Reader Response vs. Authorial Intent

[Yeshua1]

Once again, the denier of scripture tries to shift the blame., just as the Obama Justice Department spokespersons try to shift the blame to the Trump Justice Department. There is no limit when folks become untethered from truth.

Begotten does not mean "not begotten."

Glorified does not mean not yet glorified.

Saved through faith means our faith, if credited by God, provides our access to the grace of salvation.

Y1 teaches the reciprocal message, which is bogus.

Eternally begotten means never was created
Glorification happens at time of the resurrection
regenerated before faith in Christ

 

[John of Japan]

Why wouldn't God breath the scriptures to each individual word written?

I'm not sure what you mean here.

 

[Yeshua1]

I'm not sure what you mean here.

I am trying to see why some would say thought for thought, as word by word seems to be how the Bible itself sees it as how was done!

 

[Van]

Eternally begotten means never was created
Glorification happens at time of the resurrection
regenerated before faith in Christ

As I said, Y1 asserts false doctrine.
Begotten means to cause to exist.
Glorified, past tense, means we were spiritually glorified when we were born anew as sons of light.
Saved through, or on basis of faith means when God credits our faith as righteousness, that is His basis for choosing us for salvation.

 

[John of Japan]

I am trying to see why some would say thought for thought, as word by word seems to be how the Bible itself sees it as how was done!

Okay, thank you.

 

[Van]

DE might result in message equivalence, or it might result in message non-equivalence. DE poses a greater risk to message equivalence than by using the word or phrase meaning for word or phrase meaning method of translation, IMHO.

 

[1689Dave]

So those who read and heard the OT had no way of understanding it until coming of Jesus?

How many prophecies can you think of came about as written? Who would have thought Jesus and the Church are the Temple made without hands?

 

[John of Japan]

So, you might ask, there are a lot of existential philosophers. Who in particular influenced Nida in his creation of DE? Thanks for asking. It was mainly Wittgenstein, but I'll let Nida answer so no one can say I'm misrepresenting him.

"As the result of an intense concern for language as a symbolic system, symbolic logicians have also contributed some highly important insights into the problem of meaning, and thus to translation. It is almost inevitable that such men as Bertrand Russell (1940) and L. Wittgenstein (1953), who declared that 'Alle Philosophie ist Sprachphilosophie,' all philosophy is the philosophy of language, should have made important contributions to our understanding of symbols and their meanings."
Eugene Nida, Toward a Science of Translating (Leiden, Netherlands: E. J. Brill, 1964), 7.

Now Wittgenstein was bad enough, but Bertrand Russel (not an existentialist) was an immoral, godless atheist who had an awful influence on Western civilization. I'd be ashamed to admit it if he influenced my Bible translation theory.

 

[John of Japan]

In the area of semantics (the study of meaning), Nida was certainly existentialist. Here is a quote:

"If the problem of describing the area covered by a particular linguistic symbol is difficult, the assigning of boundaries is even more so. The basic reason is that no word ever has precisely the same meaning twice, for each speech event is in a sense unique, involving participants who are constantly changing and referents which are never fixed."
Nida, Eugene. Toward a Science of Translating. Leiden, Netherlands: E. J. Brill, 1964, 48.

In other words, Nida did not believe in any word having a core or base meaning. Admittedly, I can't go too far on this, since I haven't read his book written with Johannes Louw, Lexical Semantics of the Greek New Testament. I have it and plan to read it this summer.

At any rate, it's not too hard to prove that words retain a core meaning regardless of context. For example, consider the Chinese word 金 (jin in Mandarin, kin in Japanese), meaning "gold." The base meaning has remained the same for 1000's of years, and does not depend on the context. Various languages have different idioms or metaphors using the word, but the base meaning remains the same. It is that yellow metal that people crave.

A certain scholar has used an embarrassing experience of my own in Japan to show this in a journal article. It seems that one day I was talking to a lady in front of the bank who had a little boy, 3-4 years old. I was trying to make friends with the little guy, but he was having none of it. So, I used a word to his mother meaning no, no good, don't like it, etc., いや, iya. then I added an adjective for "seems like," らしい (rashii). The lady got a shocked look on her face, grabbed the little man and stalked off. I thought, "What in the world did I say?" I had used two innocent words together, but did not know until I checked my big dictionary at home that this formed a new word, meaning "perverted." So I had actually said to the lady, "Your boy is a pervert!" Now, she should have had enough context to tell that I did not mean it that way, but the word is a powerful word, and its core meaning carried the day--forget the context!!

