Very dynamic!
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- Thread starter Rippon2
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The NLT would be the least dynamic of the five.
JJ has no term to describe these types of translations because he is loath to call them dynamic, or even functionally-equivalent.
They would bordering on Living Bible!
Good grief. Am I that ignorant? How about just paraphrase. Or "free." Or "thought for thought."
Here are a couple more critiques of Nida's theories by Venuti:
“Nida’s humanism may appear to be democratic in its appeal to ‘that which unites mankind,’ but this is contradicted by the more exclusionary values that inform his theory of translation, specifically Christian evangelism and cultural elitism.” (The Translator’s Invisibility, 17).
“Nida’s concept of dynamic equivalence in Bible translation goes hand in hand with an evangelical zeal that seeks to impose on English-language readers a specific dialect of English, current standard usage, as well as a distinctly Christian understanding of the Bible. When Nida’s translator identifies with the translating-language reader to communicate the foreign text, he simultaneously excludes other constituencies in the receiving culture” (The Translator’s Invisibility, 18).
Now what is interesting here is my own reader response. I want to say, "Good for Nida. He wants to win souls." But then I remember that he himself never gives evangelism as a reason for or goal of Bible translation. Still....
“Nida’s humanism may appear to be democratic in its appeal to ‘that which unites mankind,’ but this is contradicted by the more exclusionary values that inform his theory of translation, specifically Christian evangelism and cultural elitism.” (The Translator’s Invisibility, 17).
“Nida’s concept of dynamic equivalence in Bible translation goes hand in hand with an evangelical zeal that seeks to impose on English-language readers a specific dialect of English, current standard usage, as well as a distinctly Christian understanding of the Bible. When Nida’s translator identifies with the translating-language reader to communicate the foreign text, he simultaneously excludes other constituencies in the receiving culture” (The Translator’s Invisibility, 18).
Now what is interesting here is my own reader response. I want to say, "Good for Nida. He wants to win souls." But then I remember that he himself never gives evangelism as a reason for or goal of Bible translation. Still....
You can't even quote me accurately.
Does the NLT border on the translation philosophy of the NLT?
Well, you were reluctant to categorize them earlier.Good grief. Am I that ignorant? How about just paraphrase. Or "free." Or "thought for thought."
You need to define what a "free translation" means in your Definition thread.
The term "thought-for-thought" needs to be dismissed. What you call thought-for-thought is actually phrase-for-phrase, clause-for-clause, or even at times sentence-for-sentence. You should know what John Purvey expressed about real translation. He went on to discuss sense-for-sense.
How old is the expression 'thought-for-thought' really? You claimed it's centuries. Can you document that? Or were you talking off-the-cuff?
Your understanding of the word 'paraphrase' is in need of some reworking. You maintained that you are ignorant of a number of translations that I would call dynamic. They are legitimately translations --not paraphrases.
As I said, I've not read them. But I've got plenty of terms to classify them when and if I ever read them.
I gave several definitions there in Post #2.
I see.
You're got me there. I was speaking off the cuff, as you say. What is actually 1000's of years old is the term "sense for sense," which goes back to Cicero and Horace in the first century BC, along with "word for word." Jerome also used these two terms in his "Letter to Pammachius." Both of these cases are well known, but I can give you documentation if you insist.
It really doesn't matter to me. I only gave "paraphrase" as one possibility of what I might call those versions. When I teach what is wrong with paraphrasing, I use a terrible Japanese paraphrase. I don't have any need to know about those translations. I simply gave "paraphrase" and those other terms as examples of what I might classify them as. Doesn't mean I think they are paraphrases.
Venuti again, writing a bout DE as paraphrase:
“Eugene Nida, drawing on research from the American Bible Society, considers the problem of translating between different realities. He argues that solutions need to be ethnological, based on the translator’s acquisition of sufficient ‘cultural information.’ Since ‘it is inconceivable to a Maya Indian that any place should not have vegetation unless it has been cleared for a maize-field,’ Nida concludes that the Bible translator ‘must translate “desert” as “an abandoned place”’ to establish ‘the cultural equivalent of the desert of Palestine’ (Nida 1945: 197). Here translation is paraphrase. It works to reduce linguistic and cultural differences to a shared referent. Yet the referent is clearly a core of meaning constructed by the translator and weighted toward the receiving culture so as to be comprehensible there" (Intro to “1940s-1950s” in The Translation Studies Reader, 2nd ed., p. 113).
