Featured Elements of Bible Translation

By this title I mean things that a Bible translator must know or check or learn in order to do the best possible Bible translation. Sure, anyone who knows a source language and a target language, both, can do a Bible translation, but it may turn out to be extremely literal (Ulphilas in the 4th century, Young's in the 20th century, etc.), or full of errors (like a certain tribal translation that had to be recalled and all the copies burned because of a single wrong word in the target language).

I began translating the Lifeline Japanese Bible in around 2000, some time before I joined the BB, and had so much to learn! I had three books by Eugene Nida, picked up at a missionary kid school second hand sale, had been trained in Hebrew and Greek, had taught Greek in a Japanese Bible school, and had been part of a brief failed effort to translate from the TR of John, but was still pretty ignorant. The denizens of the BB were sometimes a big help, like when I asked them if I should transliterate or translate baptizo, baptisma (I baptize, baptism). I translated.

I learned as I went, and I'd like to share some of those things with you.

 

First of all, consider semantics, often defined as "the study of meaning." A word can be either monosemous (one meaning) or polysemous (various meanings). Let's say you decide a word in the source language is monosemous. You're not done. Questions to ask include:

Is there an equivalent word in the target language? Finding an exact equivalent is often very difficult. There are some easy words like "gold," the same word for 1000s of years in Chinese (金). But then once you find that easy word, you still have to determine whether or not it is used in the source language in an idiom, or some other way symbolically (metaphor, etc.).

Then there are very difficult words like "justification," which must be a phrase in Japanese: 義と認められる (gi to mitomerareru), "being recognized as righteous." The verb mitomeru there is passive, but I had a hard time for years figuring out the meaning of the root word. One day the senior missionary was at our place in Yokohama for a tent meeting. Looking at a piece of land for the tent, he had me call up the owner, who used mitomeru. So I asked the senior missionary, and he didn't know! I still had to learn that it meant "to recognize." It was a process.

Then you may have to determine if the word in the target language is for males or females! Many languages distinguish in some cases between the sexes. Japanese does so. For example, in Japanese men never end a sentence with the conversational particle わ (wa). You wouldn't want Jesus sounding feminine, would you?

This is all somewhat less difficult if the translator is a native speaker of the target language, but then he has to get the word in the source language correct.

This is all really easy, right??

 

It's complicated!

I do consider koine Greek to be a dead language in the sense that it is frozen in time as we read it in the NT. In some ways that makes it easier to figure out, in that the resources (LXX, church fathers, etc., are accessible in the same or near same time frame. Having said that, koine Greek is not static in history, having developed into modern Greek over the centuries.

As for Hebrew, the fact that it has been resurrected into modern Hebrew makes it unique among modern spoken languages. On the other hand, while not a spoken language for centuries, it was regularly accessed by Jewish and Christian scholars, though not changing and developing in the way a "living" language does. (Cf the older and modern meanings of "gay" in English, or how we no longer say "thee" and "thou.")

Great example of good semantic research! Thanks for posting it.

 

Let's say you are going to track down the meaning of a Greek hapax legomenon, occurring only once in the NT. First of all, the context in the Greek is vital. How is the word being used? This may not give the final answer, but can help. Then, you can consult other sources, such as the LXX and early church fathers, as mentioned above. If you are a sophisticated researcher you can search the usage in the papyri, a resource not available to such lexicographers as Thayer or Strong.

Historic linguistics (etymology) is a last resort, but sometimes it is needed, such as with the famous example of theopneustos (θεόπνευστος), a compound word probably invented by the Apostle Paul from θεος ("God") and πνευμα ("spirit" or "breath"). The word then means "God-Breathed," as my grandfather's theological tome on inspiration has it, Our God-Breathed Book, the Bible, by John R. Rice. The Greek word exists in no document prior to 2 Timothy, but does exist in early church writings after Paul.

 

Americans are really spoiled with their many, many Bible translations. It always bothers me when a Christian author uses a bunch of different translations to make his points. Really? Can't you find a translation you can trust?

Again, the fact that Western civilization has a Christian foundation means that a lot of English translation efforts are homogenous, using the same terminology and similar renderings, competing with each other for the best renderings, the ones the customers will most appreciate.

