number of evident textual problems. In the genealogy of Jesus, Matthew 1.11, one generation seems to have been left out if one compares the genealogy that occurs in 1 Chronicles 3.15-16, but such problems apparently posed problems even in New Testament times. Paying too much attention to genealogies is criticized in Titus 3.9. In 2 Samuel 24.9 the size of Israel’s Wghting force is given as 800.000 and Judah’s as 500,000 while in 1 Chronicles 21.5 the same armies are numbered as 1,700,000 for Israel and 470,000 for Judah. Some discrepancies can be attributed to the fact that the Hebrew term eleph may refer to somewhat diVerent sizes of military units, but the totals should certainly be the same. Some people, however, insisted that diVerences in numbers are not a matter of errancy. Nevertheless, it is clear that the totals are certainly extremely high. Rome at the height of its power had only 35 legions (approximately 200,000 soldiers) spread from Parthia to Portugal and from Hadrian’s Wall in England to the North Africa. Most scholars suggest that the Wgures for Israel and Judah must have been inXated, in view of the fact that diVerences in numbers in 1 and 2 Chronicles in contrast with 1 Samuel through 2 Kings show the ten-
93
94
Fascinated by languages
dency for the Wgures in 1 and 2 Chronicles to be generally higher, and therefore more uncertain. One of the most striking diVerences occurs in 1 Chronicles 21.1, where Satan is said to have incited David to number the people of Israel, while in 2 Samuel 24.1 it is the Lord who is angry with Israel and encourages David to number the people so that God will have a reason to punish Israel. As a result of the two-days of studying various types of diVerences in the various biblical texts, the participants realized that the issue of inerrancy was a much more complex issue than they had realized. The principal editor of the journal indicated that he would simply not use the terms inerrancy and infallibility because some Christians use such terms with a meaning quite diVerent from what most people understand by these words. The rest of the editors, however, felt that such terms are such signiWcant symbols of Christian faith that they should not be neglected or dropped, because the faith of too many devout people depends on just such words. At last I began to realize why it was so diYcult to talk with some Bible translators about some of the problems within the texts of the Hebrew Bible and the New Testament. Bible scholars through the centuries have been fully aware of such problem passages, but generally scholars have concluded that such diVerences in the texts are precisely what one should expect from oral traditions and documents written and transcribed by scores of people over more than a thousand years. If the contents of the 66 books of the Bible were completely consistent in every detail, a person would have every reason to be suspicious of their authenticity. What is amazing about the Hebrew Bible and Greek New Testament is the similarity and relevance of themes and issues. When a West African chief read the second chapter of Romans in his own language for the Wrst time, he exclaimed, “That’s us right there!” And frequently it is said that instead of people reading the Bible, the Bible reads people. I sincerely respect the faith of those who may diVer with me, and I greatly appreciate their sincere dedication to the truth they live by and for which they are willing to die. Perhaps this is the reason that I have been at ease with so many Christians of diverse backgrounds and with so many people of other faiths.
Texts and interpretations
Vatican Council II Even before Vatican II, when Roman Catholic prelates decided that it was time for the liturgy of the church to be in the language of the people, I had experienced a number of important changes in individual Roman Catholic leaders. In Costa Rica I heard a sermon by a Jesuit that would have been enthusiastically received by most Southern Baptist congregations in America, except for one marginal reference to the Virgin Mary. After completing a series of lectures at the PontiWcal Biblical Institute in Rome, I chatted with a young Jesuit who expressed his appreciation for what I had said about putting the Scriptures into the every-day language of the people. He insisted that this was the most important development since the Reformation. On a visit to Spain I was invited to spend a day with an important Roman Catholic scholar working on Greek lexicography. We began at nine o’clock, and I noticed immediately that his library contained more commentaries by Protestant scholars than those written by Roman Catholics. I shared with him my concerns about the limitations in most dictionaries, in which people encounter lists of so-called glosses, English words that may substitute for Greek terms, but no deWnitions and few attempts to point out diVerent meanings on the basis of diverse contexts. We had a fascinating exchange of views, and I greatly admired his knowledge and his concern for meaningful translations for the laity. At three o’clock he suggested that we go out for lunch, and he assured me that he was taking me to the Wnest restaurant in that part of Madrid because it had one of the Wnest stocks of wine anywhere in Spain. I personally do not like alcoholic beverages, and when he asked me what kind of wine I would prefer, I had to admit that I didn’t know the name of any Spanish wine. But I did suggest that perhaps the best beverage for me would be mineral water. His face registered intense surprise and even social horror, “How can we possibly celebrate the communion of faith with mineral water?” he exclaimed. And so I drank wine to our shared ecumenical health. The Bible Societies have been traditionally Protestant in theological orientation, so that any signiWcant changes in policy about cooperation with Roman Catholic and Orthodox religious leaders presented serious challenges to several societies that were members of the United Bible Societies, even though from the very beginning the United Bible Societies were organized to serve all
95
96
Fascinated by languages
Christian constituencies regardless of structural aYliation. My colleagues were strongly united in their desire to respond to the expressed needs of all churches, and Laton E. Holmgren was particularly eVective in contacts with Roman Catholic authorities in the United States and in the Vatican, but none of us fully appreciated the implications of such developments. Soon after the declarations of Vatican II that the liturgy and the three-year series of Scripture readings should be translated into the local languages of worshippers around the world, translation consultants were swamped with requests for help. From priests to bishops we received numerous requests for assistance — especially books dealing with principles of Bible translation and helpful commentaries published on various books of the Bible. These requests for help were both numerous and widespread, and so we concluded that this must represent a completely new policy of the Vatican. Accordingly, we invited some representatives of the Vatican, especially in the department of Propaganda Fidei, to meet with us in Cret Berard, a conference center in Switzerland. I was asked to head up the discussions, but I was opposed to the idea of prepared papers, because writers tend to defend their own views rather than explore the ideas of other people. Also, I thought it would be much better not to have a secretary or a recorder. We simply needed to talk about what was happening. We began the two-day consultation by describing our experiences in various parts of the world and by asking quite frankly whether all this represented the policy of the Vatican. We indicated clearly that we wanted to respond positively to requests for help, but we needed to know if this would be misinterpreted in some circles. To our immense surprise we learned that leaders in the Vatican knew nothing about requests for help from the United Bible Societies. They were as surprised as we had been, so what should we do? In some places there had already been considerable cooperation, but what form should this cooperation take in the future? Should we set up joint Protestant and Roman-Catholic teams of translators? Should we make available existing texts of the Scriptures published by the Bible Societies? Should we have Roman Catholic translation consultants? What would be the implications of existing Scriptures being reviewed for an imprimatur? Anything and everything was on the table. I mentioned my experience with a group of Roman Catholic scholars in Hong Kong, and I wondered whether we could think in terms of joint
Texts and interpretations
teams of Roman Catholic and Protestant scholars preparing Bible translations for joint use. Because our guests from the Vatican were as surprised as we had been, they scarcely knew how to answer, but they were anxious to talk about the incredible implications of such a development. The issue of proper names would inevitably be a problem, but the fact that within Roman Catholic and the Protestant traditions there are diVerences in the forms of proper names and in key terms might reduce considerably the emotional impact of new forms of names and new ways of talking about important theological concepts. We also brought up such issues as the perpetual virginity of Mary, to which one Vatican representative responded, “That is part of our tradition, but it is not a part of the New Testament text.” And we continued to talk about such issues as the brothers of Jesus and the various bulls against the work of the Bible Societies. Should such bulls be withdrawn or simply forgotten? The latter was obviously the better solution. By the second day there seemed to be no major road-blocks to launching a number of trial programs. One of the Vatican representatives was so enthusiastic about the prospects that he immediately suggested giving wide-spread publicity to such a program. But I tried to point out that it would be much better to produce some joint texts and then inform people of the plans and policy. How could some of our Protestant friends in Latin America justify cooperation with people whom they regarded as “unsaved heretics?” But one member of Propaganda Fidei immediately responded, “You have your fundamentalists and we have our cardinals.” As we came to the end of our discussions, I was asked to prepare a rough draft of a possible document on interconfessional cooperation. Over a period of several years this document was repeatedly discussed and revised, and Wnally adopted by both the United Bible Societies and the Vatican. But word about our meeting in Cret Berard somehow reached the international press, and a reporter in New York got me on the telephone and asked, “How did you ever come to agreement after almost 500 years of arguing?” so I responded, “We were talking with the scholars of the churches, not with the politicians.” Unfortunately, there are some subtle misunderstandings that hamper interconfessional communication. As one Roman Catholic prelate explained to me, “You Protestants assume that the Church of Rome is a single hierarchical institution and therefore you imagine that we are always in agreement on
97
98
Fascinated by languages
all major issues. But that is not true. At the same time, we Catholics assume that you Protestants are divided on most issues, when in reality you tend to vote as a single block. We are both hampered by our ignorance of one another.
The Ecumenical French translation of the Bible One of the Wrst programs to beneWt from the agreement on ecumenical cooperation in translating was proposed by a number of French scholars who wished to produce such a translation for the Protestant and Roman Catholic churches in France, West Africa, and parts of the PaciWc Islands. They also wanted the text to be both literary and intelligible when read in worship services. The Bible Societies welcomed the idea enthusiastically and arranged for an exploratory meeting of a joint committee in Switzerland. I was delighted to be invited as a guest, and I sat with the committee for a period of two weeks during which the translation team dealt with Paul’s Letter to the Romans. They had decided that if they could agree on translating the text of Romans, they could agree on anything and everything, and that is precisely what happened. During those two weeks there were many discussions about diVerent passages in Romans, and there were numerous diVerences of opinion, but not once did the team split along confessional lines. Accordingly, the scholars decided that if they could work so creatively for two weeks they could do so for the time required to translate the entire Bible. In record time the Bible was published jointly by the French Bible Society and Editions du Cerf in 1988. It contained excellent notes, helpful cross references, and useful introductions. The rendering of the liturgical text of Ephesians 1.3-14 is especially Wne. But there were other entirely diVerent reactions to Vatican II. For example, our closest neighbor, who was a member of the nearby Roman Catholic church, was terrible distraught by the reciting of the Mass in English. Unless the Mass was in Latin, she insisted that it was meaningless to her, although she readily admitted that she did not know a word of Latin. But she loved the sounds of the Latin ritual and the inspiration which she experienced. When I asked her why she didn’t proWt from the English wording, because in this way she could learn so much more about her faith. But she insisted that
Texts and interpretations
she was not interested in learning about her faith, she simply wanted to enjoy her faith. A few months later when I was Xying out of Quito for Rio de Janeiro, two elderly women were muttering without meaningful intonation the Lord’s Pray and the Prayer to the Virgin as they took their seats, but the unintelligible recitation of the prayers changed radically when our old four-motor plane Xew into a violent storm. The packages and clothing came down from the open shelves, and with the up and down drafts the objects fell and Xoated up. But the intonation of their prayers changed radically during the storm because they were anxious that God would truly hear them. As already noted, many Protestants also mumble the Lord’s prayer because they really do not understand its meaning. The old-fashioned wording and the misleading phraseology simply do not make sense, and accordingly for many English-speaking Protestants the Lord’s Prayer is really a mantra. Evidence for this can be readily found in the extreme resistance of people against any attempts to change the wording, even though people may recite the prayer only when children are baptized, young people are married, and the dead are buried. Recent oYcial declarations of the Vatican indicate, however, that in the future the Bible of the Roman Church is to be the Nova Vulgata, a liturgical adaptation of the Latin text of Saint Jerome. This radical change has already been strongly condemned by a number of Roman Catholic biblical scholars. But if Roman Catholic authorities follow the stipulations of the liturgicam autenticam the “authentic liturgy,” interconfessional cooperation in translating will be forced to come to an abrupt end.
The Greek Text of the New Testament A crucial program for New Testament translators was undertaken by a team of outstanding textual scholars of the Greek New Testament, who spent almost ten years under the auspices of the United Bible Societies to produce a new Greek text. They carefully studied and evaluated all the evidence of some 5,000 manuscripts and scholarly editions in order to determine the most reliable form of the text. The results of this scholarly analysis of textual problems by Kurt Aland, Matthew Black, Carlo M. Martini, Bruce M. Metzger, Allen Wikgren, and the later participation of Barbara Aland and Johannes Kara-
99
100 Fascinated by languages
vidopoulos, are contained in the Fourth Revised Edition of the Greek New Testament, published by the United Bible Societies and further explained in a Textual Commentary on the Greek New Testament, prepared by Bruce M. Metzger on behalf of the editorial team. The formation of this team was not an easy task. One scholar who had been recommended for this project indicated that he did not feel that a committee was really necessary or advisable because he did not believe that there was anyone else in the world capable of serving with him. Obviously, he was not invited to be a part of the team. Kurt Aland was actually under house-arrest by the East German authorities, and he and his family had to escape by pretended to go on vacation to the North Sea. But they were able to contact Kurt’s publishers in East Berlin and escape to the West, All of the copies of manuscripts had to be left behind and accordingly, the United Bible Societies paid for copies to be obtained from major libraries and institutes so that Aland could set up an unusually eVective research program at the University of Münster, Westphalia, Germany. The Greek New Testament committee met each year for a month or more in various parts of Europe and America. We had earlier discovered that for long periods of time concentrating on important technical materials, it was important for participants to have an opportunity to be in pleasant vacation surroundings with their families. In the long run such an arrangement proved to be less expensive than putting committee members up in hotels, and the families enjoyed so much the chance to have extended vacations in places where they could play, cook and eat in their own distinctive ways. In order for people to understand why certain words are lacking or are added or are diVerent in various parts of the New Testament, translators generally need some immediate help in evaluating the many diVerences in the hundreds of signiWcant manuscripts. Accordingly, the Greek New Testament is printed with a helpful evaluation of diVerences by rating them as A, B, C, and D. An A rating indicates that the words in the text are quite certain, although there may be some relevant alternatives in the apparatus at the bottom of the Greek page. A B rating marks a text as being somewhat uncertain, while a C rating indicates that there is considerable uncertainty, usually because the variations occur in so many diVerent kinds of manuscripts. A D rating means that probably only God knows what was in the original biblical text at this point.