“Eugene Nida, drawing on research from the American Bible Society, considers the problem of translating between different realities. He argues that solutions need to be ethnological, based on the translator’s acquisition of sufficient ‘cultural information.’ Since ‘it is inconceivable to a Maya Indian that any place should not have vegetation unless it has been cleared for a maize-field,’ Nida concludes that the Bible translator ‘must translate “desert” as “an abandoned place”’ to establish ‘the cultural equivalent of the desert of Palestine’ (Nida 1945: 197). Here translation is paraphrase. It works to reduce linguistic and cultural differences to a shared referent. Yet the referent is clearly a core of meaning constructed by the translator and weighted toward the receiving culture so as to be comprehensible there" (Intro to “1940s-1950s” in The Translation Studies Reader, 2nd ed., p. 113).
In the following is a discussion of Dr. Phillips and Dr. E.V. Rieu by F.F. Bruce. It is found in The Bible Translator of 1955, but the actual dialog transpired on Dec. 3, 1953.
"Both translators were in perfect agreement about the principle of equivalent effect, and Dr. Rieu made an important point here with regard to the translating of our Lord's words. Our Lord often spoke paradoxically, and His original hearers did not always find it easy to grasp His meaning; a translation, therefore, which aims at making everything He said crystal clear is not producing the equivalent effect --- and could, indeed, reflect the translator's own failure to grasp His meaning." (p.226)
"Dr. Phillips defends himself by appealing again to the principle of equivalent effect. The effect produced on first-century readers....from that which it would produce on twentieth-century readers." (p.227)
Both quotes are taken from History Of The Bible In English by F.F. Bruce.
"Both translators were in perfect agreement about the principle of equivalent effect, and Dr. Rieu made an important point here with regard to the translating of our Lord's words. Our Lord often spoke paradoxically, and His original hearers did not always find it easy to grasp His meaning; a translation, therefore, which aims at making everything He said crystal clear is not producing the equivalent effect --- and could, indeed, reflect the translator's own failure to grasp His meaning." (p.226)
"Dr. Phillips defends himself by appealing again to the principle of equivalent effect. The effect produced on first-century readers....from that which it would produce on twentieth-century readers." (p.227)
Both quotes are taken from History Of The Bible In English by F.F. Bruce.
Again, translators primary objective is to get what was intended meaning to them, not what we think it should have been!
The above quotes knocks the wind out of the sails of JJ. He's too stubborn to admit that Martin Luther, Phillips, Rieu and others down through the centuries used the method of dynamic equivalence. And that includes the principle of equivalent effect and reader's response. Nida didn't invent the concept, he merely codified it. Sir Isaac Newton didn't invent gravity. Benjamin Franklin didn't invent electricity. Nida didn't invent what had transpired many times before his birth.
Wayne Grudem rejects the term "formal equivalence" for literal translations, as I do. He writers, "I do not generally use the phrase 'formal equivalence' nor do I think it is a useful phrase for describing essentially literal translations."
("Are Only Some Words of Scripture Breathed Out by God?" in Translating Truth, p. 20).
("Are Only Some Words of Scripture Breathed Out by God?" in Translating Truth, p. 20).
Since the Holy Spirit inspired word by word, should not translator strive to do the same as much as is possible?
That's an impossibility.
The ESV reverts to functional equivalence so often that the term "essentially literal" is about as accurate as "optimal equivalence" when describing the CSB. In other words : false advertising.
I said do that whenever possible!
Again, you're thinking of word replacement. That's not translation. I have said this before, if the two most form-oriented translations in English aside from the old ASV, have several thousand more words than the original in the N.T. you know that is an impossible task. For most of the canon there is no one-to-one correspondence.
I guess the answer would depend on the capability of the translated words to communicate the ideas the original words communicated to the initial audience. Words are symbols as they communicate ideas.