However, missionary Bible translators usually face a paucity of such material. And it's easy to get a word wrong in the target language. A particularly difficult word is "Spirit/spirit." Is your word the one used for spiritism in a tribe? Uh oh!

In Buddhist countries it is quite easy to use a word that is religious, but with Buddhist connotations, or even Buddhist primary usage. One such word in Japanese is satori, verb satoru. (悟り, 悟る). This is the word used in Buddhism for "enlightenment," which may be achieved by meditation. Check it out here: さとり - Jisho.org.

Even the most used and literal and conservative translation, the Shinkaiyaku (done by NASB principles and paid for by the Lockman Foundation) uses this Buddhist term for "understanding" in various places in the Old Testament, especially in Proverbs! For the word in our translation, we use the neutral term rikairyoku (理解力), ability to understand.

 

Another challenge in determining the meaning of a single word is respect language, also called honorifics. This points to words used to address someone of either higher or lower status in society. Some languages have as many as four or five levels of respect language.

So, do the Pharisees show respect towards Jesus, or treat him as an inferior? Depends on the context. Some Pharisees are rude to Jesus, others are respectful. It can be very difficult to discern which level of respect language to use in the rendering.

Some might think that English has no respect language, but that is mistaken. The Bible has titles: Rabbi, Teacher/Master, Lord, etc. Then what about when Jesus calls his mother (John 2:4) or someone else (Matthew 15:28, Luke 13:12) just "Woman"? Is that being disrespectful? It sounds like it in English, but it is not disrespectful in koine Greek. So is the rude-sounding "Woman" okay in English? What about kurios (κύριος)? Should it be translated "Lord" or "Sir"? Again, it depends on the context.

Japanese has five levels, in my reckoning: plain, polite, respectful, highly respectful, and imperial level. To show respect, we considered having Jesus addressing his mother as 女の方, which might be loosely translated into English, "Woman of honor." We ended up with just 婦人 (fujin), a normal word for "lady" with no honorific connotations, either negative or positive.

 

Another issue with choosing nouns in the target language is style. This has to be done with the translator's skopos--translation goal--in mind. Is he going for a folksy, very colloquial translation? Or does he want a literary version? Or perhaps he is even shooting for a classical language version. I know of one translation effort in Tibetan that was working with a classical dialect because there were so many dialects to choose from, but Tibetans communicated through the classical dialect.

In Confucian societies we have a tough time with the simple pronoun "you." In Japanese we have the normal word for "you" being anata (あなた). This is a neutral term, suitable for any style. It can be contracted in colloquial dialogue as anta (あんた). A more crude word is omae (お前), a strictly male term used for someone below one's self in society, including (in Japanese eyes) women! (Should Jesus use this one for Satan??) A more polite version of that is kimi (きみ、君), which is usually male but can be used for females. Then we have nanji (なんじ、汝), the classical version of "you."

And you thought that "you" is a simple word, and that "thee" and "thou" were hard to figure out!

 

A big challenge for the Bible translator is what linguists call taboo words. A taboo word is “a word known to speakers but avoided in some, most, or all forms or contexts of speech, for reasons of religion, decorum, politeness, etc.”
P. H. Matthews, Oxford Concise Dictionary of Linguistics, 2nd ed. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007), 400.

There are no taboo words in the Bible, in spite of a certain Greek scholar's view that skubalon (σκύβαλον), a hapax legomenon in Philippians 3:8 to mean "dung," is such a word. The scholar in question thinks it is equivalent to the "s" word in English. However, careful research shows that physicians used this word in the first century, so it is more equivalent to "fecal matter" than the offensive "s" word, since no doctor uses the "s" word to his patients!

At any rate, the translator must be careful not to use words that are offensive to the average person in the target culture. One day in a sermon is used the Japanese particle ze (ぜ), which I had heard two little boys use, so it had to be okay, right? Nope. One of the dear ladies in the church informed me that I should never again use that word in a sermon! It's thought to be a bad word by the average Japanese, even though it essentially has no meaning, being a sentence ending particle used for emphasis.

One day in Yokohama our son came home using a Japanese word we did not know. So I checked it out in my biggest Japanese-English dictionary, and whoops, it was a taboo word!