Texts and interpretations 101
Unfortunately, some people assume that scholars only need to count the manuscripts that are for or against a particular reading and that on the basis of such a “democratic approach” it is possible to determine what was the original form of the text. But textual reliability depends not on the number of manuscripts but on the quality and the distribution of the manuscripts. Most Greek New Testament scholars recognize four basic classes of manuscripts: (1) the Alexandrian Text, represented by the Vaticanus and the Sinaiticus manuscripts, as well as such papyri as p66 and p75, and many Church Fathers, (2) the Western Text, widely used in Italy and Gaul and consisting notably of codex Bezae, called codex D, as well as p38 and p48 and a number of Church Fathers, (3) the Caesaraean Text represented especially by p45, which apparently originated in Egypt and was taken to Caesarea and then Jerusalem and was associated with the names of Origen, Eusebius and Cyril, and (4) the Byzantine Text, also called the Syrian Text, which was the latest of the major classes of texts and generally the least satisfactory because it was so often a conXated text as the result of scribal attempts to harmonize diVerences. This least reliable of all the Greek texts was, however, the basis of most Bible translations in Europe at the time of the Reformation and was the Greek text for the King James Bible, which in turn had a great impact on translations in the so-called missionary world. This text, published by Erasmus in 1516, and in a corrected edition of 1519, and called the Textus Receptus, received wide acceptance, for example, by Martin Luther and by William Tyndale. When scholars are faced with diVerences in textual evidence, they base their judgments about the most reliable form of the text by considering both the external and the internal evidence. The external evidence involves the date of a manuscript, the evident care of the copyist, the geographical distribution of the text types, the genealogical relation of the texts (which manuscripts were the basis for later copies), and the weight of the evidence, not the mere number of manuscripts. The internal evidence involves several matters of transcriptional probabilities, for example, the fact that the more diYcult readings are more likely to be original. Because copyists tend to simplify and harmonize, the shorter forms of the text are likely to be better than the longer expressions, and harmonized expressions are likely to be inferior. In addition, stylistically smoother readings are likely to be later readings.
102 Fascinated by languages
Some textual diVerences depend on scribes dropping a line, if two lines begin or end with the same words, and changes in the pronunciation of words may result in confusion. For example, by New Testament times the vowel sounds: iota, epsilon-iota, eta, omicron-iota, and upsilon were all pronounced in the same manner, so that words for “we” and “you” sounded alike. Such oral-aural factors became important when a single scribe would read a text aloud as several scribes wrote down what they heard. Some devout persons insist that diVerent readings should be judged by examining the theological positions of the scholars involved. One man has insisted that if a text of the Bible is clear about such doctrines as the deity of Jesus Christ, the Virgin Birth, the return of Christ, and the inerrancy of the Scriptures, such a text can be completely accepted as being based on the right manuscripts. Most persons, however, believe that doctrines are derived from the most reliable texts, not the texts from the doctrines. Scribes often harmonized a text so that it agrees with other passages of the Scriptures. But perhaps for stylistic or structural reasons, there may be reasons for not doing so. In Matthew 5.11 there is a clear case of harmonization in the addition of “falsely,” which is fully justiWed in the text of Luke 6.22, but which has been added in Matthew for the sake of having the same unusual expression as in Luke 6.22. In Mark 1.2, which contains the statement “in Isaiah the prophet,” the words that follow are Wrst from Malachi and then from Isaiah. Evidently some early scribe recognized that the immediately following words did not all come from Isaiah, and so he changed the text to read “in the prophets.” In this way the statement would be more accurate. This is a typical case in which a scribe has intentionally harmonized the text in order to make it agree with the larger context. The last twelve verses of Mark are an example of a very large section that has very little textual justiWcation. In fact there are four diVerent endings because the Gospel seems to stop so abruptly. All the endings have unusual terminology as well as content, and the traditional ending in most New Testament translations contains statements about handling snakes and drinking poisonous substances, something that seems completely contrary to the sober and practical character of the rest of the Gospel. The last three words of Luke 2.14 may have more than one meaning. The customary rending “good will toward men” is based on the last word in Greek being in the nominative case, but the better texts have a genitive case form
Texts and interpretations 103
which may be interpreted in two diVerent ways, “among people of good will” or “people with whom God is pleased.” This latter interpretation is unusual, but certainly plausible. The passage about the “Woman Taken in Adultery” (John 7.53-8.11) is particularly interesting because it certainly does not belong at this point in the Gospel of John. It is not found in many diverse manuscripts of high quality. No Greek Church Father before the 12th century cites this account. The story also diVers from the Gospel of John in both style and vocabulary. In some manuscripts of John it occurs in three diVerent places and in one manuscript of Luke it occurs after 21.38. Most scholars think that the passage was dropped from the New Testament because it seemed to be too indulgent toward women, and at the same time the Scriptures referred to as justiWcation for stoning the woman indicate clearly that both the man and the woman should be jointly tried and condemned. Nevertheless, this passage is so typical of Jesus’ attitude toward sinners, and the fact that it has survived in such diVerent places and under such varied circumstances seems to justify the acceptance of this passage as being part of the genuine tradition. There are signiWcant diVerences of content between the Gospel of Mark and the Gospel of John, probably written some forty to Wfty years later. In the Gospel of Mark Jesus strongly rebuked a man with an unclean spirit who had declared that Jesus was “the Holy One of God.” Later Jesus healed a leper, but he warned the man not to say anything to anyone. According to the Gospel of Mark, Jesus apparently wanted his deeds and his words to speak for themselves, and he warned his disciples not to reveal who he was (Mark 3.12). But in the Gospel of John Jesus cleanses the Temple at the beginning of his ministry, and he is portrayed as declaring openly “the Father and I are one” (John 10.30) and “the Father is in me and I am in the Father” (10.38). I greatly admired the scholarship of all the members of the Greek New Testament team, but Kurt Aland seemed to be so “driven” by some inexplicable force to make his mark in biblical and secular scholarship. Fortunately, an important member of the staV of the German Bible Society took me aside one day and told me that he wanted to share with me information that might help me better understand Kurt Aland. He then explained that Kurt had been a foundling baby left on the door steps of a Protestant pastor named Aland. With this information I could readily understand Kurt’s overwhelming desire to make a name for himself. His divorce from his wife, whom Althea and
104 Fascinated by languages
I greatly admired, and his marriage to his brilliant assistant who became the director of the institute, for which Kurt had given his life, Wnally began to make sense. I could be more relaxed when I was with Kurt and Barbara, and in fact I was invited to visit them on several occasions. At the same time I was anxious to be assured that Barbara would become a creative leader in her own right, because Kurt was truly an overhelming personality. But when I once visited them for a week end in their country home and saw Kurt washing dishes, I realized what an eVective leader Barbara truly is.
A textual commentary on the Hebrew Bible After the completion of the Greek New Testament, 4th edition, we realized that the next big job would be a textual commentary on the Hebrew Bible as the basis for a revision of the Biblia Hebraica Stuttgartensia, which contained a great deal of information for translators but did not provide adequate evaluations of the textual data in the apparatus. The mixture of textual and literary analyses often proved misleading to translation teams, and the enthusiasm for literary criticism toward the end of the 19th Century posed real problems for translation teams, especially because so few conjectures based on literary criticism were reXected in the manuscripts discovered in caves at Qumran near the northern part of the Dead Sea. A fully competent team of scholars was essential if the best in English, French, Dutch, and German textual scholarship was to be made available to Bible translators. This meant incorporating into notes the textual insights reXected in such translations as the New English Bible, the New American Bible, the Traduction Oecumenique de la Bible, the Nieuwe Vertaling, and the Einheitsüberstzung. But the choice of persons for such a team would be diYcult, except for Dominique Barthélemy, of the University of Freibourg, Switzerland, who was an obvious participant because of his outstanding scholarship in the Weld. When I approached him about the possibility of his involvement in the project, I warned him that it might involve ten or even twenty years of his life, but his response was meaningfully short, “The text of the Hebrew Bible is my life.” Other members of the committee included Alexander R. Hulst of the University of Utrecht, who had done extensive work in textual criticism for
Texts and interpretations 105
many years, Norbert LohWnk, who had combined his textual interests with highly creative developments in Roman Catholic churches in Germany, William D. McHardy of Oxford University, who had major responsibility for problems of text in the Revised New English Bible, H. Peter Rüger, who taught at the University of Tübingen and was closely associated with various projects of the German Bible Society in Stuttgart, and James A. Sanders of Columbia Seminary in New York City and later of Clairmont Seminary in California, who was particularly active in research on Qumran material. The two secretaries of the committee were Adrian Schenker of the University of Freiburg and John A. Thompson of the Presbyterian Seminary in Cairo and for a number of years closely associated with the work of the United Bible Societies. A six-day preliminary session of the committee was held in Arnoldsheim, Germany, in 1969 in order to study a series of Wfty textual problems selected by John Thompson as being typical of what the committee would need to study in order to decide the validity and nature of a proposed textual commentary. For me this was a particularly exciting and frustrating meeting. First, I was delighted that for the most part the members of the proposed committee agreed on a strictly textual approach, but I was worried that John Thompson seemed to be taking such scant notes about the discussions. He, however, assured me that everything relevant would be in his notes, and that is exactly what happened. His working knowledge of some thirteen diVerent languages of the Middle East was truly impressive. The most important decision of that meeting was the restriction of the project to valid textual diVerences. This meant rejecting textual alternatives based on purely literary analyses, in other words, conjectures would not be included in the textual commentary. At the same time the committee wanted to review all textual issues reXected in the Revised Standard Version, The Bible de Jerusalem, the Revidierte Luther Bibel, and the New English Bible. The results of the study of textual problems were scheduled for publication in French over a period of seven years in Wve volumes of between approximately 300 to 600 pages each. Because of Barthélemy’s declining health, however, only four volumes were published by the end of 2001. We also hoped that this series could be translating into English, but this proved impossible but to illustrate what could and should be done, an illustrative volume on Isaiah was written by Jan de Waard especially for the use of translators. In any forthcoming revision of the Biblia Hebraica Stuttgartensia the decisions of the committee will certainly be incorporated.
106 Fascinated by languages
The committee recognized four diVerent stages in the development of the Hebrew text, but restricted their studies to textual problems for which there is reliable data represented in the second of these four stages. The Wrst stage would be the actual autographs, the original forms of the diVerent portions of the Hebrew Bible, but none of these documents now exist. The second stage would be the form of the texts approximately 300 years before Christ, after whatever editorial changes were introduced following the return of exiles from Babylon. The third stage would represent the consonantal text used by Hebrew scribes around 70 A.D., a stage that could be called the protomassoretic, and the fourth stage could be the text with vocalization and accentuation developed and adopted by the Massoretes in the 8th and 10th centuries. This restriction and focus of attention on the second stage, although not equated with the original documents, has the great advantage of representing what was the earliest text that can be provided from textual evidence. It also provides a basis for the study of divergencies. And although there are special problems in Proverbs, Jeremiah, and Ezekiel, this is the best that can be done on the basis of existing manuscript evidence. One of the most important functions of the various studies and discussions by the committee was the elaboration of a series of criteria in terms of fourteen factors that suggest careful study and judgment: Factor 1: the relatively narrow base for particular variants. If a textual variant occurs in only one textual tradition, for example, only in the Targum, the Syriac, or the Vulgate, such a variant is textually very weak and certainly needs conWrming evidence if it is to be considered as belonging to the second stage. Factor 2: a wide base for a textual variant would seem to immediately suggest its early representation, but often a wide base can be deceptive if several diVerent manuscripts represent the same kind of scribal treatment of a problem. The need for multiple independent readings is what counts. Factor 3: The importance of diVerent forms of the text that can only be explained by determining how they must go back to some earlier form of the text. It is, of course, diYcult to determine in each case the motivations for textual variants. Accordingly, one must consider the probabilities of certain modiWcations. Factor 4: SimpliWcation of a text. When a text is particularly diYcult to understand, scribes frequently attempt to make sense by simplifying the meaning of the form.
Texts and interpretations 107
Factor 5: Assimilation of parallel passages. Because scribes frequently tend to make similar texts more and more alike, such assimilations are suspect. Factor 6: Textual alterations required by the process of translating into another language. Factor 7: The modiWcation of a text for the purpose of making the meaning plain, particularly for the sake of certain theological conceptions. Factor 8: If scribes do not understand a text correctly, because some particular term or grammatical construction is no longer employed, they often try to make sense of the text, but their eVorts often result in the wrong sense. Factor 9: Inadequate or incorrect understanding of historic events, largely because of signiWcant changes in the culture, and therefore the complications in representing the meaning of a text correctly. Factor 10: Accidental omission of letters, syllables, similar words. Such omissions frequently take place when there are similar nearby sequences, especially at the beginning or end of lines. Factor 11: Accidental repetition of sequences, although less frequent than the omissions mentioned in Factor 10. Factor12:various other types of scribal errors, for example, confusion of words, transposition, omission of letters and groups of letters — the types of errors that most people so often make in writing. Factor 13: Expanded expressions, often called doublets. Some texts actually contain explanations inserted by scribes. Factor 14: The advisability of rejecting purely conjectural readings because so few appear to be necessary and so many lead to results that are only marginal to the sense of a passage or may even introduce erroneous concepts. These factors are essentially the same as those used in all studies of textual evidence and are applicable to New Testament text studies as well as to the history of all developments of texts over a long period of time. I knew only enough Hebrew to appreciate how little I actually knew, but I was very anxious to attend all the sessions because I learned so much. The background notes prepared for the committee by Peter Rüger were excellent, and the discussions were illuminating because members spoke about so many relevant factors that enter into decisions about the quality of texts. The discussions were in three languages: English, French, and German, but Hulst had no trouble with English or German. It was interesting that persons spoke their own mother tongue (except for Hulst), but if someone
108 Fascinated by languages
listening was apparently having special diYculty understanding some point of view, the speaker generally shifted immediately to the other person’s own language. There were plenty of diVerences of opinion, but not once was there an emotional Xare-up over the data or the interpretation of the relevant factors. The participants seemed to thoroughly enjoy the work, and in the nine sessions of one month each (meeting once in St. Andrews, Scotland, but eight times in Freudenstadt, Germany) the committee experienced a rare sense of unity. Members of the committee often played scrabble in four languages at once: English, Dutch, French, and German, but players could win points only in their own mother tongue. Hulst, however, was required to have a Dutch dictionary because so many strange vowel and consonant combinations seemed so “out of this world.” Sometimes the committee shifted to playing scrabble in Hebrew. The food was marvelous, but the words on the menu did not always match what some members expected. For example, when James Sanders saw “Wlet americain” on the menu, he was enthusiastic until the bloody uncooked ground beef was served. But the cupboard and icebox where the committee met always had plenty of beverages, as well as cakes and cookies bought each day fresh from marvelous bakeries. The musical concerts oVered by the city were excellent, but the church services, both Roman Catholic and Protestant, were so heavily theological and academic that we were not surprised that the church services were so sparsely attended. In fact, we were told that for Germany as a whole only about Wve percent of the people in the country side and small towns and only about two percent of the people in the cities have any vital relation to a church, in the sense that they attend a church on the average of once a month. It was impossible to arrange for the translation of the French volumes prepared by Bartélemy, and his death brought the French series to a halt, but the material reviewed by the committee will form the basis for a proposed revision of the Stuttgartensia Old Testament Text.