So again, in Bible translation every single word in the source text is important and should be translated. God communicated to us in words.

I'll catch everyone again on Monday. Have a great weekend.

 

[Yeshua1]

How many prophecies can you think of came about as written? Who would have thought Jesus and the Church are the Temple made without hands?

There was progressive revelation, but those to whom God originally spoke and wrote to would have known the main gist of what he was saying to them!

 

[Logos1560]

Since later translators are not the authors of what they translate, do they in effect not translate according to their own understanding/interpretation [reader response] of authorial intent?

 

[Logos1560]

I am trying to see why some would say thought for thought, as word by word seems to be how the Bible itself sees it as how was done!

Instead of being either/or, perhaps many times both should be considered. In many cases, the meaning of individual words can vary and differ, depending on how they are used in a thought or context. If the meaning of the thought is not kept in the resulting translation, claimed accuracy in translating individual words could become pointless.

Perhaps it could be more of a problem when either word-by-word or thought-for-thought is overemphasized instead of perhaps trying to find a balance where the meaning of words is determined by how they are used in the thought.

 

[Yeshua1]

Instead of being either/or, perhaps many times both should be considered. In many cases, the meaning of individual words can vary and differ, depending on how they are used in a thought or context. If the meaning of the thought is not kept in the resulting translation, claimed accuracy in translating individual words could become pointless.

Perhaps it could be more of a problem when either word-by-word or thought-for-thought is overemphasized instead of perhaps trying to find a balance where the meaning of words is determined by how they are used in the thought.

Good point, as one must always be mindful of the context and also how that author has already used their words and phrasing before...

 

[Rippon2]

Words are not translated in isolated units. That's why words in context with the surrounding text is fundamental. Phrase by phrase, clause by clause and sentence by sentence is how meaningful translation is done. The interlinear method is not true translation. Meaning is paramount. By looking at individual trees you will miss the forest of contextual meaning.

 

[Van]

Instead of being either/or, perhaps many times both should be considered. In many cases, the meaning of individual words can vary and differ, depending on how they are used in a thought or context. If the meaning of the thought is not kept in the resulting translation, claimed accuracy in translating individual words could become pointless.

Perhaps it could be more of a problem when either word-by-word or thought-for-thought is overemphasized instead of perhaps trying to find a balance where the meaning of words is determined by how they are used in the thought.

If we use lexicons to provide the meaning or range of meanings for a particular word or phrase, then all we need to do is to see which meaning best fits the context of the text being translated or studied. If someone chooses from outside the historical-grammatical range of meaning, the result is outside the original authors intent.

 

[John of Japan]

Since later translators are not the authors of what they translate, do they in effect not translate according to their own understanding/interpretation [reader response] of authorial intent?

Reader response is not the reaction of the translator to the original text, but rather how the translator seeks to translate in such a way as to provoke a response identical to that of the original readers. So, a missionary translator working with a PNG tribe will translate in such a way that their response will mirror that of a 1st century Jew or Roman. The translator would thus not render the text in a way that represented his or her own response, but that of the tribal member.

 

[John of Japan]

If we use lexicons to provide the meaning or range of meanings for a particular word or phrase, then all we need to do is to see which meaning best fits the context of the text being translated or studied. If someone chooses from outside the historical-grammatical range of meaning, the result is outside the original authors intent.

I agree except to say that lexicons are not the translator's only source for determining semantic range.

 

[Van]

I agree except to say that lexicons are not the translator's only source for determining semantic range.

As long as the choice falls within the historical-grammatical range, those other sources should be fine. Nouns should remain nouns., and words meaning "out of" should not be said to mean "before."

 

[Yeshua1]

Reader response is not the reaction of the translator to the original text, but rather how the translator seeks to translate in such a way as to provoke a response identical to that of the original readers. So, a missionary translator working with a PNG tribe will translate in such a way that their response will mirror that of a 1st century Jew or Roman. The translator would thus not render the text in a way that represented his or her own response, but that of the tribal member.

how about though where some will not translate Jesus as Son of God say to Muslims as do not want to ffend them?"

 

[Yeshua1]

I agree except to say that lexicons are not the translator's only source for determining semantic range.

is this an area where the Nida lexicon is used to supplement more traditional ones such as the BAGD then?