The thing is, sometimes dictionaries don't tell you this stuff. Check out the word ze here: ぜ - Jisho.org. You have to learn it from the nationals or the tribespeople, often through using it in their presence and being rebuked. So Bible translation, especially cross-cultural missionary Bible translation, teaches humility.

 

Here are the various kinds of taboo words:

1. Taking God's name in vain. (Usually only first world countries with a Christian history have this category.) This is unambiguous. There is no doubt when this kind of taboo word is used. It is when a person uses any name of God (God, Jesus, etc.) in a vain way, or in other words, as an expletive instead of with its real meaning. An expletive is a word used for its effect, rather than its meaning.

2. Cursing. This is actually wishing disaster upon someone or something. It usually occurs in English with the word “d**n,” which was originally a good English word but has become a taboo word. This is also an unambiguous expletive, meaning that it is obvious when it is used.

3. Other expletives have meanings involved with bodily functions. This is kind of a catch-all category, and the usages are often ambiguous, meaning that depending on the society the words may be different. Some British words are not taboo words in American English, and vice versa. It is society which decides when and why these words are taboo words.

4. Insulting words. Every language has words which are purposefully insulting. The literal meaning might be totally innocuous in another language. The worst thing you can call a Japanese is 馬鹿野郎 (“Country bumpkin fool”).

5. Racial epithets. Any place where two or more races live together will have inappropriate words denoting racism.

 

Consider the issue of inflection. This is where a language uses prefixes, suffixes, and infixes (morphemes in the middle of a word) to show changed grammar and meaning. English is only lightly inflected: adding "-s" for a plural, adding "-ing" for a participle, "-ed" for a past tense, and the like.

On the other hand, Greek is highly inflected, with five noun cases, which apply also to adjectives and definite articles, various verb tenses, moods, and voices, with one verb having a prefix, infix, and suffix, all three! Only adverbs are not inflected in Greek!

Compare these to Japanese, which is inflected somewhere between those two languages. Or then there is Hungarian, which has 18 noun cases!

The noun cases in Greek are: nominative (the subject of the sentence), genitive (possessive), dative (indirect object), accusative (direct object), and vocative (who you are speaking to). (The Davis beginning grammar and some others have seven cases, but that's not relevant here.) These are the basic usages of the cases, but there are others which I won't go into. The point is, the casual, English-only translator misses the significance of cases in a language.

 

Consider the spiritual elements needed for Bible translation. Just to translate the New Testament alone takes years, unless you somehow garner full financial support and are able to work full time. Even then the revising, proofing, etc., may take years. The point is, unless you are called by God, don't be a Bible translator!

Part of Matthew's Great Commission is to teach the believers all that Jesus taught us. That demands Bible translation! So Bible translation is also obedience, and that is a spiritual characteristic.

Again, Bible translation ability is a gift of God. I equate it with the non-miraculous gift of "tongues" ("languages" in 1611) and the "interpretation of tongues" in 1 Corinthians 12:10--"To another the working of miracles; to another prophecy; to another discerning of spirits; to another divers kinds of tongues; to another the interpretation of tongues." These are not miraculous, bur providential gifts.

I have long been aware that God has gifted me in the area of language, and especially in the interpretation or translation of languages. Two of the best years of my life were when I could study Japanese full time! I absolutely loved it! I had to travel two hours one way into Tokyo from Saitama Prefecture, braving the tremendously packed "Yama no Te" rush hour trains down in Tokyo, then be in class for 3 hours, have lunch, play ping pong, then head back two hours. It was a total joy!

Now, if you don't have the call of God and the linguistic gifts from God that I have, the education of learning a foreign language, and then the experience I have on a translation team with foreign nationals, sure, you can think of yourself as a Bible translator--but you can't fool me (and God!).

Next, the Holy Spirit as the translator's partner.

 

This afternoon I will teach "Bible Translation Theory and Practice," with just two students. Both have felt the call, the leading of the Holy Spirit to be translators. And both are very gifted by God in languages! Their homework for tomorrow was to translate most of John 1 from the Greek while critiquing the New World Translation of the same passage. In support, they must give their own observations, lexical entrees, notes from commentaries, etc. They will both do well!

Both are men of God, spiritual men who walk with the Lord. Neither will "hinder the cause of Christ," as I was bizarrely accused of doing on the other thread for simply disagreeing with another poster.