Texts and interpretations 109
The Greek-English lexicon of the New Testament For more than Wfty years I had been fascinated by the meaningful relations between words. In fact, I introduced some semantic considerations into the book Morphology and much more in the book Componential Analysis of Meaning, but for years I was dissatisWed with existing lexicons of biblical languages because they did not deal with the crucial problem, for example, the diVerent meanings of the same word are often much further apart semantically than are the related meanings of terms from very diVerent domains. For example, in the Greek New Testament the diverse referential meanings of pneuma namely, “Holy Spirit, spirit, evil spirit, ghost, inner being, wind, breath,” seem to be semantically more distant from one another than are the members of the domain Thought and feeling, “spirit, mind, heart, conscience, thought, feeling, soul.” Most people assume that words cover the range of human experience like a neatly Wtted mosaic, but that is far from the actual state of semantic structures. The meanings of words include, overlap, and contrast on several levels and in many diVerent ways. Many people also think that if the semantic history of a word is known, then the meanings can be easily sorted out, but that too is frequently impossible and often misleading. For example, the Greek term agorizo, meaning literally “to buy in the market place,” occurs in the New Testament in the sense of “to redeem.” Accordingly, some early Christians must have assumed that for God to redeem believers, he had to pay the Devil so much money for each convert. Often the meaning of a term depends on local historical circumstances. For example, in Matthew 5.13 the text speaks about salt losing its Xavor or saltiness, but pure sodium chloride does not lose its salty taste or strength to preserve foods. The salt in New Testament times was often adulterated with other substances, especially lime. During damp periods the salt would leach out, and what was left was essentially worthless and accordingly was thrown out into the street. The meaningful aspects of words can be eVectively studied in two primary ways: syntagmatically and paradigmatically, that is, either in real contexts of usage or by means of testing diVerences of meaning by inserting semantically related words into the same semantic frame. At least ninety-Wve percent of a person’s knowledge of his or her mother tongue is derived from hearing words
110 Fascinated by languages
in various real contexts, that is, in syntagmatic frames of actual usage. But in trying to understand the meaning of words in a language that one does not know thoroughly, it is often helpful or even necessary to use the paradigmatic technique of substituting diVerent words in the same paradigmatic frame, for example: he walked around the block, he paraded around the block, he marched around the block.
This highlights the reason for studying meaning in terms of various semantic domains. On one occasion I was chatting with the editor of a major English dictionary, and I congratulated him on the exceptionally neat deWnitions of meaning in his publication. But with a meaningful smile, he confessed, “When a usage seems to be so semantically awkward that we cannot Wt it easily into our system, we just put such an example aside.” Obviously an adequate lexicon of the Greek New Testament cannot put such awkward examples aside because users are constantly confronted with a speciWc series of New Testament contexts. The development of a truly useful lexicon for translators of the New Testament requires a great deal of time and research if it is to be of real help to translators who must know the meanings of any one word in relation to other meaningfully related words. This requires editors with a background in Classical Greek, Hellenistic Greek, Patristic Greek, and linguistics. I had looked for such people for at least ten years and was almost ready to give up when I met Johannes P. Louw of the University of Pretoria, South Africa, who headed up an important department of Greek involving thirteen teachers and professors working in classical as well as biblical Greek. He had exactly the right kind of background in Greek and linguistics, and I asked if he would be interested in such a project, although I made it plain that such a task might take a major part of his time for the next ten years. Shortly after my discussions with Johannes Louw, I met Rondal B. Smith, who was teaching at Lincoln Christian College after completing his doctorate in linguistics with a specialty in lexical semantics. Rondal was very helpful during the Wrst few years, but other responsibilities prevented him from continuing. Several other persons helped at various times, but we were particularly glad that Karen Munson was working in the Translations Department of the American Bible Society and could give us so much strategic help.
Texts and interpretations
She is an unusually competent proofreader of Greek texts and a Wrst-rate organizer of lexical data. We wanted to make sure that we had a valid set of principles to guide us and at the same time we wanted the resulting lexicon to be of practical use to translators. We considered following the outline of meanings in Roget’s English Thesaurus, but the logical classiWcation just did not Wt the categories that we found in the New Testament. Accordingly, we decided that the best initial procedure would be to prepare a slip of paper for each of the meanings separated by a semicolon in the Greek New Testament Dictionary edited by Barclay M. Newman. The result was a set of approximately 25,000 meanings for the vocabulary of about 5,000 words. Our next task was to classify such meanings on the basis of groups of semantic domains, and we began by setting up classes as entities, activities (including changes of state), characteristics (including states), and relationals (conjunctions and prepositions of such relations as cause, purpose, result, condition, concession, place, time, direction, focus, etc.) In our small apartments in a mountain village in Switzerland, we did not have much space for hundreds of piles of slips. Nevertheless, because Johannes had come without his family, we decided to classify the slips in his apartment. The poor man had to keep the windows closed and step ever so carefully around his apartment where we classiWed and sub-classiWed hundreds of diVerent semantic domains and sub-domains. As we worked at the task of classiWcation, most of the domains and subdomains seemed to develop very naturally, especially in the case of entities in nature, for example, air, Wre, water, earth, rock, precious and semiprecious stones. and metals. But the classiWcation of the thinking process was much more complex, for example, the domain To Think was divided as follows: To think, thought (generic) To think about with the implied purpose of responding appropriately To think concerning future contingencies To intend, to purpose, to plan To decide, to conclude To choose, to select, to prefer To distinguish, to evaluate, to judge
Our classes and subclasses were based essentially on degrees of semantic diVerence. And the order of sub-domains was generally from generic to speciWc.
111
112
Fascinated by languages
As we worked through the various classes and subclasses, we continually encountered meanings that did not seem to Wt any of our classes, and accordingly we added them to what we called our “bone pile,” which we would try to analyze when we had Wnished the more obvious primary, secondary, and tertiary classes. By the time we had worked through the 25,000 slips we had a bone-pile of about 500 slips that we had not been able to classify readily, so we decided that we would test out system by seeing how long it would take us to distribute the 500 items in the bone-pile. To our surprise and great satisfaction, it was possible to assign all of these additional terms and meanings within one day. What a relief!. Apparently our system seemed to work. But there was a great deal of Wne tuning to do as we reviewed various arrangements of domains and the order within domains so that the basic concept of moving from generic to speciWc would be carried out. Furthermore, we needed to do a good deal of interclassiWcation of related classes, for which Karen Munson proved to be an excellent guide. Strategic help also came from Louw’s graduate students and from several persons who were hired to review the material. My task was to provide the deWnitions and for this I reviewed carefully the meanings of terms in the Greek-English Lexicon by Newton G. Liddell and Robert Scott (Oxford: Clarendon Press) and in many instances I traced the meanings of a term from Classical usage to Hellenistic, and even to later Patristic usage. Toward the end of the project people insisted that we should have used computers for the project, but when we started, there were no computer programs that could be adapted to our needs. It is certainly true that we could have saved at least two years time if we had had computers to help do the work. One constant concern in the classiWcation of meanings was the diVerent types of semantic relations which can perhaps be best illustrated with English terms because the various dimensions are more evident, and we do not have so many semantic “holes” as exist in the documents of the Greek New Testament. The following set of semantic relations seemed to be the most prevalent: 1. Clusters: run, walk, jump skip, dance (with each meaning set oV from other meanings by at least one signiWcant distinction) 2. Overlapping: love/like, talk/speak 3. Positive/negative: yes/no, in/out 4. Reversives: tie/untie, brief/debrief 5. Direcion of participation: lend/borrow, buy/sell
Texts and interpretations
6. 7. 8. 9. 10. 11. 12. 13.
Comparison: good, better, best; Wne, Wner, Wnest Sex: boy/girl, man/woman, bull/cow Social status: rich/poor, leaders/followers Size: huge, large, small, tiny Time: ancient, old-fashioned, modern, futuristic Space: there/here, near/far Inclusive/exclusive: “we” including “you” and “we” excluding “you” Series: a. inWnite: one, two three, etc. b. repetitive: Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, etc. c. gradation: private, corporal, sergeant, etc.
Family relations was one of the simpler domains in which the relations between diVerent sets of meanings are rather obvious, but in place of the Greek terms the typical English correspondences are here listed: 1. Biological, but not successive generations: race, tribe, relatives, kinsmen, family 2. Biological and successive generations: father, mother, parent, ancestor, parentage, seed, lineage, genealogy, child, son, daughter, descendant, root, fruit of genitals, fruit of womb, bastard, orphan, Wrstborn 3. Biological in the same generation: brother, daughter, adopted child, cousin, and 4. Kinship based on marriage: husband, wife, bridegroom, bride, father-inlaw, mother-in-law, daughter-in-law, widow. The Greek words oikos, oikis, literally “house,” can also refer to a family or household including family members, relatives, servants, and slaves, all who form a household. The Greek term sarks, literally “Xesh,” illustrates a number of problems in range of usage and special theological relevance. In Revelation 19.17-18 the birds come to eat the Xesh of kings and captains, as well as of slaves and free. In 1 Timothy 3.16, however, “he appeared in human form” is a reference to Jesus. In 1 Peter 1.24 the same word refers to people in general, namely, “human beings,” although well know in this passage as “All Xesh is like grass,” and in Hebrews 12.9 the same word is simply an emphatic doublet, literally “our fathers of Xesh” but referring to “human fathers.” In Romans 11.14 sarks refers to all people related to Paul, namely, his Jewish nation, “perhaps I can make the people of my own race jealous.” This
113
114
Fascinated by languages
meaning of sarks depends entirely on the context and is one of the typical syntagmatic meanings of sarks. Sarks also has an extended meaning that refers to the psychological nature and behavior of people. In 1 Corinthians 1.26 sarks may be rendered as “human point of view” as in “few of you were wise from a human point of view.” And in Galatians 5.19 one may render sarks as “human nature” in the statement “what human nature does in quite plain.” But in Galations 6.8 the same term may be rendered as “human desires,” as in “the one who plants in the area of his human desires.” In Hebrews 5.7, however, the reference is simply to physical life, literally “in the days of his Xesh.” But in Galatians 4.23 the term seems to refer only to typical physical birth, “who was born in accordance with Xesh,” a usage that parallels the occurrence of sarks in John 1.13. There are also several idioms occurring with sarks for example, “Xesh and blood” is a typical way of talking about a person, Matthew 16.17 “it was not revealed to you by anyone.” But in Jude 7 “going after other Xesh” refers to homosexual practice, while in John 1.13 the phrase “desire of Xesh” probably refers simply to sexual desire. The series of meanings of logos represent a very diVerent set of meanings that depend primarily on syntagmatic contexts to provide clues to meaning: 1. the content of what is said, John 4.41, “many more believed because of what he said” and Colossians 3.16 “the message about Christ,” 2. the act of judging the class of someone, Acts 14.12, “they gave Paul the name Hermes because he took the lead in speaking,” 3. a document or book, Acts 1.1, “in my Wrst book I wrote about all the things,” 4. a Wgurative title of Christ, John 1.14, “the Word became a human being” (but whether Christ is the message or proclaims the message is not clear), 5. Wnancial accounts, Matthew 18.23 “he wanted to check on the servants’ accounts,” 6. reason for an activity or state, Acts 10.28, “I ask therefore for what reason did you send for me, 1 Peter 3.15 “to everyone who asks you the reason for your hope,” 7. a happening or event, Acts 8.21, “you have no part or share in this event,” in which “event” refers to the practice of giving the Holy Spirit by placing the hands on a person, 8. appearance or matter, Colossians 2.23, “which things have the appearance
Texts and interpretations
of being based on wisdom” or “which seem to be a matter of wisdom,” 9. a formal accusation or complaint, Acts 19.38, “if Demetrius and his workers have an accusation against someone.” There is one idiomatic usage consisting of the genitive case of logos and the middle form of the verb poieomai, Acts 20.24, “but I regard my life to be worth nothing to me.” In each case one may say that it is the context that determines the particular meaning, but it would be much better to analyze the meaning of the combination of the noun logos and the context as being examples of molecular meaning. In other words, instead of regarding a word as having a number of diVerent meanings with the context pointing to the right meaning, it is much more relevant to assume that the meaning is on a molecular level, that is, a combination of the focal term and the context. For this type of lexicon based on semantic domains, we had to have three diVerent indices: Greek to English with listed occurrences in the lexicon, English with a list of contexts in which the respective meanings occur, and an index of passages listed in the various domains. The project took a total of ten years and in the Wnal stages Louw and his students put in a great deal of time working on last minute checks and crosschecks. In fact, in composing the material there were a number of problems that only Karen Munson could handle in South Africa, where the composition was done. The Bible Society of South Africa paid the entire cost of the composition so that the lexicon could be sold at a reasonable price to translators and students. Unfortunately, the price has been inordinately increased, and many people for whom it was prepared have been largely priced out of the market. Very serious consideration was given to the possibility of doing something similar for the Old Testament because the two most generally employed lexicons for the Hebrew Bible have several liabilities. For example, the Koehler-Baumgartner lexicon has fourteen pages of abbreviations that are diYcult to distinguish. Furthermore, the lexicon gives meanings in both German and English, and while the meanings in German are generally quite good, they are too often limited to single terms and the corresponding terms in English are at times misleading and often seem strange. This lexicon is essentially a combined concordance and dictionary because so many references are included under various meanings.
115
116
Fascinated by languages
The Brown-Driver-Briggs lexicon is more widely used because it is directed to an English-speaking audience, but the editors wanted to recognize only tri-consonantal roots (that is, roots consisting of three consonants), and as a result locating some shorter stems is diYcult. Moreover, the order of meanings is not systematic. The entry for ‘ab “father” has the meanings of 1. “father of an individual” 2. “God as father of his people…who constituted, controls, guides and lovingly watches over them” (but what about God’s role in war and storms?) 3. “head of a household, family, clan” 4. “ancestor of an individual” 5. originator or patron of a class, profession or art” 6. Wgurative of “benevolence and protection” 7. term of “respect and honor” 8. “ruler, chief” Would it not be more helpful to distinguish between biological relations (real and Wgurative) and sociological roles, with further distinctions in initiator, status, and control? What is important for translators and exegetes are the distinctive semantic contexts: not the area of meaning of separate words, but the combined meaning of focal terms and their deWning contexts.
