Truth and Myth in the Literal-Free Diagram (part 4)

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.