Karen Jobes squares off against the essential literalists

In a paper given at the last annual meeting of the Evangelical Theological Society, Karen Jobes challenges the claim that an “an essentially literal” translation of a text yields a more accurate representation of the source text’s meaning than does a translation that aims for “functional” or “dynamic equivalence.” Her thesis is the following: “The fidelity of a translation to the original language cannot be adequately evaluated by pitting formal and functional equivalence against each other” (page 16; the entire paper is available online here).

The Zondervan blog has initiated a discussion of her paper; go here. I was invited to blog in reply. Here goes.

As did Richard Rhodes not too long ago on the excellent Better Bibles Blog, Karen Jobes takes a look at standards of accuracy in translation beyond the realm of Bible translation. In particular, she looks at the practice of simultaneous translation in such fora as international conferences and the United Nations. Karen highlights a key finding by bolding it in her paper:

Linguists studying [simultaneous] translations discovered that the failure to communicate accurately the meaning of the source utterance was found in those places where the simultaneous translator rendered the source utterance too literally, that is, when preservation of the grammatical, syntactical, and semantic forms of the original statements was given too high a priority in producing the translation. (p. 10)

An excellent point. I worked on occasion as a simultaneous interpreter at international conferences while living in Italy, and I attest to its truth. When translating on the fly, any attempt at formal equivalence inevitably backfires. In a worst case scenario, formal equivalence is symptomatic of the fact that the simultaneous translator does not understand the utterance to be translated well enough to translate properly.

Karen also notes that studies of simultaneous translation have shown that accurate translation from one language to another sometimes requires far fewer or far more words in translation than are found in the source text. It all depends on the peculiarities of the two languages involved.

Another excellent point. For example, in terms of translating from ancient Hebrew into English, the English will almost inevitably be more verbose.

Still, I think the value of analogies drawn from the world of simultaneous translation (Karen Jobes) and professional translation standards in the European Union (Richard Rhodes) is limited in terms of the practice of Bible translation. I will explain why in an upcoming post.

Comments

[J. K. Gayle]

Thanks for comparing how Karen H. Jobes (using "simultaneous translation" analogously) and Richard A. Rhodes (turning to the EU translation standards) propose to get at "accuracy" in a Bible translation.

Jobes is also talking about methodology. The EU does not if they do share the goal, somehow, of "accuracy," which for those EU standards is pure idealistic Platonic gas, despite their use of the word "process" to cover up the vague vagaries of this sentence: "The translator shall transfer the meaning in the source language into the target language in order to produce a text that is in accordance with the rules of the linguistic system of the target language and that meets the instructions received in the project assignment." And offering lists of what a "translator shall pay attention to" and "shall check [of] his/her own work" adds absolutely nothing.)

What's really novel about turning to simultaneous translation as an analogous methodology for Bible translation is there's the subjective human element involved. (Yes, Jobes wonders whether "dead language" and whether "extra time in the process of text work" really breaks the analogy down). I see simultaneous translation as very close to what Kenneth Pike does in his monolingual demonstrations.

Methods that are mired in concern over textual accuracy at any level of language are born out of a translation model that puts logic over person. That makes the original the beautiful source while the translation is always the ugly target. (Remember what Stefan keeps trying to say, as if his voice could ever be exceedingly small.)

What if instead of source and target; original beauty and inevitable ugliness; and the constant strife over "accuracy," the person translated and the person being translated worked like guest and host? (That's the way Lydia He Liu conceives of the kind of translation Chinese do of modern Western texts).

But if we're stuck in logical Western modernism, then how about we compare Jobes' methodology proposal with Willis Barnstone's? The answer? We aren't ready to imagine his fair critique. "In our century," shows Barnstone, "the Bible has suffered ignominiously 'accurate' translations. Accurate has replaced literal as the word to justify bad translation" (The Poetics of Translation: History, Theory, Practice, page 63).