Texts and interpretations
SpeciWc Bible translation problems Quoting scripture parallels
One of the most controversial texts in the Bible occurs in Isaiah 7.14, in which the Hebrew text contains the word almah meaning “young woman.” But the translators of the Septuagint (made some 200 years before Christ) translated the Hebrew text as “virgin,” although the physiological state of the girl or woman is not a relevant element in the larger context. The translator of the Septuagint might have concluded that the Greek term parthenos “virgin” was appropriate because a member of a royal household and not married to a particular man might be called a “virgin.” Temple prostitutes were also called “virgins,” in view of the fact that they had no oVspring. But such a translation in the Septuagint of Isaiah 7.14 is not only unusual, but even misleading. Christians knew about the virgin birth of Jesus from the Gospels of Matthew and Luke, and some persons undoubtedly related these texts to Isaiah 7.14, because the Septuagint Greek Old Testament seemed to provide a prophetic announcement of Jesus’ birth. It is strange, however, that no reference to the virgin birth of Jesus occurs in any of the letters attributed to Paul, who was particularly concerned about the distinctive character and nature of Jesus, but, of course, the letters of Paul were probably written some time before the Gospels of Matthew and Luke. There was also the theological problem of recognizing a virgin birth in the time of King Ahaz, because that would make two virgin births, and if two, why not even more? But this would obviously detract from the uniqueness of Jesus’ birth. Nevertheless, early Christians often cited Old Testament Scriptures out of context because they believed in the double application of prophetic insights. For example, in Matthew 2.15 the Greek text has “out of Egypt I have called my son,” a reference to Israel’s deliverance from Egypt (Hosea 11.1) and not a direct reference to the escape of Joseph, Mary, and the baby to Egypt because of Herod’s threats. At the present time almost any translation of Isaiah 7.14 that does not use the word virgin is regarded by many people as automatically heretical, and therefore the entire translation must be rejected because it appears to insult the mother of Jesus. They assume, as did Luther, that the New Testament is
117
118
Fascinated by languages
somehow more trustworthy than the Old Testament and that the Old Testament can be corrected so as to agree with the New Testament. But most modern scholars (both conservative and liberal) take the position that the Greek and the Hebrew Scriptures must be understood in terms of their own cultural setting and meaning. Many Christians do not realize the extent to which the Greek New Testament depends on the Hebrew Bible. In fact, the New Testament has more than 500 references to persons and places mentioned in the Hebrew Bible and has borrowed more than twenty terms from the Hebrew Bible, often without explanation, because such words were evidently well known to early Christians.
PersoniWcation of abstracts The close relation between the Greek New Testament and the Hebrew Bible can be readily seen in the way in which abstract terms, such as wisdom and love, can be made into active literary agents. In Proverbs 8 and 9 “wisdom” calls out to people and urges them to listen to her, as in the following segment of Proverbs 8.14-22 (New Revised Standard Version): I have good advice and sound wisdom; I have insight, I have strength. By me kings reign, and rulers decree what is just; By me rulers rule, and nobles, all who govern rightly. I love those who love me, and those who seek me diligently Wnd me. Riches and honor are with me, enduring wealth and prosperity. My fruit is better than gold, even Wne gold, and my yield than choice silver, endowing with wealth those who love me, and Wlling their treasuries. The Lord created me at the beginning of his work, the Wrst of his acts of long ago.
Note a similar type of personiWcation of love in 1 Corinthians 13.4-7 (Today’s English Version):
SpeciWc Bible translation problems
Love is patient and kind; it is not jealous or conceited or proud. Love is not ill-mannered or selWsh or irritable; love does not keep a record of wrongs. Love is not happy with evil, but is happy with the truth. Love never gives up; and its faith, hope, and patience never fail.
Idioms Both the Greek New Testament and the Hebrew Bible are full of idioms that represent the cultural context of people’s lives. Many of the idioms in the Greek New Testament are borrowed from Hebrew: “let the dead bury their dead” meaning “that is not the issue,” Luke 9.60 “bearing a scar” meaning “to be a slave,” Galatians 6.17 “putting the hand to the plow and looking back” meaning “starting to do something, but hesitating to continue,” Luke 9.62 “to strengthen the weak knees” meaning “become encouraged,” Hebrews 12.12 “gird up the loins of the mind” meaning “be ready to learn,” 1 Peter 1.13 “give glory to God” meaning “promise to tell the truth,” John 9.24 “to be in bitter gall” meaning “to be very envious, bitter,” Acts 8.23 “to pour out blood” meaning “to murder,” Romans 3.15
The Greek term kardia literally “heart,” occurs in a number of idioms, many of which refer to mental activity: “to go up upon the heart” meaning “to begin to think,” 1 Corinthians 2.9 “to open the heart” meaning “to be open-minded,” Luke 24.45 “to Wll the heart” meaning “to cause to think,” Acts 5.3 “to put into the heart” meaning “to make up one’s mind,” Acts 19.21 “to make hard the heart” meaning “to make unable to learn,” John 12.40 “to broaden the heart” meaning “to show aVection,” 2 Corinthians 6.11 “to turn the heart toward” meaning “turn friendly toward,” Luke 1.17
A number of these idioms have their parallels in Hebrew, which is especially rich in Wgurative expressions, and particularly so in poetry. One of the richest sources of such Wgurative expressions is in the Book of Job. Note, for example, some of the Wgurative expressions in Chapters 3-9:
119
120 Fascinated by languages
let gloom and darkness claim the day, Job 3.5 the eyelids of the morning, Job 3.9 the doors of my mother’s womb, Job 3.10 knees to receive me, Job 3.12 (a reference to birth) God has fenced me in, Job 3.22 those who plow iniquity, Job 4.8 their tent-cord is pulled up, Job 4.21 (a reference to death) at noonday they grope in the darkness of night, Job 5.14 in its time the shock of grain comes to the threshing Xoor, Job 5.26 like a slave longing for shade, Job 7.2 months of emptiness, Job 7.3 watcher of humanity, Job 7.20 (a reference to God) my own clothes will abhor me, Job 9.31
What is even more strange is that Wgurative language often occurs in highly technical contexts dealing with important theological issues. Metaphorical use of such terms as blood, cruciWxion, death, and sacriWce become crucial symbols of faith and relation to God through Christ. Blood: one who eats my Xesh and drinks my blood (John 6.54), my blood is drink indeed (John 6.55), propitiation through faith in his blood (Romans 3.25), redemption through his blood (Ephesians 1.7), made peace through the blood of his cross (Colossians 1.20). In one English translation of the New Testament the rendering of blood as “sacriWcial death” was totally rejected, and the publishers had to change back to the term blood. Cross, cruciWxion: preaching of the cross (1 Corinthians 1.18), suVer persecution for the cross of Christ (Galatians 6.12), enemies of the cross of Christ (Philippians 3.18), by whom the world is cruciWed unto me (Galatians 6.14), our old man is cruciWed with Christ (Romans 6.6), I am cruciWed with Christ (Galatians 2.20). Die, death: baptized into his death (Romans 6.3), the body of this death (Romans 7.24), the sting of death is sin (1 Corinthians 15.56), the sorrow of the world produces death (2 Corinthians 7.10), he died unto sin (Romans 6.10), whether we die, we die unto the Lord (Romans 14.8), to live is Christ, and to die is gain (Philippians 1.22)
SpeciWc Bible translation problems
SacriWce: present your bodies a living sacriWce (Romans 12.1), appeared to put away sin by the sacriWce (Hebrews 9.26), by him let us oVer the sacriWce (Hebrews 13.15), with such sacriWces God is pleased (Hebrews 13.16), oVer up spiritual sacriWces (1 Peter 2.5). The Wgurative usage of terms for blood, crucify, death, and sacriWce seem to Wt so eVectively into the concept of faith in Christ as being a mystery in the Greek sense of a mystery religious experience and rite.
Technical meaning of words In traditional translations of Acts 6.2 the text speaks about a special group of disciples given the task of “serving tables,” but actually this phrase has the technical meaning of taking care of funds. The Greek term translated “tables” in the King James Version was actually a word referring to banking and the exchange of currency, and in modern Greek it is the term for a bank. Traditional translations of Luke 11.34 employ literally “the light of the body is the eye” because in ancient times people thought that sight implied light streaming from the eye and identifying objects. They did not realize that the eye was simply a mechanism for receiving light. The term generally translated as “know” in both the Hebrew Bible and New Testament often has the meaning of “to experience,” rather than “to be acquainted with.” Therefore “to know God” is not a matter of knowing about God, but experiencing his presence or power in the circumstances of life. Compare such related expressions as “to know joy” or “to know suVering.” The use of the head word “son of...” can designate an attribute or characteristic. For example, the disciples James and John were called “sons of thunder,” because they were more violent in their attitudes. And “son of a prophet” means that a person was a prophet. The terms rendered “righteous” or “righteousness” in both the Hebrew Bible and the Greek New Testament do refer primarily to correct, good actions and attitudes. But in the Hebrew Bible the focus is more on the relation of people to a local chief or to God to whom they have pledged their support and from whom they receive protection. In the Greek New Testament this same concept seems to apply in Romans 1.17, which speaks of “the righteousness of God,” which is not his personal moral character but the way in which
121
122 Fascinated by languages
God “puts people right with himself” (Today’s English Version) or “rights wrong” (the New English Bible). The term “baptism” refers Wrst to an act of ritual cleansing practiced in Judaism, but in Christianity it became a rite of adherence to or membership in the Jesus movement that was open to both men and women who were slaves, outcasts, Jews, or foreigners. At Wrst they held all their property in common, because they evidently expected that Christ would soon return to earth, and for three hundred years they were persecuted for their faith. Their social solidarity was expressed by referring to each other as “brother” or “sister,” but it was not long before focus on the family of faith gave way to emphasis on obedience to the bishops. Members of this new movement used the term “to save” to express their relation to God or Christ, who had saved them. But the Greek term implies not only the process of being rescued but also the concept of being restored to health, both physically and spiritually. In order to be a part of this dynamic movement, people had to “repent” of their sins, and the term for repentance meant literally “to have a change of thinking,” with the implication of an entirely new set of values and purposes. This was not something that people could easily renounce. In fact, it apparently cost the lives of a husband and a wife who had cheated on the size of their gift to the community of believers (Acts 5.1-11). For the most part the believers in Jesus were regarded as social outcasts and were evidently spoken of as tapeinoi, a word often used in koine Greek to designate people who were “poor, weak, ignorant, bad and base,” but this was precisely the term that Christians used in speaking about themselves as being “humble” and seeking to create a sense of “humility.” Although koine Greek has four words for “love,” the New Testament does not contain the term erao, which refers either to sexual love or to dedication to philosophy, but it does contain stergo, related primarily to love between members of a family, and phileo and agapao used in relations between people and between God and people. But there is a fascinating restriction on the usage of these last two terms, as indicated by the fact that phileo is never used to command people to love one another, but they are commanded to love with agapao. The verb phileo implies the type of love and aVection that grows out of close association (something that cannot be ordered), while agapao suggests the profound recognition of the worth and value of the person so loved.
SpeciWc Bible translation problems 123
Both the Hebrew Bible and the Greek New Testament employ words for holiness that also imply moral behavior, something that is foreign to many religions. In Central Africa I met with a famous religious leader of a fast growing cult who insisted that religion and morality were two entirely diVerent areas of human experience. In religion a person deals with supernatural powers which even the most immoral persons can control if only they know the right verbal formulas, have powerful medicine bundles, and can control the loyalty of their followers. Some words involve serious problems of understanding because of their seeming lack of semantic boundaries. For example, the Greek term aion may be understood as a unit of time, either as a particular stage or a speciWc period of history. In Matthew 12.32 the relevant Greek text may be rendered as “he will not be forgiven, not in this age, nor in the following one.” The term aion may also occur in the plural form, meaning literally “ages,” but in the context of 1 Timothy 1.17 “king of the ages” it is equivalent to speaking about “the eternal king” or “the king for all time.” This same term may, however, occur in contexts in which there is a shift from time to space, so that in Hebrews 1.2 the plural form of aion may be rendered “universe.” In the statement “through whom God made the universe” or as in some languages “through whom God created everything.” But in some languages this plural form may be rendered as “through whom God created the earth and the sky.” In 1 Corinthians 3.18, however, aion seems to focus attention on the system of values associated with people’s behavior. For example, in 1 Corinthians 3.18 the Greek text may be accurately rendered as “if any one thinks that he is wise in terms of the standards of this world,” or “...the system of this world.” But the really diYcult problems of interpretation so often occur in a series of idioms based on the occurrence of certain prepositions. With the prepositions apo and ek meaning “from” and with pro “before,” the combination refers to unlimited time in the past “from eternity,” “from the beginning,” but with eis “into” the focus is on the indeWnite future, rendered usually as “forever.” Similarly, plural formations, literally “ages of the ages” refer to unlimited future time. The adjectival formation aionios also suggests unlimited or eternal time. In some instances the lack of a word may be signiWcant. For example, the Greek New Testament does not contain the very common Greek word suntheke, “agreement, contract,” a relation acceptable to all the interested par-
124 Fascinated by languages
ties.” Instead, it always employs diatheke “covenant, testament,” a term which reXects more accurately an arrangement proposed or established by one person and agreed to by others. This is a clear reXection of the hierarchical structure of ancient society in which the sheik of the desert proposed a covenant to which his followers agreed, and so God through his prophets makes a diatheke “covenant” with his people. Unfortunately, some people read into words meanings that are not there because they think that the formal features of a word or its history can give them insight as to its function in a text. Because the Greek word ekklesia in the New Testament refers primarily to a meeting of believers in Jesus Christ and is derived literally from forms meaning “called out,” some legalists claim that the word must be understood in the sense of “being called out from this world.” In other words, believers are not to behave like people in general. Actually, the implication of the word ekklesia, in contrast to the word ochlos, means that an ekklesia has a membership and an ochlos is simply a crowd. The origin of the word ekklesia was from meetings of all the citizens of a town because the people normally had to go outside of the city walls. Some specialized meanings of the Scriptures depend on particular grammatical constructions. For example, the Beatitudes (Matthew 5.3-10) begin with a word frequently used in speaking about the gods of Olympus as being makarioi “happy, blessed.” But the beatitudes make no mention of the one who guarantees the blessed state of those who are “poor in spirit,” “those who weep,” “the meek, gentle,” or those who “hunger and thirst for righteousness.” Most scholars agree that it must be God who blesses such unusual people by making them happy with their state, and they cite the parallel to the Wrst part of the Wrst Psalm. Accordingly, the Contemporary English Version has “God blesses those people who depend only on him.” This is a considerable improvement over the King James Version that has “Blessed are the poor in spirit,” which suggests that those who have no ambition have been “blessed by God.” The Beatitudes (in contrast to the Ten Commandments) are all contradictions of generally accepted ideas about what constitutes the basis for real happiness: those who grieve will Wnd comfort, the humble will possess the earth, those who want to obey God will have what they need, those who are merciful will receive mercy, the pure in heart will see God, the peace-makers will be called God’s children, and those who are badly treated are the very people who belong to the kingdom of heaven.
