Subject: RE: Bible translation and tc

From: Rolf Furuli <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 16 Jan 1997 15:29:17 +0000

On thu, 16 Jan Andrew Smith wrote:

<The completely "objective" translation is very elusive. To 
<even come close, one would need a large critical apparatus 
<to list alternatives.

I agree with everything Andrew wrote as a response to my 
E-mail. It was not my intention to discuss questions about 
translation, but rather to give a background for my 
text-critical questions. But allow me a comment on 
translation, which indirectly has a bearing on textual 
criticism:

In medicine we have the principle of `informed consent`. The 
patient makes the decision based on the specialized 
knowledge on the physician. The reader of the Bible is not 
in the same position. He is completely `in the hands of the 
translators`. The translation process starts with the 
thoughts of the author, and ends when the mind of the reader 
grasps this thought. What I have studied is whether it is 
possible for the translator with his translation to arrange 
for the reader to have a part in the translation, i.e. to 
make as few choices on the part of the reader as possible, 
thus letting the reader work with the text.

I have compared the strictly literal, and controversial `The 
New World Translation` with the idiomatic `Today´s English 
Version` from the vantagepoint: To which degree is the 
theology and bias of the translators `forced upon`the 
reader? The reason why idiomatic translation is the rule 
today, is that such translations communicate better.However, 
for the group of Bible readers wanting to have a part in the 
translation process, literal translations  will be the best 
form of communication, provided that they have a good 
critical apparatus. In this way, even people who don´t know 
the original languages may benefit from tc.

Taking the results of Psycholinguistics into account, it is 
possible to make a sound theoretical foundation for literal 
Bible translation, accepting all James Barr has done for 
lexical semantics,and without building on the `etymological 
fallacy` (that there is one fundamental meaning for every 
Greek and Hebrew word).  

Rolf Furuli
Oslo