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Translation Terminology

Deacon

Deacon

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John of Japan said:
respect language: Also called honorific language, 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. Japanese has (in my thinking): plain, polite, respectful, highly respectful, and imperial level.

Question: Does English have respect language?
Does NT Greek?
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I lived in Cincinnati growing up; I've been told I still have a bit of an accent.
Once our 4th grade class got a bit rowdy and the principle was called in to handle us
He was busy yelling away... and each time he demanded we shape up, my friend, who came from a military family from the Deep South, would respond, YES SIR!
This went on quite a few times until finally the Principle, who was not used to such a response, yelled back - Stop saying that!
My friends training was so ingrained that he immediately responded, YES SIR! - and then realized what he did and shriveled up in disgrace.

Rob
 
John of Japan

John of Japan

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Deacon said:
I lived in Cincinnati growing up; I've been told I still have a bit of an accent.
Once our 4th grade class got a bit rowdy and the principle was called in to handle us
He was busy yelling away... and each time he demanded we shape up, my friend, who came from a military family from the Deep South, would respond, YES SIR!
This went on quite a few times until finally the Principle, who was not used to such a response, yelled back - Stop saying that!
My friends training was so ingrained that he immediately responded, YES SIR! - and then realized what he did and shriveled up in disgrace.

Rob
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Good story. Alas, respect language is fading away in modern American English. I'm appalled at the filthy language--taboo language--seen all through American society nowadays.
 
John of Japan

John of Japan

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I think that a truly educated person does not need such language to communicate.

There is a famous scene in the play “Cyrano de Bergerac” where an enemy tries to pick a fight with Cyrano in Act 1, so he insults his nose: “Monsieur, your nose...your nose is rather large.” Cyrano mocks him with much more effective insults which he could have used (with no taboo words):

“Oh, no, young sir. You are too simple. Why, you might have said a great many things. Why waste your opportunity? For example, thus:
Aggressive: I, sir, if that nose were mine, I’d have it amputated on the spot.
Practical: How do you drink with such a nose? You must have had a cup made especially.
Descriptive: ‘Tis a rock, a crag, a cape! A cape? Say rather, a peninsula!
Inquisitive: What is that receptacle? A razor case or a portfolio?
Kindly: Ah, do you love the little birds so much that when they come to see you, you give them this to perch on.
Cautious: Take care! A weight like that might make you top-heavy.
Eloquent: When it blows, the typhoon howls, and the clouds darken!
Dramatic: When it bleeds, the Red Sea.
Simple: When do they unveil the monument?
Military: Beware, a secret weapon.
Enterprising: What a sign for some perfumer!
Respectful: Sir, I recognize in you a man of parts. A man of... prominence! Or,
Literary: Was this the nose that launched a thousand ships?”

They then have a sword fight as Cyrano composes a poem, with “Thrust home” as the last line—which Cyrano then does.
 
Deacon

Deacon

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John of Japan said:
I think that a truly educated person does not need such language to communicate.

There is a famous scene in the play “Cyrano de Bergerac” where an enemy tries to pick a fight with Cyrano in Act 1, so he insults his nose: “Monsieur, your nose...your nose is rather large.” Cyrano mocks him with much more effective insults which he could have used (with no taboo words):

“Oh, no, young sir. You are too simple. Why, you might have said a great many things. Why waste your opportunity? For example, thus:
Aggressive: I, sir, if that nose were mine, I’d have it amputated on the spot.
Practical: How do you drink with such a nose? You must have had a cup made especially.
Descriptive: ‘Tis a rock, a crag, a cape! A cape? Say rather, a peninsula!
Inquisitive: What is that receptacle? A razor case or a portfolio?
Kindly: Ah, do you love the little birds so much that when they come to see you, you give them this to perch on.
Cautious: Take care! A weight like that might make you top-heavy.
Eloquent: When it blows, the typhoon howls, and the clouds darken!
Dramatic: When it bleeds, the Red Sea.
Simple: When do they unveil the monument?
Military: Beware, a secret weapon.
Enterprising: What a sign for some perfumer!
Respectful: Sir, I recognize in you a man of parts. A man of... prominence! Or,
Literary: Was this the nose that launched a thousand ships?”

They then have a sword fight as Cyrano composes a poem, with “Thrust home” as the last line—which Cyrano then does.
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Steve Martin works off that scene in the 1987 movie, "Roxanne."

https://www.facebook.com/video.php?v=25778522201734850
 
John of Japan

John of Japan

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authorial intent: the meaning the author intended to convey. In Bible translation, this is in opposition to Eugene Nida's "reader response," putting the responsibility for human comprehension on the Divine Author rather than the human reader. In other words, it would be very strange if a single human understood all that the eternal, omniscient God wanted to convey. God is in charge of the Word of God, not the reader, as in "reader response."