SpeciWc Bible translation problems
The initial phrase of the Hebrew Bible, usually translated “in the beginning” is diYcult to express in some languages, because “beginning” must always be related to some activity, that is, “the beginning of something.” Actually, the expression in Genesis 1.1 may be related to the verb “create” so that the text may be accurately translated as “When God began to create.” For many persons, however, this would seem to deny the traditional view that God created the universe out of nothing. In John 1.1 there is an echo of Genesis 1.1, but the term logos “Word” (an evident title for Jesus) is here usually rendered as “Word,” although the meaning is more accurately represented by “meaningful message.” In Greek there are other words for “word,” namely, epos, lexis and hrema, referring to words either in a text or in lists, but with these words the emphasis is more on the formal or grammatical features, and not on the content. In John 1.16 there is a diYcult problem in determining the proper meaning of the preposition anti, but the understanding of this usage depends on the content of verse 17, “because the law was given by Moses; grace and truth came through Jesus Christ.” For the most part translators have rendered John 1.16 as “from his fullness we have all received blessing upon blessing” or “...one blessing after another.” But this interpretation of the preposition anti as referring to one blessing added to another is contrary to Greek usage. Actually, the preposition anti implies one thing in place of another. Instead of meaning that one grace was added to another, it is more accurate to understand anti in its usual sense and translate the two verses 1.16-17 as “From his fullness we have received the gift of grace and truth in place of the gift of the law through Moses.” The problems of understanding and translating a text are especially complex when a text has certain obligatory features imposed by literary tradition. For example, the introduction of the Letter to the Romans by Paul is unusually complicated because formal letters required in a single sentence the name of the sender in addition to circumstances prompting the sending of the letter, identiWcation of the intended receivers of the letter, and a statement expressing best wishes and beneWts for those receiving the letter. The introduction of Paul’s letter to the believers in Rome is particularly complicated by the fact that Paul had never visited the church in Rome and therefore he had to identify his relations to the believers as positively as possible. Furthermore, there was an intense controversy about Paul’s role as an apostle to the churches that he had founded among Gentiles. In Rome there
125
126 Fascinated by languages
was also considerable hostility toward Jews. Accordingly, in a compact sentence of 93 words Paul justiWes his role as an apostle, explains his understanding of the Good News, and his relation to the believers in Rome, for whom he desires grace and peace from God and the Lord Jesus Christ. But the eVective translation of this compact statement requires detailed analysis of the constituent parts and the particularly complex manner in which so much is packed into one formal sentence. The New Revised Standard Version, which has as a principle of translation “As literal as possible, as free as necessary,” employs 129 words in translating this sentence as: “(1) Paul, a servant of Jesus Christ, called to be an apostle, set apart for the gospel of God, (2) which he promised beforehand through his prophets in the holy scriptures, (3) the gospel concerning his Son, who was descended from David according to the Xesh (4) and was declared to be the Son of God with power according to the spirit of holiness by resurrection from the dead, Jesus Christ our Lord, (5) through whom we have received grace and apostleship to bring about the obedience of faith among all the Gentiles for the sake of his name, (6) including yourselves who are called to belong to Jesus Christ, (7) To all God’s beloved in Rome, who are called to be saints: Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ.”
The translation committee of the Revised Standard Version followed closely the principle of “as literal as possible,” but in reality it is too literal and too long for the average reader to understand. Even in Greek the sentence is awkwardly long, but the wording has the advantage of a number of suYxes that indicate the meaningful relations between words. The literal rendering, however, includes a number of constructions that are ambiguous or misleading and are accordingly avoided in good writing. For example, the phrases “called to be an apostle, set apart for the gospel of God” would normally refer back to the immediately preceding nominal expression, namely, “Jesus Christ,” but the reference is obviously to Paul. Similarly, “the gospel concerning his Son” would seem to be in apposition to “holy Scriptures,” but the meaningful relation is to “promised.” The phrase “according to the Xesh” is certainly not meaningful to most speakers of English, and the phrase “spirit of holiness” (a literal rendering of the Greek text) occurs no where else in Scripture, although an alternative “Spirit” is indicated in a footnote without any indication as to the signiWcance of the capital letter.
SpeciWc Bible translation problems 127
The expression “grace and apostleship” seems to imply two gifts from Jesus Christ, although most scholars insist that the “grace” is “being an apostle.” And although the term “apostleship” occurs in some exhaustive dictionaries, it does so only because of its occurrence in the King James Version, but for most speakers of English this is either a meaningless or queer term. The phrase “obedience of faith” is strange and the Wnal phrase of verse 5, namely, “for the sake of his name” relates meaningfully to “being an apostle,” not to the two intervening phrases. Also, for many people the term saints refers exclusively to persons who have been oYcially consecrated or beatiWed as saints of the church, while in the New Testament the reference is to “believers” or “people of God.” The New Revised Standard Version has two single-word footnotes that are too obscure to be really helpful. The Contemporary English Version employs eight sentences with a total of 154 words to communicate essentially the same information for the average user of English, but the formal features are much more readily understandable and stylistically more acceptable, although the unity of the passage is somewhat lost by so many complete sentences: 1. From Paul, a servant of Christ Jesus. God chose me to be an apostle, and he appointed me to preach the good news 2. that he promised long ago by what his prophets said in the holy Scriptures. This good news is about his Son, our Lord Jesus Christ! As a human, he was from the family of David. But the Holy Spirit proved that Jesus is the powerful Son of God, because he was raised from death. Jesus was kind to me and chose me to be an apostle, so that people of all nations would obey and have faith. 6. You are some of those people chosen by Jesus Christ. 7. This letter is to all of you in Rome. God loves you and has chosen you to be his very own people. I pray that God our Father and our Lord Jesus Christ will be kind to you and will bless you with peace!
By beginning this general letter (general in the sense of being addressed to a group of believers) with the statement “From Paul, a servant of Christ Jesus,” the translators employed a form that in English suggests a memorandum. In reality the letter of Paul was in a sense more a memorandum or essay than a letter. Because both the choice (or “calling”) and the appointment to preach the good news were from God, the Contemporary English Version makes God the subject of the two activities. This wording is employed because many people do not readily understand the role of the preposition through in referring to the intermediate agency by which something is accomplished. The
128 Fascinated by languages
Contemporary English Version also makes the relation explicit by translating “that he promised long ago by what his prophets said in the holy Scriptures.” Verses 3 and 4 of the Greek text are combined so as to make the parallelism between the human and the divine character of Jesus more evident. Accordingly, the Contemporary English Version renders the Greek word sarks “Xesh” as simply “human.” Note that Jesus can be referred to as “the powerful Son of God” or as the one who is “shown to be the Son of God in a powerful way.” Throughout the New Testament the Contemporary English Version has dropped the use of the English word grace because it so often does not refer to the grace of God, but (1) is the name of a girl or woman, (2) ten days before having to pay bills, (3) attractive form and movement, or (4) a short prayer in traditional households before or after eating. Accordingly, the translation has “Jesus was kind to me,” a singular form referring to Paul although the Greek text has the Wrst person plural. In Greek, however, it was proper to refer to oneself as Wrst person plural, especially when addressing people that were not well known to the writer. The note indicates the diVerence but does not explain the reason for the apparent anomaly. In the Contemporary English Version the Greek expression “grace and apostleship” is properly interpreted as apposition rather than as two processes, because the grace is the privilege of being an apostle. This use of the Greek conjunction kai is not uncommon, because the conjunction is often used in the sense of “that is,” “also,” and “even.” The subjects of “obedience of faith” are the people in all the nations, and this relation is made explicit by translating “people of all nations would obey and have faith,” although the order “believe and obey” is the more usual sequence in speaking about such experiences because people normally believe before they obey. The rendering of the Greek term hagioi “holy ones” as “his very own people” is a relevant and meaningful way of avoiding the traditional use of “saints,” which can be very misleading for Protestants, Orthodox, and Roman Catholics. The Wnal blessing, literally “grace and peace,” is expanded to “will be kind to you and will bless you with peace.” What is both relevant and striking is the extent to which the meaning of the text is not what one would normally expect from the wording and grammatical relations expressed in the text. The real meaning of a text comes from the wider contexts of language use, in which, for example, “Xesh” can refer to
SpeciWc Bible translation problems 129
“human nature” and “grace” is “God’s kindness.” This aspect of language means that “words do not always mean what they seem to say.” The meaningful relation between words is often very diYcult to deWne. For example, the phrase “Lamb of God,” used in contexts referring to Christ’s death as a sacriWce for the sins of God’s people, is a genitive case relation in Greek, which frequently suggests possession or source. But neither relation seems to Wt the metaphoric context. The problem is that metaphorical meanings only suggest relations; they do not deWne them, Christ as the “Lamb of God” can be described as “the one who like God’s lamb was to be sacriWced,” but such a theological statement seems to go far beyond the Wgure of speech.
Parables In the Bible one of the most important means of teaching religious and moral princip1es was through expressions of similarity, including both aphorisms (short statements based on sets of similarities) and parables in which there is normally some set of events. In Mark 3.23 Jesus rebukes those who accuse him of cooperating with Satan and declares “How can Satan cast out Satan? If a kingdom is divided against itself, that kingdom cannot withstand attacks. And if a household is divided against itself, that family will not endure.” The more common parables usually have a more elaborate series of related events, as in the case of The Prodigal Son, Luke 15.11-32, regarded by some literary critics as the Wnest short short-story every written. But the traditional title is very misleading because the story is really about a father and two sons. The younger son receives his part of the inheritance and soon leaves for another country where he wastes his fortune in reckless living. A famine brings him to his senses, and he decides to return to his father rather than starve taking care of pigs, the most humiliating of all occupations for a Jew. The father runs to greet his younger son and orders a servant to give the son a ring (a symbol of his being a part of the family), shoes (a symbol that he will not be a servant or slave), and new clothing (appropriate dress for the planned celebration). The older brother, who has just come in from the Weld, objects to the celebration and accuses his father of being unfair. As a result the older brother refuses to participate in the festival.
130 Fascinated by languages
This parable is not simply a story about a wasteful son, but about two sons: one represented by the “sinners” who repented and listened to Jesus gladly and the other referring to the Pharisees, who were suspicious of Jesus’ teaching and anxious to catch him talking against their traditions. The interpretation of this parable is made clear by the preceding short parables about a lost sheep and a lost coin, both with explanations of their meaning (an unusual feature of parables), namely, that there is more joy in heaven when one sinner repents than when the righteous keep on being righteous and therefore have no need of repenting. The so-called “sinners” were those who had violated the regulations of clean and unclean foods or any one of several dozen other deWling substances or activities. In many instances the real theological problems occur when a passage is interpreted as a parable or as a statement of an actual historical event. For example, Luke 16.19-3l tells about a poor man named Lazarus and a rich man who had expensive clothes and lived in great luxury. The poor man died and was carried by the angels to sit beside Abraham, but when the rich man died, he went to Hades, where he was in great pain. So he called out to Abraham and pled for pity by asking that Lazarus dip his Wnger in some water to cool the tongue of the rich man. But Abraham explains that Lazarus and the rich man have received their just rewards. The rich man, however, continues to argue that someone from among the dead should return to earth in order to warn his Wve brothers, but Abraham replies that if they will not listed to Moses and the prophets, they will not listen to someone who rises from death — an apparent allusion to Jesus. This parable has important implications for the theology of the early church, because some persons have insisted that this is not a parable but the record of actual events that provide sound evidence that hell contains real Wre, based indirectly on the use in other contexts of the term Gehenna “hell,” the name for the continuously burning refuse heap in the valley to the south of Jerusalem. The issue of what is or is not a parable may also be extended to one of the most remarkable stories in the Hebrew Bible and one which in many respects is close to the theology of the New Testament. It is the story of a man named Jonah, who was charged by God to prophesy against Nineveh, the most powerful enemy of Israel. But Jonah is reluctant to denounce Nineveh because
SpeciWc Bible translation problems
he feels that God will ultimately relent and be kind to Nineveh rather than destroy it. In order to avoid going to Nineveh, Jonah boards a ship headed for Tarshish, probably southern Spain. God sends a terrible storm and the sailors are afraid of drowning. They cannot understand how Jonah can keep on sleeping in the hold of the ship. But Jonah assures the sailors that the storm is his fault, and therefore they should simply throw him overboard in order to save their own lives. This they are reluctant to do, but they Wnally throw him into the sea, and he is swallowed by a huge Wsh and remains in the stomach of the Wsh for three days. The sailors, however, are so concerned about throwing Jonah overboard that they make sacriWces and vows to Israel’s God. Jonah’s prayer to God in verses 5 and 6 of Chapter 2 contains some signiWcant Wgures of speech, as may be noted in Today’s English Version: The water came over me and choked me; the sea covered me completely, and seaweed wrapped around my head. I went down to the very roots of the mountains, into the land whose gates lock shut forever. But you, O Lord my God, brought me back from the depths alive.
In Chapter 3, Jonah, who has been spit out on the beach by the Lord’s order to the Wsh, goes to Nineveh and prophesies against it. Not only do the king and the people show their repentance by dressing in sackcloth and ashes, but even the animals are so dressed. As a result God does not punish Nineveh. Jonah is angry and says to the Lord, “Didn’t I say before I left home that this is just what you would do?” So Jonah went out of the city to watch what God would do. There Jonah declares that he would be better oV dead than alive. But God helps Jonah by having a plant grow up to shelter Jonah, but the plant dies, and Jonah is even more angry with God, but God insists that he is right in having pity for such a great city. And at the very end God reminds Jonah that Nineveh had “more than 120,000 innocent children as well as many animals.” Because of some of the miraculous features of this story, some people have believed that it is better understood as a parable, but others insist it must be a true account because it mentions three days and nights, the same number that Jesus was said to be in the tomb. This phrase, however, can also mean at least a
131
132 Fascinated by languages
part of a third day, because it was the practice in ancient times to count both the Wrst and the last part of any day in a series as a complete day. Whether a biblical account is to be interpreted as completely historical or not depends to a great extent on a person’s understanding of the ways in which people explain events that seem to be earlier than history or beyond history. For example, the historian Toynbee regards the story of Cain and Abel as representing the ancient conXict between the agriculturists and the animal herders, because it was the agriculturists who built the cities and introduced metal tools. And this is precisely what Cain is described as doing.
Latin America
Part III: A personal touch
133
134 Fascinated by languages
Latin America
Who am I?
