Just Give Me a Dictionary
Just Give me a Dictionary
“Just write what it says,” a man said, regarding Bible translation. He didn’t understand why, when you do a Bible translation, you can’t translate literally word for word. Another woman wrote and offered, “If you give me a Nabak-English dictionary, I can help you with your translation work from the US.” She was wondering how she could help my Mom after my Dad’s death.
While it’s easy to see the wholesome desire to help in such statements, they are just illustrating the unfortunate naivete many good, sincere people have about linguistics and translation.
If the language you are translating into – the receptor language - has the same words and ideas as the language you are translating from - the source language - then yes, you can translate one word directly to another. This simply doesn’t happen. Even if it did, you would still have to worry about the countless grammar, rules, exceptions, idioms and spellings needed to master becoming a good writer in the receptor language.
Remember all the spelling, grammar, English and composition classes you took in elementary, middle and high school? The classes you took for 12 long years? That gives you an idea of what you must learn to begin a Bible translation in another language. Keep in mind that we’re talking about a hypothetical language which is so similar that you can do a word-for-word translation. That isn't even possible between the most similar of languages, such as French and Italian or Spanish and Portuguese.
What happens, then, when the receptor language does not have that same word or idea, or when the most direct translation possible produces a very skewed or distorted concept? When this happens, the translator must – and should - grapple with how to rephrase the concept in the new language while being careful to keep the accurate, intended meaning from the source.
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His appearance was like lightning, and his clothes were white as snow. The hair on his head was white like wool, as white as snow, and his eyes were like blazing fire. |
The word “snow” is a clear and simple example of this, and it turned out to be an easy issue to solve because the passages in question, such as Matthew 28:3 and Revelation 1:14, were illustrations, not historical facts. It does not say, “Snow was falling.” Instead, Matthew and John are trying to find the words to adequately describe their own subjective experience. They illustrate these with the word “snow” because they, and their first-century readers, knew what snow was. The Nabak people, however, live on a jungle island, so their language does not have the word “snow.” How could it then be illustrated for them? Based on this specific cultural information the word “snow” was changed to “cockatoo,” the whitest thing they could think of.
Several years ago, a controversy arose around a small number of Wycliffe Bible Translators in majority Muslim communities. They were attempting to translate a difficult phrase, one that is not only vital to Christian theology, but which many Muslims already have a misconception of: Son of God. This is a complicated issue, a tricky tangle of Trinitarian theology, Muslim-Christian politics, common misconceptions held by many Muslims about Jesus, God and Mary, mother of Jesus, and more still. Many Muslims believe - and abhor - the idea that God had sexual relations in order to beget Jesus, but of course it is a complete misunderstanding.
To avoid this error, some of these translators agonized over this dilemma and translated the passage as: "the Beloved Son who comes or originates from God." Their decision to do this meant they weren’t translating the Bible – at least in this passage – literally. They were taking the focus away from Jesus’s paternity while trying to maintain the connection between God and Jesus.
Some Christians objected to the way this issue was being handled by these WBT missionaries, and many people were upset. Many also defended the position.[i] Let me be clear in saying that they were correct in raising objections, and many Bible translators, encourage this sort of critical peer-review. However, when word of this broke across the Christian world around 2011, many denounced WBT and demanded a more literal interpretation of the "Son of God" passages in question. A few organizations distanced themselves from WBT and the Wycliffe Global Alliance. Some even severed their ties altogether. I’m not interested in blogging about what followed rather I am interested in the issue of translation itself. This is a serious matter and strikes right at the heart of what Bible translation actually means, about why translators do what they do.
The Nabak people had no questions and no misinterpretations with using the same form, “Son of God”. But in some areas of the world it spells gigantic problems. The Bible is so full of familial terms like “Son of God” - a clear indication of God's emphasis on relationships - it is impossible to avoid them or substitute a different form. These relational terms are an important way the Bible talks about salvation, so we can’t change them.
After some initial confusion, Wycliffe Bible Translators leadership voluntarily submitted their organization to external scrutiny. They invited the World Evangelical Alliance (WEA), an independent and highly respected Christian organization, to appoint a panel to look into the matter and offer advice, and they agreed to follow all recommendations of the panel. When the WEA released their final report[ii] in 2013, WBT publicly thanked them, and has made all the recommendations into permanent changes to their procedures. This includes any future issues of this nature being referred for independent evaluation. This was a mature, reasonable and professional response. They had admitted what had happened, sought guidance outside their own organization, and changed their own procedures to avoid this sort of issue in the future.
Despite the controversy generated by this complex issue, the dedicated and sincere women and men doing this hard work will deal with the “Son of God” issue in these Muslim countries. After all, Muslims often refer to Mecca as the “mother of all villages,” and I am confident they understand Mecca wasn’t having sexual relations to produce all the other villages.
I agree with the recommendation that the WEA made, and I think Bible translations are better for having been scrutinized and held accountable. Many organizations who had pulled away from WBT were also satisfied with the outcome. For example, the Assemblies of God had threatened to sever ties with WBT but, after the report was released, they reaffirmed their partnership with WBT. The report had been released in April 2013, and within a few months the issue had mostly blown over. Wycliffe Bible Translators, which has been doing Bible translation since 1942, had weathered a storm.
Why, then, did Wycliffe Associates, a servant organization of WBT, choose to break away from their parent and go it alone? Why did they cite this "Son of God" controversy as the reason? And why did they do this nearly three full years after the WEA report was released?
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