When they actually begin someday (after seminary graduation and missionary deputation) to get involved in cross cultural missions and Bible translation, they will be carefully listening to the Holy Spirit as they translate or work as translation consultants. After all, it is God who invented language and God who called them. The Holy Spirit will be their Teacher (John 14:26) and Guide.

So many times I have prayed for guidance and help while translating! Simply being gifted and called is not enough. The translator must walk with God and depend on the Spirit. This means he or she will walk in love, joy, peace, longsuffering, gentleness, goodness, faith, meekness, and self control. These things are what should mark a translator on the mission field, in a translation effort here in the States, or even in a translation discussion here on the BB, not harsh rhetoric, shrill accusations, and prideful posts. (And I know that on occasion I have been guilty, too.)

 

I'm still here!

Bible translation can be done by a secular linguist, skilled in the languages, and I know a Japanese NT translation that was done by someone like that. But in reality, Bible translation is not just mental, but spiritual. The translator should be filled with and led by the Holy Spirit for the task.

Here is how I pray for Bible translators:
1. For them to have wisdom, understanding, and knowledge for the task, both of the languages, but also the theology. Quite often, theological issues come up during a translation effort.
2. For them to never quit. I have known of far too many translators who quit in the middle of the work. I know of one brilliant translator into a major Asian language who quit. I know of a young lady translating into a African language where she grew up. The last time I saw her father he seemed reticent in saying how she was doing, so I'm worried about her. Bible translation is not for quitters.
3. I pray for the missionary consultant for an African translation effort, that he will have wisdom to lead.

Any suggestions about further prayer topics for a Bible translator?

 

I was just talking to one of my students who was on the team from here that recently went to Mexico to observe several translation. teams. When he got back, Spanish speaker from our Hispanic outreach asked him, "Did you become intoxicated in Mexico?" The Spanish word intoxicado actually means "sick" (esp. in your stomach), so she thought she was communicating well in English!

 

Now consider verbs. The verb system of a language is quite often very complicated (Greek), but can be somewhat simplistic (Japanese, Chinese). The Greek verb system is highly inflected. This means that many morphemes (sounds with meaning) are added in three forms: prefixes, infixes (added in the middle of a word) and suffixes. Sometimes a word has all three, like ἐλύθημεν, the aorist passive indicative of λύω, "I loose," meaning "We have been loosed."

On the other hand, Chinese verbs are not inflected at all, and have no verb tenses! The Chinese word for "go" is 去, Qù. If you want a past form, you have to add another word with a past meaning, such as "yesterday."

On the other hand, Japanese has a basic present and past tense, but no future. On the other hand, a Japanese adjective can become a past tense verb! 大きい (large) can become 大きかった, "It was big!"

So, in translation you have to know the verb tenses (or lack thereof) in the target language and how they are inflected. I'm not even talking about nuance: which verb do you use to say something without being offensive or otherwise giving the wrong impression?

 

Another issue in a verb system is called verbal aspect. To put it simply, this is how the speaker relates the action of the verb to the hearer. Greek has three aspects: aoristic (looking at the whole of the action; "I did it."), perfective (the action as completed with continuing results; we don't have this aspect in English), and imperfective (the action continuing; "I am doing it."). A related term, easier to comprehend, is aktionsart, which refers to the kind of action a verb portrays.

Unfortunately, the typical Internet denizen interested in translation (or thinking himself to be an expert) usually knows zilch about verbal aspect. Hopefully this post will help a reader like that to think more carefully about verb systems.

 

Determining meaning is a major component of the translator's toolkit. Today I had to work on the meaning of a phrase in Proverbs 23:20, "the glutton" in the KJV. There are two Hebrew words along the lines of "vile flesh eater."
1. I checked my two Hebrew lexicons.
2. I checked Japanese translations, and got something like "greedy eater of meat" as the typical rendering. I wasn't satisfied.
3. I check Keil and Delitzsch's excellent OT technical commentary.
4. I decided on "glutton" as the meaning, considering it to be an idiom.
5. I checked my Japanese-English dictionary, chose the best word for "glutton."
6. Did some Internet research about the usage of that word.
7. Will eventually get input from my Japanese partners.

I hope this shows that determining a difficult meaning is not always simple. It can be very difficult. So take what you see on the BB about such things with a grain of salt.