Lecturers and writers frequently refer to me as a Bible translator who learned something about linguistics and translation. But I have never translated a chapter of the Bible for publication, nor have I ever been a member of a translating committee. I am simply a linguist specializing in language and cultural anthropology, and because of this I was invited by the American Bible Society to Wnd out why so many of their publications of the Scriptures were so seldom read and so frequently misunderstood. I accepted the challenge of trying to Wnd out why people have so much trouble in understanding biblical texts, but in the process I have written and lectured more in secular settings than in speciWcally religious contexts. I am simply a student of sociolinguistics and semiotics who has been studying verbal communication in more than ninety countries and who continues to be fascinated by languages. Some people think that all I do is travel, lecture and write articles and books. But that is only a part of me. At heart I am a gardener and in Greenwich, Connecticut we had three acres of woods that I turned into an acre of Xowers, including 400 rose bushes, and an acre and a half of fruit and vegetables, including asparagus, tomatoes, sixty blueberry bushes, Wfty yards of raspberry vines, and lots of corn each year. We had to be able to rent our house when we were traveling, but we didn’t have the money to furnish our home that had nineteen picture windows, so I bought the necessary power tools and built all the furniture: beds, desks, cabinets, chairs, tables, and lamps by using black walnut so that I could easily reWnish with oil any damage caused by renters. For several years I was an avid photographer with some 10,000 slides, some of which were used by the Bible Society in illustrating appeals for funds. But I felt more and more like an intruder in local societies, and so Elena and I shifted our interest to bird-watching and what a wonderful time we had, with a life list of 1,400 diVerent species identiWed. I discovered that I could even do bird-watching in cemeteries, in fact they are often excellent places to Wnd rare birds because such places are a real escape from city life for birds as well as for people.
135
136 Fascinated by languages
Perhaps I should have retired Wfteen years earlier than I did on December 1, 1981 because I have had so much fun since retirement. But the GreekEnglish Lexicon needed some last minute improvements, and I was anxious to write an article on molecular meaning of words that formed the basis for a later book on Contexts in Translating (2002). Wonderly’s illness and death left some work for me in relating to the interconfessional team preparing the Spanish Version Popular de la Biblia. It was a great experience to see how Latin American Roman Catholics and Protestants could work together so creatively. Perhaps the most gratifying aspect of this program was to see how the Roman Catholic participants were even more sensitive to possible adverse reactions of Protestants than even the Protestant members of the team had been. I still had thousands of slips of paper on which I had made notes about translation problems and cultural diVerences. These I sorted out and sent most of them to friends in the Summer Institute of Linguistics for whatever use they might want to make of them, but my scribbling may have made them largely useless. During the next few years Althea’s health continued to decline and she became more and more forgetful. Because she needed more help and less stress in order to cut down on rising blood pressure, we moved to a Quaker retirement community just outside of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, where I planted a large garden of more that 350 rose bushes, and each year it was possible to cut more than 30,000 roses that we made into bouquets for the residents. This was something Althea greatly enjoyed. The day before the massive stroke that caused Althea’s death, she expressed her fear of having more debilitating strokes and she hoped sincerely that any additional stroke would be suYciently strong that she would not recover. And that is precisely what happened, just forty-Wve days before our projected Wftieth wedding anniversary. After a very meaningful worship service that Wlled the local Baptist Church, I soon left for Arizona, the same kind of country in which I had grown up in Southern California, and for somewhat more than two years I spent time trying to learn to use a computer in the mornings and in the afternoons I hiked in some of the most beautiful mountains in the West. But somehow someone in Granada, Spain, learned about me and invited me to give a series of lectures on translation theory and practice in an institute for translating and interpreting. This school not only had some excellent
Who am I? 137
teachers and facilities but was located in a fascinating city with tall glass oYce buildings, ponderous dark churches, and gorgeous Arabian palaces. This one invitation led to another and the next year the director of the program in translating and interpreting at Complutense University of Madrid invited me to give a series of lectures to students, and a year later I returned for a conference of translators. On such occasions I always learn so much that I was delighted to share my own experience. That year a Spanish woman by the name of Maria Elena FernandezMiranda, an important executive in the translations program of the European Union in Brussels, attended my lecture and she also gave a major lecture that same day. She was particularly thoughtful and helpful to me and two other visiting lecturers, but I did not realize what an important role and series of responsibilities she had had, Wrst in her work in Spain as a jurist and then as an executive in the Commission of the European Union, where her competence in Spanish, French, Italian, Portuguese, and English, as well as her administrative know-how, were widely appreciated. Elena and I found that we had much more in common than we had Wrst imagined, and I wrote her so often that she once received four letters at the same time. But for two non-Belgians to be married in Brussels would have taken months of endless documentation. Accordingly, it seemed much better to Xy to Savannah, Georgia, where we could get married in two days with the help of Karen Munson and her husband Dick, a professor of mathematics in the local State university. Elena is the mother of Wve brilliant multilingual children and recently Wnished a 700 page PhD cum Laude at Complutense University on the life and publications of Apollinaire, a famous French poet. But more importantly she is an attractive loving person, and we thoroughly enjoy our life together.
Lecturing and writing Shortly after moving to Europe, the University of Liverpool sponsored a conference on Translating Sensitive Texts and what could be more sensitive than translating the Lord’s Prayer, which in English contains so many antiquated words and misleading expressions? And at one university after another I was invited to lecture on problems of language correspondences, and espe-
138 Fascinated by languages
cially on the sociolinguistic diVerences that constitute so many intractable complications for translators. Later a local Institute for Translators and Interpreters asked me to give a series of lectures with special focus on language and culture, and these formed the basis of a small book published by Hazard Press on The Sociolinguistics of Interlingual Communication. And soon there were invitations from more than forty programs in translating in Europe, Asia, and the Americas. As I got older I was introduced more and more on the basis of my earlier book Toward a Science of Translating, and I once became the “father of modern translating,” then the “grandfather,” and even later “the Archimedes” and even the “patriarch” of translating. Evidently it was time for me to stop, but I was greatly enjoying gardening, lecturing, and writing. I was very impressed with some of the forty or more programs in Europe for the training of translators and interpreters, but some were faced with serious problems of more students wanting to study translating than there were persons capable of teaching. Two diVerent graduate students asked me to be their mentor for work on advanced degrees, something that I was delighted to do because I learned so much about academic standards, research facilities, and requirements for academic posts. Living in Brussels with Elena, who is right at the center of the problems of multiple languages, has been a great advantage in understanding the decline in the use of French and the increase in the use of English. Theoretically all the eleven languages of the European Union have equal sociological and legal standing, but increasingly the economic pressures are such that translating and interpreting eat up an increasingly large part of the budget. Accordingly, what will happen when the European Community goes to twenty languages in the near future? In Europe, as in so many parts of the world, diVerences of language become a litmus test of social and political acceptability. Accordingly, I am fascinated with what is happening in countries that are becoming increasingly bilingual, for example, Holland and Scandinavia, as well as Italy and Greece, and even in France among better educated people. In Romania the interest in learning English is astounding, because it is an entry card to Western Europe. I have often discussed with Europeans the reluctance of so many people to move from one place to another, even within their own countries, in order to
Who am I? 139
take advantage of more interesting jobs and better pay. But most Europeans seem reluctant to leave their home towns and extended families, and to learn a new language seems to be an impossible nightmare. In some countries, however, there is a growing reluctance to accept foreigners, especially in areas where fascism and skinheads are on the rise. One of my good friends who is closely involved in interlingual communication commented to me, “What is happening in Europe has never happened before in all of human history, because previous combinations of nations resulted from military power. And even if the European Union fails to accomplish all of its goals, it will still be worth all the eVort if it can give us peace for another Wfty years.” What a unique privilege to live at the center of a world of languages!
Lecturing People often ask me why I accept so many invitations to lecture in so many places in the world, and I always have a triple answer. In the Wrst place, I like to share information about new developments in language and culture. In the second place, this is an excellent way to meet translators and possible translation consultants, and in the third place, this gives me a great opportunity to try out new ideas and obtain feedback. In writing all my diVerent books and articles, I have always endeavored to test ideas with audiences by encouraging their responses and by carefully reading their facial expressions as I speak. I am extremely indebted to those who question what I have said and who argue with me. In a recent series of lectures in ten diVerent universities in China, I asked people to write out their questions and comments, which I responded to as meaningfully as I could. But I kept all the slips and used them as the basis for the book on Contexts in Translating. Sometimes, however, I get more than I have bargained for. For example, I was about ten minutes into my lecture to a group of Spanish-speaking pastors in Cuba when one of them stood up and declared, “You do not know what you are talking about.” And before I had a chance to defend myself, another pastor stood up and said to the man criticizing me, “No! You are wrong, and he is right!” They argued with each other for about Wve minutes, but Wnally they turned to me and said that I could go ahead. Later, another person interrupted me, but during my life I have never had a more attentive audience.
140 Fascinated by languages
During a lecture to some 500 students in a college sponsored by a theologically conservative church, I brieXy mentioned the need to have our behavior reXect our theology. Immediately a young man stood up and ask in a demanding manner, “Are you saying that if I smoke, I will not go to heaven.” I was hesitant to answer because I didn’t want to get involved in a subject that apparently was an on-going issue in the college, The only thing I could think of at the moment was, “No indeed! In fact, if you do smoke, you will probably go to heaven sooner.” What else could I have said? At a diVerent college where I had lectured several times, I was asked if the wine at Cana was actually wine. Certainly, the participants believed it was wine because it was signiWcantly better than what they had already drunk. And I ended by assuring the audience that the miraculous wine at Cana was not boiling water poured over raisins, an explanation used by some people who believe that drinking wine is a sin and that Jesus was sinless and therefore could not have made real wine. I later learned that one of the professors in the college had just published a book to prove that the wine at Cana was indeed boiling water poured over raisins. I was never asked back.
An eclectic and a pragmatist In the three areas of research in which I have been involved throughout my life, namely, linguistics, cultural anthropology, and Bible translating (see my Bibliography), I have always been fearful of holistic systems, whether ideological or linguistic, but I have always been open to ideas that produce valuable and measurable results. Particular data and insights can be accepted as relevant and true, but building these into systems of thought can stiXe creativity and lock minds shut to new evidence. At the University of California I was much impressed with Plato’s Republic. What a masterpiece of Greek style and organization! But what a terrifying picture of a completely authoritarian and totalitarian state. And when one realizes what a failure Plato was in Syracuse, the Republic, like all ideal systems, leaks badly. Theological insights are extremely helpful unless they are wrapped up in systems that refuse to take into consideration the insights of other scholars,
Who am I?
something that is equally true of diVerent theories of language. Unfortunately, we humans seem aZicted with the virus of holistic systems, and each important insight is too quickly expanded into an autonomous system, which even obscures what was genuinely valuable in the original insight. I cut my linguistic teeth on the theory of “item and arrangement,” but when persons started saying that it would be possible to employ such a theory or system to analyze a language without reference to meaning, I bowed out. Structure without meaning is nonsense, what BloomWeld called trying to prize-Wght with one arm tied behind one’s back. Tagmemics, developed by Kenneth L. Pike, my good friend and brilliant colleague for many years, is a remarkably direct way to begin thinking about language and it has been a great help to many Bible translators. But slots and Wllers are not enough, because the relations between slots and between Wllers are the really crucial facts of language. StratiWcational Grammar provided some important insights about the relations of various levels of language structure and it could have been an excellent way to introduce insights about the structure of texts, but it was quickly swamped by enthusiasm for Chomsky’s view of language. Chomsky chose to highlight the dichotomy between performance and competence and to make competence the core of language, which touches reality only in sounds and semantics, but so many of the really important aspects of a language were dismissed as representing mere subcategorization. In reality, however, all we really know about competence comes from performance. I was personally pleased to use the term ‘kernel’ because it Wt well the kinds of distinctions I was already making between basic combinations of entities, activities, processes, states, characteristics and relationals. But I never could understand the need for complete abstraction, nor for Chomsky’s rather radical revisions. Functionalism, promoted by Halliday and a number of other scholars, has provided some very important insights for thinking about language and culture, but as I argued with Halliday, when we were once in China at the same time, I could not understand his preference for trinary vs. binary structures, especially when some of the sets of terms were not coordinate. Nevertheless, his work on stylistics has been of great help in understanding the range of texts.
141
142 Fascinated by languages
Recent developments in Cognitive Linguistics are especially helpful for persons interested in the semantics of words and combinations of words. Ronald W. Langacker and a number of associates have been particularly helpful in pointing out the limitations in Chomsky’s approach and the need for realism about the form and meaning of language. But some of the diagrams of semantic relations seem to me too Wxed in form. Meanings have very indeWnite boundaries and tend to constantly expand and contract in unsystematic ways. Until we have a fully acceptable theory of language based on the working of the human brain (something we will probably never adequately understand), we cannot expect to have one dominant and comprehensive theory of language and of translation. There are too many diVerent kinds of languages, too many diVerent types of texts, and too many diVerent audiences with diverse needs. In translating I am also an eclectic and a pragmatist.
Books are more than words Concern for the acceptance of a new translation of the Scriptures does not stop with evaluating the clarity and quality of the text. It is also important to consider the color of the binding, size of type, kind of paper, drawings, and the format, especially when notes and introductions are involved. Unfortunately, New Testaments and Bibles are too often bound in black cloth with red edges, but in some cultures black is a symbol of something fearful and in other cultures red immediately suggests blood, especially when combined with black. But the worst defect in traditional publications in socalled new languages is the tendency to use no more than eight-point type so as to save money, but this always results in a tremendous loss in readership. In so-called primitive areas of the world most people cannot aVord readingglasses. No Wrst text in a language should have less then 10 point type and 12 point would be much better if one calculates the number of reader-hours of use rather than merely the number of copies sold below the cost of printing. In typically arid parts of the world, green is a favorite color for binding, but in the tropics it is generally better to have books bound in blue or red. For the most part, yellow is not a favorite color, except in China, where yellow is the color of royalty and government. But color is not the most important factor in most of the tropical world. If books are to outlive the attacks of mold
Who am I? 143
and insects, they need to have specially manufactured paper and binding with generous quantities of insecticide. The inclusion of pictures, in color or in black and white, can make a publication much more acceptable and meaningful, but such pictures must be carefully selected. For example, in one New Testament published for people in West Africa the missionaries thought it would be good to have the drawings of biblical characters done in a native style, so that the Biblical characters would seem more acceptable and meaningful. But the pictures produced precisely the opposite eVect. Young men who had been in Palestine during World War II laughed at the pictures because they knew that people in the Middle East were not West Africans. Sometimes, however, even serious mistakes in publishing can prove to be an asset. In the case of a New Testament published for a tribe of Indians in Latin America, the printer made a mistake in ordering the paper, and the published New Testament turned out to be about three inches thick. But the people were delighted because their New Testament was even thicker than the Spanish dictionary used in the local schools. This showed that their language was even more important than Spanish.
