I’ve been way too
busy lately to blog. But I’m finally now able to add a ‘part 4’ that I’ve been
wanting to add since the last post! The current series is because I felt it was
important to have something on the internet that critiques the traditional ‘diagram
of translation theory’ (sometimes I've called it 'literal-to-free' diagram and sometimes 'literal-to-paraphrase' diagram). In other words something brief that will broaden the horizons of those who
will undoubtedly encounter its (mis)use.
Part 4 concerns the
‘size’ of a ‘unit’ being translated.
The ‘unit size’ being
translated may theoretically be quite large or quite small. But, for whatever
reason (and there lies a thesis or two!), in almost all English Bible versions the
chosen unit size is very similar.
So in theory a translator
could chose to translate a whole paragraph at once (as a single large ‘unit’
that tries to relay the larger ‘point being made’, namely the various rhetorical
and social implications being implied) or at the other extreme could chose simply
to translate word-by-word, or perhaps at an even smaller scale to translate all
the ‘morphological’ elements within a single word (for example the parts of a ‘compound
word’, including prefixes and affixes -- we discussed this point briefly in
part 1 for Mk 1:1 for εὐαγγελίον eu-angelion (literally “evangel” but traditionally either
“gospel” or “good news”, though more effectively “proclamation [of salvation]”).
It’s probably no
surprise that our old friend the ‘literal-to-free diagram’ again does not
really help to display the differences. That is, it does not cope well with displaying
the different unit sizes employed by each translation. The fault this time lies
not so much with the diagram but with the lack of variety of Bibles that translate
‘above’ the size of a ‘sentence’ (that is, larger than clause-level). As a rule,
almost every English version only translates somewhere between the ‘phrase
level’ (or ‘word group’) and the ‘sentence level’ (or ‘clause complex’).
Putting this observation
alongside the traditional diagram produces something like the following:
This time what the
diagrams does help to demonstrate is that there is hardly any difference
between the alleged ‘extremes’ using the traditional literal-to-free diagram!
We’ve had to shrink the diagram down to squeeze between only three or four ‘levels’.
Essentially this is just
what Stanley Porter has argued (and whence the above table derives) in:
Stanley E. Porter, “Assessing
Translation Theory: Beyond Literal and Dynamic Equivalence.” Pages 117–45 in Translating
the New Testament: Text, Translation, Theology. Edited by Stanley E. Porter
and Mark J. Boda. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2009.
The reason for the
lack of variety will probably have something to do with the fact that most English
Bible versions are designed to stand alone (not many are deliberately made to
be used primarily in conjunction in another existing translation). This means
that there is an inherent pressure to find a compromise between the potential extremes
(as there would presumably not be something else to gauge such an extreme
against for comparative purposes).
However, the more English
versions that are produced makes such an assumption seem more and more ridiculous
(anyway, that’s another tangent we could easily follow up…no doubt another time).
I’ll resist saying
that’s all for this series this time (on the literal-to-free diagram) but I really
would like to move onto other matters…
In all, I think that
the diagram still has some utility if the issues raised here (including parts 1,
2, & 3) are also taken into account.