Now someone's going to object to all this: "we just can't have IN-accuracies when it's the Bible being translated." And yet Barnstone would rightly have this reply: "A deeper infidelity in Bible translation goes undetected, however. For although it is assumed that the felony of contemporary Bible translators is literary insensitivity, mediocrity, or overliteralism, few people realize that from earliest Bible translation to the present there has only been the appearance of literalism [for accuracy's sake, of course] . . . The translations of the Hebrew Bible and the Christian Scriptures, consciously or not, are similar to the controlled news information in authoritarian states. In other words, license (register c) and extreme freedom has been applied to Bible translations, yet passed off as literalism (register a). There is nothing uncommon about a misalliance of theory and practice, of intention and realization. The gap between proclaimed intention and realization in regard to Bible translation is extreme, however."

(Somebody please tell Lingamish that Father-Mother is not more accurate than Mother-Father. And that Susan Thistlethwaite is on who remembers person is above logic in translation when she says, methodologically even, “We also try to look at ways in which texts have been misunderstood or misused in order to, uh, do actual harm to people and to, umm, apparently exclude them from the realm of God.”)

[Andrew Compton]

Jobes also has an article on translation in the most recent issue of JETS.

Thanks for the link to this paper. I had the chance to hear her give it at ETS and have been wishing I had a copy ever since!

[Lingamish]

JK, your comment is rich with novel ideas. I agree that Mother-Father is equally valid, and Susan and her team were wimps for not putting it that way.

I had this crazy experience interpreting for Stephen Levinsohn addressing Mozambicans and explaining how Greek gives prominence to clauses by putting them in the front while Bantu languages put them at the end. And the way I said it was something like this: "...while the Bantu languages put it where? At the end." So my Portuguese was mimicking a classic technique in Bantu languages: using a rhetorical question to highlight a piece of information at the end of a statement.

I spend far more time interacting the Biblical writers being forced against their will to speak Bantu, than English (or Luther's German) and I've yet to meet an African translator who can truly let go of the reference translation and communicate the meaning in his own language. Their struggle is not that much different from what translators in the West are going through. If anything they have a slight advantage because there is simply no way to reflect the form of the original in a hyper-agglutinative language. So a formal translation is impossible. And a formal translation in English probably is too.

And John, please read the interview of Newman on the PBS link. He states the purpose of the CEV translation. It was not for second-language speakers or 4th graders and you are sowing confusion by saying so. And my statements about literary translations were about a hypothetical case and not a comment on what I consider an ideal translation for English-speakers (not specialists). I would like to see such a translation done. Perhaps we can collaborate?

[JohnFH]

David,

the question of what the CEV was intended to be, and what in fact it has become, is an interesting one. I have my copy of the CEV right in front in me; it is a "Children's Illustrated Edition." So far as I know, CEV is mostly sold as a children's Bible.

But you are right; that is not what CEV was intended to be. In the preface, it is stated very clearly that CEV is intended for the "inexperienced reader," for that segment of the population, "half of U.S. adults" according to statistics released by the National Center for Education, who "have very limited reading and writing skills."

I don't know what the solution is for that half of the population CEV targets. Experience tells me that less literate individuals prefer to read the Bible in a prestige translation like (N)KJV. They understand it, insofar as they do, based on oral expositions of it they have heard from a preacher.

The whole idea of a Bible you can just pick up and read, without the benefit of a community of faith and a tradition of interpretation as contexts, has grave limits. ABS markets CEV as a "mission-driven" translation. But is the mission one of being able to just pick up the Bible and read it, without the benefit of a community of faith and a tradition of interpretation as contexts?

That's not the mission that drives me.

[Lingamish]

Gosh, that makes a lot of sense. I'm going to dump all these CEVs and get something better for our family. What would you suggest?

[JohnFH]

What translation is being used in worship and from the pulpit? It might be good to use the translation your kids hear elsewhere as a point of departure.

[Lingamish]

Please forgive my sarcasm. I was temporarily possessed by an evil spirit...

Well, in answer to your question, I can only say that considering our situation in Africa that's a complicated question!

But I agree with you totally that in general a family should try to fit within the environment of their church. And I don't envy pastors who have to navigate the treacherous waters of selecting a pew Bible or living with choices made in past generations. Nor do I think it is easy in America where the 31 flavors of Bible versions creates quite a bit of confusion.

Sorry to keep beating on this horse but a pew Bible and a Bible for children ought to share a similar characteristic: they read well out loud.

No easy answers on this one, eh?