144 Fascinated by languages
Selective Bibliography 145
Selective Bibliography
Linguistics, culture and translation Books Nida, Eugene A. Bible Translating. New York: American Bible Society. 1946, (rev. ed., 1961). ———, Morphology: The Descriptive Analysis of Words. Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press. 1946, (rev. ed., 1957). ———, Linguistic Interludes. Santa Ana, CA: Summer Institute of Linguistics. 1947. ———, Learning a Foreign Language. New York: Friendship Press. 1950 (rev. ed., 1957). ———, God’s Word in Man’s Language. New York: Harper and Row. 1952. ———, Customs and Cultures. New York: Harper and Row. 1954. ———, and William A. Smalley. Introducing Animism. New York: Friendship Press. 1959. ———, A Synopsis of English Syntax. Norman, OK: Summer Institute of Linguistics. 1960 (2nd rev. ed. The Hague: Mouton, 1966). ———, Message and Mission. New York: Harper and Row. 1960. (Paperback edition, 1972. Pasadena, CA: William Carey Library). ———, Toward a Science of Translating. Leiden: E. J. Brill. 1964. ———, Religion Across Cultures. New York: Harper and Row. 1968. (Reprinted in 1979 by William Carey Library). ———, Communication of the Gospe1 in Latin America. Ciudad de Mexico: Centro Intercultural de Documentación. 1969. ———, and Charles R. Taber. The Theory and Practice of Translation. Leiden: E. J. Brill. 1969. ———, Understanding Latin Americans. Pasadena, CA: William Carey Library (a revision of Communicating the Gospel in Latin America, published in 1969), 1974. ———, Componential Analysis of Meaning: An Introduction to Semantic Structures. The Hague: Mouton. 1975. ———, Customs and Cultures: Anthropology for Christian Missions. (New edition with 1975 preface) South Pasadena, CA: William Carey Library. 1975. ———, Exploring Semantic Structures. Munich, Germany: Wilhelm Fink. 1975. ———, Language Structure and Translation: Essays Selected and Introduced by Anwar S. Dil. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press. 1975. ———, Good News for Everyone. Waco, TX: Word Books. 1977. ———, and William D. Reyburn. Meaning Across Cultures. Maryknoll: Orbis Books. 1981. ———, Translating Meaning. San Ditmas, CA: English Language Institute. 1982. ———, Sign, Sense, and Translation. Pretoria, S. Africa: University of Pretoria. 1983. ———, J. P. Louw, A.H. Snyman, and J.v.W. Cronje. Style and Discourse: With Special Reference to the Text of the Greek New Testament. Cape Town: Bible Society of South Africa. 1983. ———, Language, Culture, and Translating. Shanghai Foreign Language Education Press: Shanghai, China. 1984.
146 Fascinated by languages
———, and Jan de Waard. From One Language to Another. Nashville: Thomas Nelson. 1986. ———, and Johannes P. Louw. Greek-English Lexicon of the New Testament Based on Semantic Domains. New York: United Bible Societies. ———, and Johannes P. Louw. Lexical Semantics of the Greek New Testament. Atlanta: Scholars Press. 1992. ———, The Sociolinguistics of Intercultural Communication. Brussels, Belgium: Les Editions du Hazard. 1996. ———, and Hu Zwanglin. Understanding English. Beijing: Peking University Press. 1996.
Translator’s handbooks on books of the Bible Bratcher, Robert G. and Eugene A. Nida. A Translator’s Handbook on the Gospel of Mark. Leiden: E. J. Brill. 1961. Newman, Barclay M. and Eugene A. Nida. A Translator’s Handbook on the Acts of the Apostles. London: United Bible Societies. 1972. and Eugene A. Nida. A Translator’s Handbook on Paul’s letters to the Colossians and Philemon. Stuttgart: United Bible Societies. 1977. de Waard, Jan and Eugene A. Nida. A Translator’s Handbook on the Book of Ruth. London: United Bible Societies. 1973. Ellingworth, Paul and Eugene A. Nida. A Translator’s Handbook on Paul’s letters to the Thessalonians. Stuttgart: United Bible Societies. 1975. Arichea, Daniel C. and Eugene A. Nida. A Translator’s Handbook on Paul’s Letter to the Galatians. Stuttgart: United Bible Societies. 1976. Loh, I-Jin and Eugene A. Nida. A Translator’s Handbook on Paul’s Letter to the Philippians. Stuttgart: United Bible Societies. 1977. Bratcher, Robert G. and Eugene A. Nida. A Translator’s Handbook on Paul’s Letters to the Colossians and Philemon. Stuttgart: United Bible Societies. 1977. Price, Brynmore F. and Eugene A. Nida. A Translator’s Handbook on the Book of Jonah. New York: United Bible Societies. 1978. Newman, Barclay M. and Eugene A. Nida. A Translator’s Handbook on the Gospel of John. New York: United Bible Societies. 1980. Arichea, Daniel C. and Eugene A. Nida. A Translator’s Handbook on the First Letter from Peter. New York: United Bible Societies. 1980. Bratcher, Robert G. and Eugene A. Nida. A Translator’s Handbook on Paul’s Letter to the Ephesians. New York: United Bible Societies. 1983. Ellingworth, Paul and Eugene A. Nida. A Translator’s Handbook on the Letter to the Hebrews. New York: United Bible Societies. 1983.
Important articles Nida, Eugene, A., Linguistics and ethnology in translation problems.” Word. 1:194–208. 1945. ———, “Field techniques in descriptive linguistics.” International Journal of American Linguistics. 13:138–146. 1947. ———, “The analysis of grammatical constituents.” Language. 24:168–177. 1948. ———, “The modiWcation of morphemes.” Language. 24:414–441. 1948.
Selective Bibliography 147
———, “DiYcult words and phrases.” The Bible Translator. 1.25–19, 72–74, 116–121, 158– 162. 1950. ———, “Orthographic problems in Yipounou.” The Bible Translator. 1:110–116. 1950. ———, “The most common errors in translating.” The Bible Translator. 1:51–56. 1950. ———, and C. Moises Romero, “The pronominal series in Maya.” International Journal of American Linguistics. 16:193–197. 1950. ———, “Training the translation helper.” The Bible Translator. 1.41–50. 1950. ———, “Translation or paraphrase.” The Bible Translator. 1:97–106. 1950. ———, “A system for the description of semantic elements.” Word. 7:1–14. 1951. ———, “New help on old problems.” International Review of Missions. 40:190–196. 1951. ———, “Problems of revision.” The Bible Translator. 2:3–17. 1951. ———, “A new methodology in biblical exegesis.” The Bible Translator. 3:97–111. 1952. ———, “Selective listening.” Language Learning. 4:92–101. 1952. ———, “Cross-cultural communication of the Christian message.” Practical Anthropology. 2.36–42. 1952. ———, “Problems in translating the Scriptures into Shilluk, Anuak and Nuer.” The Bible Translator. 6:55–63. 1955. ———, “Tribal and trade languages.” African Studies. 14:155–158. 1955. ———, “Language culture and theology.” Gordon Review. 3151–167. 1957. ———, “Mariology in Latin America.” Practical Anthropology. 4:69–82. 1957. ———, “Meaning and translation.” The Bible Translator. 8:97–108. 1957. ———, “Motivation in second language learning.” Language Learning. 7:11–16. 1957. ———, “The role of language in contemporary Africa.” Practical Anthropology. 4: 122–137. 1957. ———, “Analysis of meaning and dictionary making.” International Journal of American Linguistics. 24:279–292. 1958. ———, “Marginal helps for the reader.” The Bible Translator. 9:1–21. 1958. ———, “Some psychological problems in second language learning.” Language Learning. 8:7–15. 1958. ———, “The relationship of social structure to the problems of evangelism in Latin America.” Practical Anthropology. 5:101–123. 1958. ———, “Illustrations for ‘primitive’ peoples.” Bulletin of the United Bible Societies. 38:65– 72. 1959. ———, “Indians of the Americas face the future.” National Fellowship of Indian Workers, News Letter. 71:1–3. 1959. ———, “Principles of translation as exempliWed by Bible translating.” On Translation. Ed. Reuben A. Brower. Cambridge: Harvard University Press. Pp 11–31. 1959. ———, “The role of cultural anthropology in Christian missions.” Practical Anthropology. 6:110–116. 1959. ———, “Do tribal languages have a future?” The Bible Translator. 11:116–123. 1959. ———, “Psychological relations in the communication of Christian faith.” Missionary Research Library, Occasional Bulletin. 11:116–123. 1960. ———, “Religion: communication with the supernatural.” Practical Anthropology 7: 97– 112. 1960. ———, “Christo-paganism.” Practical Anthropology. 8:1–15. 1961. ———, “Communication of the Gospel in Latin America.” Practical Anthropology. 8:1–15, 1961.
148 Fascinated by languages
———, “Kerugma and culture. Underlying problems in the communication of the Gospel in Spanish-speaking Latin America.” Lutheran World. 8:269–280. 1961. ———, “New help for translators.” The Bible Translator. 12:49–60. 1961. ———, “Some problems of semantic structure and translational equivalence.” A William Cameron Townsend en el XXV Aniversario del I. L. V. Mexico. ed Benjamin Elson. D. F: Instituto Linguístico de Verano, 313–225. 1961. ———, “The indigenous churches in Latin America.” Practical Anthropology. 8:97–105. 1961. ———, “Diglot scriptures.” The Bible Translator. 13:1–16. 1962. ———, and William L. Wonderly. Cultural diVerences and the communication of Christian values.” Practical Anthropology. 10:241–258. 1963. ———, “Linguistic and semantic structure.” Studies in Languages and Linguistics. Festschrift in honor of Charles C. Fries. ed. Albert H. Marckwardt. Ann Arbor, MI: English Language Institute, University of Michigan Press. Pp. 13–33. 1963. ———, and William L. Wonderly. “Linguistics and Christian missions.” The Bible Translator. 15:51–69, 107–116, 154–166. 1963, ———, and William L. Wonderly. “Selection, preparation, and function of Indian leaders.” Practical Anthropology. 10:233–136. 1963. ———, “Probleme beim Übersetzen der Bibel.” Die Bibel in der Welt. 7. 1964. ———, “Review of The Church and Cultures by Louis J. Luzbetak, S.V.D., an Applied Anthropology for the Religious Worker.” Practical Anthropology. 11:285–188. 1964. ———, “A system of semantics,” Studies in Descriptive and Applied Linguistics. ed. Mamoru Shimizu. (Bulletin of the Summer Institute of Linguistics, vol. 3, August 1965). Tokyo: International Christian University. Pp 3–16, 1965. ———, “Culture and church growth.” Practical Anthropology. 12:22–37. 1965. ———, “African inXuence in the religious life of Latin America.” Practical Anthropology. 13:133–138. 1966. ———, “DiYculties in translating Hebrews 1 into Southern Lengua.” The Bible Translator. 18:117–122. 1967. ———, “Sociological and linguistic dimensions of literacy and literature.” World Literacy Manual, eds. Floyd Shacklock et al. New York, NY. 1967. ———, “Science of translation.” Language. 45:483–498. 1969. ———, “Formal correspondence in translation.” The Bible Translator. 21:105–113. 1970. ———, and Harold W. Fehderau. “Indigenous pidgins and koinés.” International Journal of American Linguistics. 365:14–155. 1970. ———, “Semantic components in translation theory.” Le langage et l’homme, June 1970, 42–46. Bruxelles: Institute Libre Marie Haps. 1970. ———, and William Wonderly. “Communication roles of languages in multilingual societies. “ Language Use and Social Change. ed. W. H. Whiteley. Published for the International African Institute. Oxford: University Press, pp. 57–74. 1971. ———, “Language and communication.” In No Man is Alien: Essays on the Unity of Mankind. ed. J. Robert Nelson. The Netherlands: E. J. Brill. Pp. 183–202. 197l. ———, “New religions for old: a study of culture change.” Practical Anthropology. 18:183– 202. 1971. ———, “Sociopsychological problems in language mastery and retention.” The Psychology of Second Language Learning. eds. Paul Pimsleur and Terence Quinn. Papers from the Second International Congress of Applied Linguistics. Cambridge: University Press. Pp. 59–65. 1971. ———, “Communication and translation.” The Bible Translator. 23:309–316. 1972.
Selective Bibliography 149
———, “Implications of contemporary linguistics for biblical scholarship.” Journal of Biblical Literature. 91:73–89. 1972. ———, “Linguistic models for religious behavior.” Practical Anthropology. 19:13–26. 1972. ———, “Linguistic theories and Bible translating.” Practical Anthropology. 19:301–308. 1972. ———, “Linguists and translators.” The Bible Translator. 23:225–233. 1972. ———, and Charles R. Taber. “Semantic structures.” In Studies in Linguistics. ed. M. Estellie Smith. In Honor of George L. Trager. The Hague: Mouton, Pp.122–141. 1972. ———, “The Wfth point of the compass.” Practical Anthropology. 19:274–279. 1972. ———, “Varieties of language.” The Bible Translator. 23:316–322. 1972. ———, “Bible translating in today’s world.” The Bible is for All (Lectures given at the International Biblical-Pastoral Seminar, July 1971, Rocca di Papa). ed. Joseph Rhymer. London: Collins on behalf of the World Catholic Federation for the Biblical Apostolate. Pp. 54–74. 1973. ———, “Bible translating.” Aspekte der Theoretischen, Sprachenpaarbezogenen und Angewandten Übersetzungswissenschaft II. eds. Wolfram Wilss and Gisela Thome. Heidelberg: Julius Groos Verlag. Pp. 1–32. 1974. ———, “The book of life.” How to Understand the Bible. eds. Ralph Herring, Frank StaV, et al. Nashville, TN: Broadman. Pp. 13–25. 1974. ———, “Translation.” Current Trends in Linguistics. Vol 12. ed. Thomas Sebeok. The Hague: Mouton. Pp. 1045–1068. 1974. ———, “Language and psychology.” The Bible Translator. 26:308–313. 1975. ———, “A framework for the analysis and evaluation of theories of translation,” Translation Applications and Research. ed. Richard W. Brislin. New York: Gardner Press. Pp. 47–91. 1976. ———, “Semantic relations between nuclear structures.” Linguistic and Literary Studies, in honor of Archibald A. Hill. eds Edgar C. Plome and Werner Winter. Theoretical Linguistics. Lisse, The Netherlands: Peter de Ridder Press. Pp. 219–225. 1976. ———, and Johannes P. Louw and Rondal Smith. “Semantic domains and componential analysis of meaning.” Issues in Linguistic Theory. ed. Richard W. Cole. Bloomington and London: Indiana University Press. Pp.139–168. 1977 ———, “Translating means communicating.” Linguistics and Anthropology. ed. Uriel Saville-Troike. Georgetown University Round Table on Languages and Linguistics. Pp. 213–229. 1977. ———, “Translating means communicating: a sociolinguistic theory of translation.” The Bible Translator. 30:101–107 and 318–325. 1979. ———, “Problems of biblical exegesis in the Third World.” Text-Wort-Glaube (dedicated to Kurt Aland). ed. Martin Brecht. Berlin: Walter de Gruyter. Pp. 159–165. 1980. ———, “The contribution of linguistics to the theory and practice of translating.” Linguistic Studies (Festschrift in Honor of Berthe Siertsma). eds D. J. van Alfemade, A Feitsma, W. J. Meys, P. van Reenan, and J. J. Spa. Netherlands: Rodopi. Pp. 353–361. 1980. ———, “Bible translation for the eighties.” International Review of Missions. 70:130–139. 198l. ———, “Languages are for communicating: some second thoughts on practical implications for linguistics.” Language Science. 3:51–57. 1981. ———, “Practical limitations to a phonemic alphabet.” The Bible Translator. 32:204–209. 1981.
