Featured The Harm of Dynamic Equivalence

I have some time this week before starting teaching on Monday, and one of our translation students is interested in the translation philosophy of Dynamic Equivalence (DE) in the Good News Bible, often the source text (ST) for Wycliffe people and other Bible translators. (DE, invented by Eugene Nida, was later renamed functional equivalence because of misuse of the original term, but we'll use DE.) So to help me with that, first I'm going to define and describe DE, then go through the GNB John 3.

First of all, it is important to note that Nida was neoorthodox, so his translation theory is based on the neoorthodox view of the inspiration of Scripture. Nida wrote, “Neo-orthodox theology has given a new perspective to the doctrine of divine inspiration. For the most part, it conceives of inspiration primarily in terms of the response of the receptor, and places less emphasis on what happened to the source at the time of writing” (Eugene Nida, Toward a Science of Translating, 1964, p. 27.).

Therefore, the goal of a DE translation is the experience of the reader in the target language, more so than the authorial intent of the original document. The term “receptor” is very important in DE, so I avoid it in favor of "target." It refers to the reader of the Bible translation, who is assumed to react to Scriptures in an existential way, experiencing something which is not necessarily eternal truth but merely subjective truth for the immediate present.

Nida wrote, “Dynamic equivalence is therefore to be defined in terms of the degree to which the receptors of the message in the receptor language respond to it in substantially the same manner as the receptors in the source language” (Nida and Tabor, The Theory and Practice of Translation, 1982, p. 24). This is called "reader response."

So, why don't I like DE, other than the fact that it is based on neoorthodoxy?
1. It often misses the nuances of the original language by making the target language primary.
2. It usually seeks to make ambiguity explicit, therefore defeating the purpose of the ambiguity used by the original divine and human authors.
3. It often adds material that the translator thinks necessary to make meaning explicit.
4. It sometimes leaves out what it considers to be repetition, meaning some of the character of the original is lost ("Verily, verily....).
5. It actually looks down on tribal people, thinking they are not bright enough to understand the meaning without extra words being added.
6. Etc. etc.

 

The first English version done with DE was the Today’s English Version (TEV; the book title was Good News for Modern Man; now called the Good News Bible), translated by liberal Baptist Robert Bratcher. In the first edition, it was notorious for translating “death” for the Greek haima in Rom. 3:25, Col. 1:14 and 20, etc. The outcry was so great that this was corrected in later revisions.

I will compare the GNB as found on Biblegateway.com to the NA28 Greek text. I'll give the GNB verse, then the Greek, then comment.

1. There was a Jewish leader named Nicodemus, who belonged to the party of the Pharisees.
1 Ἦν δὲ ἄνθρωπος ἐκ τῶν Φαρισαίων, Νικόδημος ὄνομα αὐτῷ, ἄρχων τῶν Ἰουδαίων·
JoJ: “Who belonged to” is not strictly literal, but not too bad. There is one added phrase in English, “the party of.” I think this adds information that is not accurate. In some languages, it might be misunderstood as a political party. The Greek simply has “a man of the Pharisees,” and that is how I would translate it, though I might add a footnote to explain “Pharisees.”

2 One night he went to Jesus and said to him, “Rabbi, we know that you are a teacher sent by God. No one could perform the miracles you are doing unless God were with him.”
2 οὗτος ἦλθεν πρὸς αὐτὸν νυκτὸς καὶ εἶπεν αὐτῷ· ῥαββί, οἴδαμεν ὅτι ἀπὸ θεοῦ ἐλήλυθας διδάσκαλος· οὐδεὶς γὰρ δύναται ταῦτα τὰ σημεῖα ποιεῖν ἃ σὺ ποιεῖς, ἐὰν μὴ ᾖ ὁ θεὸς μετ᾽ αὐτοῦ.
JoJ: This rendering adds “the miracles you are doing” instead of just “these miracles.” This makes explicit what is ambiguous. There is no need for that, since miracles are in the recent context of John ch. 2.

3 Jesus answered, “I am telling you the truth: no one can see the Kingdom of God without being born again.”
3 ἀπεκρίθη Ἰησοῦς καὶ εἶπεν αὐτῷ· ἀμὴν ἀμὴν λέγω σοι, ἐὰν μή τις γεννηθῇ ἄνωθεν, οὐ δύναται ἰδεῖν τὴν βασιλείαν τοῦ θεοῦ.
JoJ: The GNB leaves out “and said,” but that is the way the Apostle John wrote. If you simply say “Jesus answered” you are not portraying the Apostle John’s style accurately. It may sound a little strange to the ear in some languages to say, “Jesus answered and said,” but so what?

 

Hmm. Never thought of it that way, but....

 

Here are more verses:

4 “How can a grown man be born again?” Nicodemus asked. “He certainly cannot enter his mother's womb and be born a second time!”
4 Λέγει πρὸς αὐτὸν [ὁ] Νικόδημος· πῶς δύναται ἄνθρωπος γεννηθῆναι γέρων ὤν; μὴ δύναται εἰς τὴν κοιλίαν τῆς μητρὸς αὐτοῦ δεύτερον εἰσελθεῖν καὶ γεννηθῆναι;
JoJ: The GNB leaves out “to him.” It translates with “asked” instead of “said,” but that’s not a big problem. It adds the word “grown” to “man” though that word is not in the original Greek, and adds unneeded information. (Ever heard of a man who was not grown?) It adds the word “certainly,” which is unneeded. It changes a rhetorical question to a declarative sentence, which looks down on the reader as someone who cannot understand what a rhetorical question is.