I can prove from his own books the fact that Eugene Nida, inventor of dynamic equivalence, was an existentialist, and thus neo-orthodox. He thus believed that reading the Bible led to an event wherein the reader had an experience, gaining his own knowledge not from God, but from his experience. That is what is behind his term "reader response." Thus Nida was a heretic.
 
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O

OnlyaSinner

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John of Japan said:
historical linguistics (also called diachronic linguistics): the study of how language develops and changes over a period of time, in particular the etymology of individual words. This becomes important primarily when a hapax legomena is present in the source document.

idiom: a word or phrase with a meaning different from the literal meaning. Example: "raining cats and dogs" (which makes no sense in other languages than English). My Japanese translation partner, "Uncle Miya" Miyakawa, loved English idioms, especially cat idioms: "Cat got your tongue?" A Japanese cat idiom is: Nekojita, or "tongue of a cat," meaning a person has a sensitive tongue (heat, etc.).

Any cat idioms to share?
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As nervous as a long-tailed cat in a room full of rocking chairs.
 
John of Japan

John of Japan

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meaning-based translation: a theory developed by Mildred Larson in her book Meaning-Based Translation (1984, 2nd ed. 1998), in which the goal is to properly render the meaning of the original into the target language. Larson quotes Nida many times, and generally follows his method, though she does not directly teach reader response. Larson differs from literal methods in that it does not insist on equivalence of the grammatical forms from the original to the target language. JoJ.
 
John of Japan

John of Japan

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paraphrase: “A restatement of a text or passage in another form or other words, often to clarify meaning” (American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language, 3rd ed. Houghton Mifflin Co, 1996; electronic version).

So a paraphrase isn't really a translation, but a restatement. And if it is a paraphrase of the Bible, it is giving the paraphraser's opinion of what God said to us. And dynamic equivalence is a type of paraphrase.

"It is quite clear that paraphrase is unavoidable with dynamic equivalence theory…. This is primarily true because of the subjectivity involved in the transfer step. The failure to employ transfer rules, but rather to depend on the translator’s subjective judgment, makes it almost certain that the information transferred to the receptor language will lack complete equivalence with the information of the source message. Thus the theory fails to accomplish equivalence; it is instead scientific up to paraphrase" (James Price, Complete Equivalence in Bible Translation. Nashville: Thomas Nelson Pub., 1987, p. 27).
 
John of Japan

John of Japan

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In Post #38 I asked if Greek has respect language. I guess I'll have to answer that myself. Yes, it does! Here are just a couple of examples.

Think of the word kurios (κυρίος), usually translated "Lord" for the Lord Jesus. However, 12 times it is translated "Sir" in the KJV, sometimes even when someone is speaking to Jesus when they don't know Him.

Then there is hetairos (ἑταῖρος), only 4 times in the NT, all in Matthew. Translated "friend," it does not mean a true friend (philos, φίλος), but can be translated "comrade." Notably, Jesus used it to greet Judas in the Garden, showing that Judas was no longer a true friend.

The reason this is important to the Bible translator is that many languages have much more respect language than the Biblical languages or English: Spanish, various Asian languages, etc. Japanese, as I believe I mentioned earlier, has 4-5 levels of honorifics, depending on who is teaching it.

Just the statement, "It is"--
To a kid, da (だ)
To an equal: desu (です)
To a superior: de gozaimasu (でございます)
To a top boss: de irrashaimas (でいっらしゃいます)
To the emperor: ni narimasu (になります)
There is also a literary form: de aru (である)
 
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John of Japan

John of Japan

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Verbal aspect refers to "the view of the action that the speaker chooses to present to the hearer" (David Alan Black, Learn to Read NT Greek, 3rd ed, p. 14). This is often confused with Aktionsart, a German term meaning "kind of action."

Daniel Wallace (The Basics of New Testament Syntax, pp. 220-221) has the verbal aspect of the present tense being the "Instantaneous (Aoristic or Punctiliar Present)" and the "Progressive Present (Descriptive Present)." David Alan Black (It's Still Greek to Me, p. 107) has the "continuous present" and the present as "aoristic aspect."

The main significance of this for translation is that the present active indicative of Greek can be translated with a continuing sense. For example, "Ask and it shall be given unto you" can be translated, "Keep on asking...." John R. Rice uses this Greek sense for his famous book, Prayer, Asking and Receiving," to say that we should not just pray one time for what we want, but keep on praying, not quitting.
 