150 Fascinated by languages
———, “Problems of cultural diVerences in translating the Old Testament.” Mélanges Dominique Bartelemy, Études Bibliques OVertes à l’occasion de Son 60 Anniversaire. eds. Pierre Casetti, Othmar Keel and Adrian Schenker. Fribourg: Editions Universitaires, Göttingen:vandehoeck and Ruprecht. Pp. 297–307. 1981. ———, “Semantic reinterpretation of primary religious vocabulary.” Theolinguistics. Studiereeks Tijdschrift: New Series, no. 8. ed. J. P. van Noppen. Pp. 283–294. 1981. ———, “The New Testament Greek text in the Third World.” New Testament Textual Criticism. eds. Eldon Jay Epp and Gordon D. Fee. Oxford: Clareton Press. Pp. 375– 380. 1981. ———, “Traducción y comunicación.” Teoria y Práctica de la Traducción primer encuentro internacional de traductores. Santiago: Ediciones Universidad Católica de Chile. Pp. 25–31. 1981. ———, “Translators are born not made.” The Bible Translator. 32:401–415. 1981. ———, “New words for old meanings.” The Bible Translator. 33:424–430. 1982. ———, “Translating legal terms in the Bible.” Langage du Droit et Traduccion: Essais de Jurilinguistique (The language of the Law and Translation: Essays on Jurilinguistics). Ed. Jean-Claude Gémar, Départment de linguistique et philologie de l’Université de Montréal. Co-edition published by Linguatech and Conseil de la langue française. Quebec, Canada. Pp. 261–269. 1982. ———, “Style in Bible translating.” Ulrich Fick zum 60 Geburtstag. ed. Siegfried Meurer. Stuttgart: German Bible Society. Pp. 70–78. 1983. ———, “Rhetoric and styles: A taxonomy of structures and functions.” Language Sciences. 6.287–305. 1984. ———, “Translating means translating meaning — a sociosemiotic approach to translating.” Tenth World Congress of FIT Vienna. ed. Hildegard Bühler. Wilhelm Braumuller. Pp. 119–125. 1985. ———, “Sociolinguistics and translating.” The Fergusonian Impact, vol. 1: From Phonology to Society. ed. Joshua A. Fishman, et al. Berlin, New York, Amsterdam: Mouton de Gruyter. Pp.471–477. 1986. ———, “Social linguistics and translating.” Sociolinguistics and Communication. ed. Johannes P. Louw. London, New York: United Bible Societies, Monograph Series, 1:1– 49. 1986. ———, “Stretching language.” Meta: Translator’s Journal. 32:42–45. 1987. ———, “Special problems in translating religious texts.” Special Problems in Translating Religious Texts. ed. Ann Wescott. Kansas City, MO: Mid-America Chapter of the American Translators Association. Pp. 1–8. 1988. ———, “The meaning of rhetoric.” Essays on the English Language and Applied Linguistics. ed. Gerhart Nickel et al. Heidelberg, Julius Groos: Pp. 156–164. 1988. ———, “Intelligibility and acceptability in Bible translation.” The Bible Translator. 39: 301–308. 1988. ———, “Editing translated texts.” Text: Transactions of the Society for Textual Scholarship. eds. D. C. Greetham and W. Speed Hill. 4:13–27. 1989. ———, “Theories of translation.” Foreign Languages. 6:2–13. 1989. ———, “Not what but how: a cross-cultural study of discourse.” Northeast Conference on Legal Interpretation and Translation. ed. Angela M. Aguirre. Wayne, NJ: The Consortium of Educators in Legal Interpretation and Translation at Jersey City State College. Pp. 59–64. 1989. ———, “The role of rhetoric in verbal communication.” Language and Communication. 10:37–46. 1989.
Selective Bibliography
———, “Textual criticism and entropy.” Tradition of the text: Studies oVered to Dominique Barthélemy in celebration of his seventieth birthday. eds Gerard J. Norton and Stephen Pisano. Freiburg, Switzerland: Universitats Verlag. Pp. 122–128. 1991. ———, “My linguistic odyssey.” First person singular II. Autobiographies by North American Scholars in the Language Sciences. ed. Konrad Koerner. Studies in the History of the Language Sciences, vol. 61. Amsterdam and Philadelphia: John Benjamins Publishing Co. 1991. ———, “A personal triad.” Wege in der Sprachwissenschaft:vierundvierzig autobiographische Berichte; Festschrift für Mario Wandruzka. eds Hans-Martin Gauger and Wolfgang Pockel. Tübingen: Narr. Pp. 176–182. 1991. ———, “The sociolinguistics of interpreting.” Sendebar, Boletín de la E.U.T.I. de Granada. 4:19–27. 1993. ———, “The molecular level of lexical semantics.” International Journal of Lexicography. Oxford University Press 10,4:265–274. 1997. ———, “The changing scene in world languages.” American Translators Association. Amsterdam, Philadelphia: John Benjamins Publishing Company:9:9–17. 1997. ———, “The contribution of linguistics and computers to Bible translating.” Association Internationale Bible et Informatique. Paris: Honoré Champion Éditeur. 5:27–37. 1998. ———, “Translators’ creativity versus sociolinguistic constraints.” Translators’ Strategies and Creativity. eds. Ann Beylard-OzzeroV, Jana Králová, Barbara Moser-Mercer. 27:127–136. 1998.
151
152 Index
Index
Index A Africa south of the Sahara 13 African churches 16 African hunters 20 agreement 124 agreement on translating 23 Aland, Barbara 99, 104 Aland, Kurt 99, 102 alphabets Alexandrian Text 101 Althea’s illness and death 136 American Bible Society 2, 4, 53, 79, 91, 110 American Standard Version 3 Aparteid 15 Arabic Bibles without diacritics 25 Archbishop George Phimphesan 28 Arichea, Danny 72, 73 Armenia 60-61 B BaYnland 53 Bali with Danny Arichea 71 baptism 22 Barthélemy, Dominique 104 Bayer River area in New Guinea 42 beatitudes 124 beginning 125 Belgium Congo 13 Béguin, Olivier 6 Berggrav, Eivind 5 Bible as literary text 81, 86 Bible Society of South Africa 115 Bible texts and interpretation 69-116 Bible translating 5 Biblia Hebraica Stuttgartensia 104 bird-watching 43, 135 Bishop Ding 34-35 Black, Matthew 99 Boyd, James Oscar 4
blessed 124 BloomWeld 2 Bradnock, Wilfred 25 Bratcher, Robert G. 69-70 branches in the road to Jerusalem 17 British and Foreign Bible Society 13 British Baptist Missionary Society 16 Brown-Driver-Briggs Lexicon 116 Burma/Myanmar 27 building furniture 135 Bushman in the Kalahari 21 Byzantine Text 101 C Caesarean Text 101 Canadian Bible Society 53 Chihuahua City 11 China 33 Christo-pagan beliefs 51 1 Chronicles 21.5 93 1 Chronicles 24.1 94 Church in Santiago, Chile 46 classes of Greek manuscripts 101 Classical Greek 2 cleansing of the Temple 92 Coleman, Noel 13, 14, 15 Columbia University 3 componential analysis of meaning 109 computers 19 Constantinople 2 Contemporary English Versión 72, 127128 contents of Holy Scriptures 88-90 Contexts in Translating 136 1 Corinthians 13.4-7 118-119 Courtship and marriage to Maria Elena Fernandez-Miranda 136-137 Cre Berard, Switzerland 90 cross 20
153
154 Index
cup of blessing 18 Czech Republic 59 D Darlington, Gilbert 6 die, death 120 Dinka 13 dinosaurs 1 Dohle, Eleanore 4 double system of communication 63-64 domains and sub-domains 111 Dorn, Louis 75 E Eastern Eskimo 53 Eastern Europe 58-65 Ecclesiastes 84 eclectic and pragmatist 140-141 Ecumenical French translation 98-99 Editions du Cerf 98 F factors in textual evidence 106-107 fasting 17 feasts to celebrate ecumenicity 44-45 Federau, Harold 75 Fetzer, Marie 71 forgiveness 14, 42 French and English usage in West Africa 21 From One Language to Another 73 G Gabon, West Africa 2 gardening and landscaping 135 Gbeapo and Bambara 19 Genesis 6.6 78 Genesis 31.5-9 18 Georgia 60 German 1 Gospel of Mark 2 Greek text of the New Testament 99-102 Greek-English Lexicon of the New Testament 109
Greek term kardia 119 Grether, Herbert 28 Guam 12 H Habakkuk 2.4 87 Hagar and Ismael 18 harmonizing Greek readings 102 Haywards Heath, England 5 Hebrews 6.14 18 help by lay people on Bible revision 47-49 Hills, Margaret T. 4 holy of holies 19 Hulst, Alexander 104 humble 122 Hungary 63 I inclusive and exclusive “we” 45 India 26 Indian languages of Latin America 49-52 Indonesia 43 Isaiah 1.14 117 J Japan 31 Jephthah (Hebrews 11.32) 87 John 1.16, 17 125 John 2.4, referring to the mother of Jesus 30 John 3.16, as a problem for Buddhists 28 John 7.53-8.11, a textual problem 103 John 13. The Last Supper 92 Jonah, issues of interpretation 131-132 Judges 5.28-30 81 K Kaka people of West Africa 18 Kanjoro, Musimbi 74 Karavidopoulos, Johannes 100 Kimbangu, Simon 16 King James Versión 3 Kituba Bible 16 know 121
Index
Koehler-Baumgartner Lexicon 115 Kuomintang government of Taiwan 29 L lamb 127 language competence 21 language learning and literature 81-83 language learning by missionaries 22 language schools in China 34 Latin 1 Latin America 46-52 Lebanon 15-26 lecturing in China 35-39, 137-139 lecturing in a Muslim University in Indonesia 43 Liddel and Scott Greek-English Lexicon 112 light of the body is the eye 121 Lilje, Hanns 6 literal translations of poetry between Chinese and English 38 literary character of the Bible 81 literature and theology 82-86 Lithuania 65 Loewen, Jacob 74 logos 114-115 Loh, I-jin 29, 74 LohWnk, Norbert 105 Lord’s Prayer 53, 82 Louis Segond 3 love 122 Luke 2.14 102 Luke 17.18 “give glory to God” meaning “swear to tell the truth” 77 M Malinowski 2 Mark 1.2 102 Mark 1-5 91 Mark 12.40 50 Marshall Islands 44-45 Martini, Carlo M. 99 Matthew 1.11 91 Matthew 2.9 70 Matthew 4.1-11 91
Matthew 25.32 17 Maurice Thorez Institute 59 Mayan language of Guatamala 50 McHardy, William D. 105 Mennonite colony 11 Methodist church 1 Metzger, Bruce M. 99 Mexico 11 Minneapolis 3 modal distinctions 30 Morphology, Descriptive Analysis of Words 52, 108 Mount Hermon 26 Mundhenk, Norman 42 Munson, Karen 4, 110, 112 N Navajo 55-56 Netherlands Bible Society 5, 7 Newman, Barclay M 12, 72, 111 New Testament 14 Newport, Oregon 1 Norwegian Bible Society 5 North America 53-57 North, Eric M 2, 6 O “only begotten Son” a special problem for Buddhists 28 Orthodox scholars in St. Petersburg 59 orthographies in Japanese 32 P PaciWc Island World 44-45 Papua New Guinea 41-42, 44-45 parables 129-132 Paraclete 18 paradigmatic frames 110 paying Bible translators 22 Peacock, Heber 75 Personal Touch 135-143 personiWcation of abstracts 118-119 Philippines 29, 41 photography 135
155
156 Index
polygamy 21 Ponape 12 Practical Anthropology 78 problems in Hebrew and Greek texts 9094 Professional Translators Association of China 39 proofreading 11 Protestant and Roman Catholic translators 28 Protestant church of 5,000 members in Mexico City 47 Proverbs 8.14-22 118 Q quoting scripture parallels 117 Quechua assistant 70 Qumran 104 R Relevant Ramblings 78 repent 122 residence in Arizona 136 revision of Reina-Valera Bible 47-49 Reyburn, William D. 70 righteous, righteousness 121 Roman Catholic translators in Hong Kong 40 Romania 64 Romans 1.1-7 126-128 Romans 1.17 87 rose garden 136 Rüger, H, Peter 105 Russia 58-60 Rutgers, Herman C, 4 S Sadducees 17 2 Samuel 24.1 94 Samson (Hebrews 11.32) 87 Sanders, James A. 105 Santa Sophia 2 Sapir 2 sarks 13-114
save 122 Schenker, Adrian 105 ScientiWc American 1 scrabble in four languages 108 scrabble in Hebrew 108 selection of verbs based on types of objects 30 semantic relations 112-113 semantic history of words 109 serving tables 121 sheep and goats 17 Shanghai 37 Shilluk 14 Shilluk at Doleib Hill 21 Siloam Springs, Arkansas 2 Smalley, William A. 28, 71 smuggling Scriptures into China 34, 35 Smith, Rondal B. 10 Summer Institute of Linguistics 1 son of… 121 Song of Songs 2.3-7 86 South Africa 15, 16 sources of lexical data 110 speciWc Bible translation problems 117131 Stine, Philip 75 Sudan 14 Switzerland 111 symbolic meaning 17 symbols of wealth 20 syntagmatic frames 110 Syria 26 T Taber, Charles R. 74 Taiwan 29 Tan Tsai-xi’s book Nida on Translating 37 Taylor, Kenneth 79 technical meaning of words 121-129 termites 20 Tetelcingo, Mexico 51 texts and interpretation 87-88 Textual Commentrary on the Hebrew Bible 104-108
Index
Thailand 27-28, 71 Thompson, John A. 105 The Bible Translator 7 Tic-Tock 78 training translators 75-78 translation conference sponsored by Japan Bible Society 33 Translation Consultants 69-70 translation problems caused by diverse topographies 50-51 Truk 12 typing lessons for translation helpers 28
W Waard, Jan de 73-74 Wendland, Ernst 75 whales 1 Wheaton College 71 Who am I? 132-143 Whorf’s view of Hopi 56 Wikgren, Allen 99 word 125 Wonderly, William L. 69 World Council of Churches 16 Wright, Leila 4
U Uganda 14, 15 United Bible Societies 4, 5 University of Southern California 2
X Xi’an 36, 37
V Valiente language of Panama 51 Vatican Council II 95-98 Vocabularies, extent of 19
Z Zacchaeus as sermon topic 46-47 Zuanglin Hu of Peking University 37 Zulu Book of Psalms 82
157