5 “I am telling you the truth,” replied Jesus, “that no one can enter the Kingdom of God without being born of water and the Spirit.
5 ἀπεκρίθη Ἰησοῦς· ἀμὴν ἀμὴν λέγω σοι, ἐὰν μή τις γεννηθῇ ἐξ ὕδατος καὶ πνεύματος, οὐ δύναται εἰσελθεῖν εἰς τὴν βασιλείαν τοῦ θεοῦ.
JoJ: What Jesus actually said was, “Truly, truly, I say to you.” By paraphrasing those words, the translator, subtracts an element of redundancy from the teaching method of Jesus, and actually somehow makes Jesus sound boring. The second half of the verse paraphrases the Greek needlessly.

6 A person is born physically of human parents, but is born spiritually of the Spirit.
6 τὸ γεγεννημένον ἐκ τῆς σαρκὸς σάρξ ἐστιν, καὶ τὸ γεγεννημένον ἐκ τοῦ πνεύματος πνεῦμά ἐστιν.
JoJ: The GNB renders the Greek “flesh” as “physically of human parents.” There is no need for the words “human parents,” which is redundant and paraphrastic, not in the original. It paraphrases the double use of “flesh” in the Greek, thus losing the impact of the original.

 

When I first picked up my copy, I was fascinated by those drawings. I think they added to the actual book, though not part of the translation per se.

 

I have no frustration with DE. I simply oppose it. But go ahead and yank my chain.

To me it's poor Engish--idiomatic perhaps, but not good English. In a Bible translation I believe we should have a high level of English (and I don't mean archaic language). I once talked to a Buddhist man in Japan who bemoaned the modern Japanese versions as lacking dignity. He believed a holy book should sound elevated. It wasn't too long ago that the only Bibles in Japanese were in the beautiful classical Japanese.

Nicodemus was highly educated, and certainly not stupid. And I don't believe he thought Jesus was stupid, but he couldn't follow the metaphor Jesus was using. So he simply used a rhetorical question to show what he thought of the ideas Jesus was expressing. There may have been some sarcasm in that question.

We'll agree to differ, then.

Nope, won't do that. The Greek word ἀμὴν in this context means "Truly." It has turned into a loan word in English and many other languages, but a loan word rarely means the same as the word in the language it came from. Example: California sushi (寿司) would be laughed at in Japan, and the American idea of the ninja (忍者) is so far from the Japanese original as to be a joke.

The redundancy is unnecessary, since in the context it is clear in the Greek that a human is meant (τις in v. 5).

 

Thanks for the comments. Stay tuned.

 

Very interesting. Thank you.

In my research on Nida, I learned that when Nida asked him to do a translation of the NT for Southern Baptists, he translated Ephesians, but was so discouraged by the negative feedback that he decided to quit--but of course didn't (Philip Stine [Nida's friend], Let the Words be Written, p. 81). Bible translation is not for intellectual wimps.

 

7 Do not be surprised because I tell you that you must all be born again.
7 μὴ θαυμάσῃς ὅτι εἶπόν σοι· δεῖ ὑμᾶς γεννηθῆναι ἄνωθεν.
JoJ: Not bad. The GNB does make the verse southern, “you…all” (ya’ll), adding the word “all.” But the translator’s purpose is to bring out the plural “you,” which modern English does not have, so that’s not bad.

8 The wind blows wherever it wishes; you hear the sound it makes, but you do not know where it comes from or where it is going. It is like that with everyone who is born of the Spirit.”
8 τὸ πνεῦμα ὅπου θέλει πνεῖ καὶ τὴν φωνὴν αὐτοῦ ἀκούεις, ἀλλ᾽ οὐκ οἶδας πόθεν ἔρχεται καὶ ποῦ ὑπάγει· οὕτως ἐστὶν πᾶς ὁ γεγεννημένος ἐκ τοῦ πνεύματος.
JoJ: The GNB leaves out the word “and” after “wishes.” The rest of the verse is fairly good.

9 “How can this be?” asked Nicodemus.
9 Ἀπεκρίθη Νικόδημος καὶ εἶπεν αὐτῷ· πῶς δύναται ταῦτα γενέσθαι;
JoJ: The GNB here again deletes the Apostle John’s style, leaving out “and said.” Also, it makes a plural tauta (these things) into a singular (this).

 

In the light of DE's stated goal of reader response, I don't consider those quotes to be DE. Nida's theory is a modern departure from what used to be called "free translation." So, NT quotes from the LXX may have some of what I call "micro paraphrase," but not DE. But that's a whole 'nother thread.

Now brother, you know that's not part of my narrative. In fact, Uncle Miya liked good old Young's, because it helped him understand the original. So, maybe a thread on "How Overly Literal Translations Help."

 

Folks, one help I hope this thread will be is to present DE as not just another form of paraphrase or free translation. It was a mostly new idea (not completely, though) in 1964 when Eugene Nida published Toward a Science of Translating. His terminology was misunderstood and misused, so he renamed it functional equivalence in his 1986 book with Jan de Waard, From One Language to Another.

His friend wrote a book about Nida's ministry, and said:

“Nida later felt that the term 'dynamic equivalence' had been misunderstood and was partly responsible for translations like the Living Bible. Some translators used the term 'dynamic' to refer to translations that had impact and appeal. But since he had in fact defined 'dynamic equivalence in terms of 'functional equivalence,' he began to use this latter term instead. ‘Functional equivalence' was introduced in From One Language to Another, co-authored with Jan de Waard" (Philip C.Stine, Let the Words Be Written, 2004, p. 51).

P.S. My son heard Stine speak at a regional ETS meeting, and Stine was adamant about pronouncing Nida's name correctly. So if you want to sound educated about DE, here it tje proper pronunciation: Nigh-da (not knee-da).