Featured How Possible Is Word for Word Translation?

I'm going to give a secular source here for reference: “Word-for-word Translation (or Word-by-word Translation) A method of translating which entails precise fidelity to the wording of ST [“source text”—JoJ]. Like its opposite, Sense-for-sense Translation, the term was originally coined in the first century BC by Roman writers Cicero and Horace…. Most writers now consider it an extreme form of literal translation in which a TL [“target language”—JoJ] word is substituted for each ST word without reference to syntactical factors such as word order” (Mark Shuttleworth and Moira Cowie, Dictionary of Translation Studies, 197-198).

Now, for the purposes of this thread, let's not go with "most writers." Here is my definition for the purposes of this thread: "a translation method that seeks to find the closest possible equivalent in the target language for every single word in the original document." Note that I am not talking about semantic equivalents, but not strict grammatical equivalents. For example, if a language does not have a passive voice, you simply cannot event one to translate the Greek passive.

So, how possible is it to get an equivalent word in the target language for each word in the original languages? I'm going to say about 95%.

Words that often cannot be translated from Greek include: the Greek article, some pronouns, and most particles. (I'll say what a Greek particle is later.) The Greek article often cannot be translated because it is often not used just like the English article, and indeed, many languages (Japanese, Chinese, etc.) do not have an article at all! For example, the Greek article usually appears before proper nouns, but we don't use the English article that way. Imagine translating into English: "The Jesus said to him,...."

 

Aha! Thank you.

 

Thank you for the input. Interesting indeed, remembering the historical influence of Jerome's translation.

 

Another type of word that sometimes cannot or should not be translated from Greek is the pronoun. Greek is a highly inflected language, meaning it has prefixes and suffixes with grammatical meaning. There is much information in the inflection of a Greek verb, but for our purposes what is important is that the suffixes give person (except in the participles and infinitives) and number (except in the infinitives). For example, parsing the present active indicative 1st sing. of a verb tells us that "he" or "she" performed the action. Therefore, in those cases an extra pronoun is not needed. The pronoun is encoded (if I may use that term from code theory) in the verb itself.

So why does Greek have so many pronouns in addition to the pronouns encoded in the verbs? "Since the subject of a Greek verb is already expressed in its person-number suffix..., personal pronouns are used in the nominative case only when emphasis is intended" (David Alan Black, Learn to Read NT Greek, 3rd ed, pp. 67-68). The thing is, quite often you cannot translate that emphasis. For example, what does "He (intensive pronoun) preached the Gospel" sound like in English? If you speak it you can emphasize the word "he," but it's pretty tough to do when you write it. You can underline it, and put it in bold and/or italics, but most translations are more formal in tone, and don't do that.

 

Perhaps you mean prepositions.... Distinguishing meanings in en versus eis is certainly difficult at times, since both have wide ranges of meanings.

Participles are tough to translate into English, since somewhat different functions are important in the two languages. And Hebraisms are definitely a challenge.

 

One issue facing Greek scholars and Bible translators nowadays is the Greek use of conjunctions: and, but, etc. Koine Greek uses many more conjunctions than modern English does, especially at the beginning of sentences.

Remember that the original mss of the NT in the first century were written in all caps, with no breaks, spaces, or punctuation. One theory is that many of the conjunctions were there as sentence markers: words without meaning that simply showed where a new sentence began. If that is true, they should not be translated, and indeed, some modern translations (even essentially literal ones) leave out many of these conjunctions.
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What do you think?

 

These are great questions! I can research some of them to a small degree, so I'll get back to you.

 

Possibly so. My memory (which may be faulty) tells me that Luke did not do this as much. He being a Greek might point to a Hebraism in the Jewish writers.

 

Okay, a little bit of research....

1. Classical Greek: I've looked at Xenephon's Anabasis (Around 400 BC), and though he occasionally used conjunctions at the beginning of a sentence, it was not as common as in the NT.
2. I'm sure about the levels of fluency question. Looking at the Didache (1st century AD Koine) I see a similar usage to the NT, but that could be following the NT example. Take a look at Josephus in Greek: Perseus Search Results. He seems to do this somewhat, but not as much as the NT.
3. Taking a quick look at the LXX I find that the Torah and the historical books use kai a lot at the beginning of sentences, so that could be representing vaw consecutives since some LXX translators were for extreme literalism. However, the poetic books don't do this.
4. Here is a modern Greek text, and I don't see this use of conjunctions in it: Modern Greek/Reading Exercises/Reading 02 - Wikibooks, open books for an open world

Just checked the NT, and John uses a variety of conjunctions at the beginning of sentences, but Luke (contrary to my memory) uses kai at the beginning of many sentences. This is similar to the LXX usage I mentioned. Considering Luke's high level of education, I'm guessing that his usage is typical for 1st century Koine literature.

 

Perhaps the main class of words that cannot be translated is called the particle. Here are a couple of quotes to help you wrap your head around this corner of syntax:

"Particle A catch all term for non-inflecting words that do not fit into other grammatical categories. (In older usage, “particle” referred to any small, non-inflecting word, including some adverbs, prepositions and conjunctions.) Particles can affect the tone of a clause or sentence by providing such elements as emphasis, irony, concession, assent, affirmation, or questioning. The most commonly used particle is the negative particle" (Mark A. House in Appendix II, “Glossary of Greek Grammatical Terms,” in Analytical Lexicon of New Testament Greek, with Maurice Robinson), p. 393.

Then the inimitable David Alan Black comments: “Particles are small words that don’t easily fit into any clear-cut word class. It is thus something of a ‘cop-out category’ for grammarians: if it’s small and you don’t know what to call it, call it a particle" (It's Still Greek to Me, p. 134).

 

Some of those particles are called "markers," meaning they mark some grammatical function. We have many of those in Japanese, one syllable words that cannot be translated: ga or wa to mark the subject, ka to mark a question, etc.

The Hebrew language has a marker for the direct object that cannot be translated, eth. An ignorant person in the Hebrew Roots Movement has actually put that marker into the KJV producing what he thinks is a better Bible. Here is something I wrote about that once.

There is a Bible "translation” done by an adherent to the so-called “Hebrew Roots Movement” called “The Eth Bible.”[1] The so-called “translator” (who does not know Hebrew) has taken את (Strong’s number H853), an untranslatable Hebrew marker, not knowing its true meaning, and assumed he could insert it in the Biblical text as a transliterated word. The BDB definition is: “Apparently contracted from H226 in the demonstrative sense of entity; properly self (but generally used to point out more definitely the object of a verb or preposition, even or namely): - (As such unrepresented in English.)”[2] So, its actual significance is that it simply points to a direct object. The “translator” of the “Eth Bible” completely failed.

[1] See www.cepher.net for bizarre essays on this “translation.”
[2] Brown, Driver, Briggs, Hebrew Lexicon (Accessed through E-Sword software.)

 

I'd just call it ignorant, not to mention brazen, since the dude knows no Hebrew. How in the world can you discern a language like that when you don't know the language or linguistics? A linguist is trained to examine a language and discern what the particles are. A lawyer is not, and that's what the dude is.