photo credit: bemky
Several weeks back I attended a birthday party in honor of an elderly woman who has been coming regularly to a Bible study that I lead at the senior apartment complex where she lives. While this woman has verbalized on many occasions her trust in the Lord, I’m not exactly sure where her son’s family is at after meeting them for the first time at the party. It’s always interesting to hear the first remarks people make once they learn that one is a seminary student.
They asked what denominational affiliation the seminary has. I told them it is Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary, a Southern Baptist school. They then replied that they attend a local Catholic church but are open to “all things spiritual.” I was happy to agree that I, too, am open to “all things spiritual” as far as the plain meaning of the statement goes. I have nothing against spirituality. In fact, a non-Christian ex-worker once remarked to me that he finds it shallow that many Christians while religions aren’t spiritual. I agree.
Their second question was what I wanted to do after I graduate. “So are you going to be a minister or something?” I said that I could be but that I’m pursuing work in Bible translation. “Oh, that’s interesting. There’s a lot that’s lost in translation.” This is one of those statements that people often repeat after hearing because they think it sounds clever, but they’re not actually sure if it’s true; it only seems to be true on the face of it. The idea that a lot is left behind in translation just seems to makes sense.
I wasn’t sure whether to take this comment as a dig at Bible translation or what. I should have asked what they meant by that. I find this to be a good course of action to get to the bottom of people’s thinking. They’ll either be able to articulate a well-crafted explanation of whatever it is you asked them to clarify (rare) or they’ll stumble and sort of trail off (more common). Instead I replied by saying that over and over again in my studies I’m amazed at how well translations are able to reproduce what’s there in the original. For example, I’m doing an independent study this semester on Exodus wherein I’m reading through the Hebrew, the Septuagint, and two modern translations four times each to get a feel for what’s lost and how what is communicated is communicated. So far I’m amazed at how well the message of the text sings loud and clear.
Translation is what it is but I think I can safely conclude that the message of the Bible sings out loud and clear in any language despite whatever may be lost (a topic for another time). That is the point of translation: that God’s redemptive message faithfully sing loud and clear.
“First, accomplished writers create an English rendering; then, respected Bible scholars adjust the rendering to align the manuscript with the original texts.”
This raises all kinds of questions: What Vorlage (if not the GNT) are the “accomplished writers” using? If they’re consulting an English translation, the Voice Translation goes from Greek to English to “accomplished writer” tweaking to only then consulting “the original texts” to the finished product. This is surely backwards: re-interpreting English translated from Greek which is tweaked by Greek to arrive at English. Woah. No wonder they’re arriving at outlandish translations/interpretations.
Moreover, we primarily English readers already have a hard time enough trying to recognize OT allusions in the NT (intertextuality or whatever’s the best term) without replacing terms like “Messiah” with “the Liberator.” Indeed this is only one aspect of the expected Messiah.
Finally, though they claim “it is time to bring the body of Christ together again around the Bible” (page one of Preface) they unnecessarily distant themselves–yay, cut themselves off–from the last millennia of Christianity by removing words like “baptism” and “repentance.” I’m afraid more so than already people won’t have a clue what they’re talking about in their striving to be understood, contemporary and non-divisive.