John of Japan

John of Japan

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Eugen Nida was extremely prejudiced against any kind of literal or word-for-word translation, which he called (inaccurately):

“formal correspondence: quality of a translation in which the features of the form of the source text have been mechanically reproduced in the receptor language. Typically, formal correspondence distorts the grammatical and stylistic patterns of the receptor language, and hence distorts the message, so as to cause the receptor to misunderstand or to labor unduly hard" (Eugene Nida and Charles Taber, The Theory and Practice of Translation, p. 201).
 
John of Japan

John of Japan

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machine translation: an early word for computer translation. Eugene Nida devoted the last chapter of his book delineating his new theory to this subject (Towards a Science of Translating, 1964, Chapter 12).

computer translation: a translation using a computer program to provide a first draft or even a final draft of a source document. About 15 years ago I bought a cheap Japanese translation program and tried it out on the Bible, and it was very poor. The technology has come a long way since then, but I still do not recommend it for Bible translation, which is a spiritual work, not just an intellectual effort.

AI translation: a translation using AI, such as the translation possible through Google AI. Again, this is a machine effort, not a spiritual effort, and Bible translation should be a spiritual work. I have in my library a NT translation by Japanese liberal scholars, and it is awful. That is what I imagine a complete NT translation done by AI: little knowledge of good theology, little knowledge of the proper words for difficult NT concepts (adoption, etc.). Considering a tribal translation done by pioneer missionaries into a language with no written language, AI would be almost useless.
 
Mike B

Mike B

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John of Japan said:
That is what I imagine a complete NT translation done by AI: little knowledge of good theology, little knowledge of the proper words for difficult NT concepts (adoption, etc.). Considering a tribal translation done by pioneer missionaries into a language with no written language, AI would be almost useless.
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Having done some reading on this this very issue, I believe that is the general consensus. The original
documents, being of a spiritual, supernatural nature require the same spiritual nature when being translated
due to the nuances of scripture itself. (hope that makes sense).
 
John of Japan

John of Japan

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Mike B said:
Having done some reading on this this very issue, I believe that is the general consensus. The original
documents, being of a spiritual, supernatural nature require the same spiritual nature when being translated
due to the nuances of scripture itself. (hope that makes sense).
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That does make sense. A Bible translator simply must be walking in the Spirit when he or she translates. It's a spiritual activity, accessing the precious Word of God in the original language, and doing one's best to get it correctly into the language of a people group that desperately needs it.
 
V

Van

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John of Japan said:
I've been challenged today on my assertion that the translation term "reader response" (I think it was) dates back to Eugene Nida and no further. So, I await with baited, oops, bated Baptist breath for Jerome and Anthony to correct me, since both objected to that. In the meantime, I thought I'd start a thread where we can all share knowledge of terminology used in translation. I'm at prayer meeting, which will start in a little while, and I'll post more tomorrow.

I'll start with the very term "translation."

“translation: The rendition of anything said or written in one language into another language.”[1] In recent practice, though, written renditions are translating, and spoken ones are interpreting" (Mario Pei and Frank Gaynor, Dictionary of Linguistics (Towata, NJ: Littlefield, Adams and Co., 1967), 219.).

“What is generally understood as translation involves the rendering of a source language (SL) text into the target language (TL) so as to ensure that (1) the surface meaning of the two will be approximately similar and (2) the structures of the SL will be preserved as closely as possible but not so closely that the TL structures will be seriously distorted.” (Susan Bassnett, Translation Studies, 4th ed. (London and New York: Routledge, 1980, 1991, 2002, 2014), 14.).

Christiane Nord, a Skopos theory scholar, has widened her definition to include culture: “Translation: In the wider sense, any translational action where a source text is transferred into a target culture and language. According to the form and presentation of the source text and to the correctibility of the target text we distinguish between oral translation (= ‘interpreting’) and written translation (= translation’ in the narrower sense).” (Christiane Nord, Translating as a Purposeful Activity (New York: Routledge, 1997, 141).

Care to add your own definition of "translation" or "translating"?
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When something is presented but not understood by the "audience" a translator will restate what was presented in an understandable format to the target audience. The action has nothing to do with whether the method of presentation is audio, visual, or both. It is all about the accurate transfer of information.

Yes, the target audience language, culture and education impacts the job of the translator, as no benefit comes from going from one non-understandable format to another non-understandable format. For example, if the translator uses words outside the vocabulary of the audience, a second "translator" will be needed to represent the information using words within the target audience vocabulary.
 
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