Gender-Accurate Translation of Figures of Speech in the Hebrew Bible

The Contemporary Torah is not a gender-inclusive translation. It aims to be gender-accurate, which is something else. As already noted, a gender-accurate translation does not pass judgment on how the source text constructed gender, but seeks to be as gender-inclusive or as gender-specific as the source text is, no more, no less.

Translators today face issues that were relatively unknown in previous times and places. It used to be acceptable to render male-gendered Hebrew language the intent of which, it is clear from context, was gender-inclusive, by equally male English language capable of a gender-inclusive sense.

It isn’t any more.

People have been impacted by the tremendous fuss around questions of language and gender promoted by people on both the left and the right, and are therefore likely to misread male language when used generically, as if it applied to people of the male gender only.

This is a depressing situation for someone who loves the power of language to describe things with terminology that is more than strictly referential. I love gendered language that is used in inclusive ways. For example, in this part of the Midwest, it’s not uncommon to hear one teenage girl address a group of fellow teenage girls with the expression, “Hey, guys!” It’s also possible, in certain contexts, to encourage a male with the following expression, “You go, girl!” The allusivity of this language is wonderful.

I detest the notion that anything should be changed in the famous statement by astronaut Neil Armstrong, which goes like this:

That's one small step for man; one giant leap for mankind.[1]

I would be irked no end by someone who thought it necessary to revise this to:

That’s one small step for a human being, one great leap for humankind.

The trouble with this “translation” is that it diminishes the degree to which Armstrong’s statement resumes and continues all other examples in English letters in which the achievements of ‘man’ and ‘mankind’ are touched upon. It also impoverishes the text’s prosody, another no-no.

In the world of my dreams, feminists would defend the use of male-gendered and female-gendered language in allusive, inconclusive, and inclusive ways. They would be the first to recognize that the language is impoverished if a word like ‘man’ is banned from being used in an inclusive sense.

In the world of my dreams, even anti-feminist theologians would highlight rather rather than downplay the degree to which male-gendered language in the biblical languages is used inclusively.

There’s only one problem: my dream world does not exist.  In the real world,  my friend  Debbie may call herself a 'fireman,'  but her union avoids the term, and calls everyone  'firefighters.'  In the real  world, Vladimir Putin is  'Person of the Year,'  whereas I would prefer to call that person, even if it were Hillary Clinton,  'Man of the Year.'

If possible, the controversy around the use of gendered language in reference to God is even more polarized. On the one hand – among both feminists and anti-feminists - you have people claiming that the deity in the Bible is male, without quotation marks. On the other hand, you have people who claim, as I do, that all language referred to God is figurative to one degree or another, and that in translation, the attempt should be made to be, in this respect as well, as gender-specific as the source text is, no more, no less.

How does The Contemporary Torah handle this issue? I offer examples in my next post.

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[1] As pointed out on NASA’s website, at the time of the mission, the world heard Armstrong say "That's one small step for man; one giant leap for mankind." As Andrew Chaikin reports in A Man on the Moon, after the mission, Armstrong said that he had intended to say 'one small step for a man.'  However, he also agreed that the 'a' didn't seem to be audible in the recordings. The important point is that the world had no problem understanding his meaning. Over the decades, people interested in details of the mission have listened repeatedly to the recordings, without hearing any convincing evidence of the 'a'. In 2006, journalist / entrepreneur Peter Shann Ford claimed to have located the 'a' in the waveform of Armstrong's speech. Subsequently, more rigorous analyses of the transmission were undertaken. As of October 2006, none of these analyses support Ford's conclusion.

Comments

[Suzanne]

You are talking in ideals here and not really addressing some very simple linguistic questions. Should bene Israel be translated as "children of Israel" or "sons of Israel" and in the absence of a word for "child" doesn't "ben" sometimes mean simply that - a child. Is there always some deep metaphorical meaning to all this or is it sometimes simply a matter of calling both

[Suzanne]

... oops, that's enough for today.

[JohnFH]

See my next posts.

[David E. S. Stein]

Yes, there are consequences in our allowing "man" to continue the centuries-old trend of shedding its originally gender-neutral sense. It is a gain for technical writers (who value clarity and precision) and a loss for poets (who value rhythm, ambiguity, and allusive language).

Now, when you speak about the propriety of using gendered language in inclusive ways, let me suggest that you be careful to differentiate between between singular and plural references, and between references to a particular individual versus to a category of persons:

** The term "guys" works inclusively because it's plural. I doubt that those teenagers who say "you guys" would likewise say about an individual, "She's a really great guy."

** Your friend Debbie can call herself a "fireman" because it's in reference to a specific person and you already know that she's a woman. No confusion there. That's a different situation than the union's choice of terminology to refer to its overall membership, where "firemen" (rather than "firefighters") would make its female members relatively invisible.

In other words, your examples cannot be generalized to all instances of male language, only to others of the same type.

[JohnFH]

Very interesting points, David.

However, "she's a really great guy" is possible. Google "she's a great guy" and you'll see it's used, and in more than one sense. The sense I'm familiar with is pretty much like the way singular "Mensch" can be used in German irrespective of gender.

In addition, as George Jochnowitz states (American Speech 58 [1983] 68-70), "'She's a nice guy' can be heard now and then."