What Counts as Foreign (Identifying Verbal Valency)

In my previous post I asserted that no matter what the translation philosophy underlying an English Bible translation is (whether it seeks a ‘domesticating’ approach or a ‘foreignizing’ approach) the translator must identify what counts as a foreign element in the first place.

Let me explain. When I mark the exercise sheets given out to the students enrolled in NT Greek I occasionally need to remind them to use acceptable English so that they demonstrate that they understand not only what each individual Greek word is but understand how the words together make grammatical sense. It is not enough to identify individual words. They need also to identify grammatical constructions. A very simple example is that Koine participles (‘-ing’ verbs e.g. ‘baptizing’ and ‘believing’) change from simple participles when preceded by a definite article (‘the’) so as to imply personal pronouns (‘the person who baptizes’; ‘the person who believes’).

This is why we ask that they use good, acceptable English (“Translate into Good Idiomatic English”) because pronouns and definite articles in Koine affect the grammar, and students need to show that they are learning the grammar, not just the words.

But the opposite is also true: literal translations can be misleading...

Interestingly, the more that a grammatical construction in Hebrew or Greek appears to be relatively easy to transfer into English the more I think we should be suspicious that we have correctly identified the foreign elements in the first place. Ιt is easier to slow down and debate how best to translate a difficult grammatical construction. Less so when the construction appears straight forward.

A biblical example: דבר על לב (‘speak concerning the heart’)

What does the biblical expression ‘speak concerning the heart’ mean? It is a question posed by Carolyn Leeb, “Translating the Hebrew Body into English Metaphor,” in The Social Sciences and Biblical Translation (Atlanta: SBL, 2008), 109–125. Leeb finds only nine passages where the exact expression is used, which does not include similar expressions. The 9 occurrences are: Gen 34:3; Gen 50:21; Judg 19:13; 2 Sam 19:8; Hos 2:16; Isa 40:2; Ruth 2:13; 2 Chron 30:22; 2 Chron 32:6.

Leeb is particularly concerned with the first occurrence, Gen 34:3 concerning how Shechem speaks to the girl he has just raped (Dinah).

They way I read Leeb’s overall conclusions is that she is interested in how the speaker in each instance may be using his powerful position to persuade the addressee to do what the speaker thinks is best. She argues that every example involves a powerful male speaker and a powerless hearer (p.114). So in the case of Gen 34:3 Shechem tries to convince her or ‘reason with her’ speaking from a more powerful position (not necessarily: ‘speak tenderly to her’, the Greek OT has ἐλάλησεν κατὰ τὴν διάνοιαν 'he spoke according to the mind [of the unmarried girl]'). Shechem wanted to keep Dinah (the preceding phrase clause is 'he loved the girl').

In reviewing Leeb’s chapter Fika van Rensburg (RBL 12/2009) summarised it as:

A social-scientific examination of the ancient Israelite understanding of the body reveals that in their world the heart was understood to be the seat of reasoning, not feeling. Accordingly, the phrase “speak to the heart” should be rendered with “argued with” or “reasoned with.”

Actually this is only half correct, Leeb actually argued: “In my model, the heart is part of the interior of a human being, a locus of both reason and feeling.” (p.121)

Still, it looks like the various English Bibles have mistranslated these passages. And it’s not just those translations that have tried to 'domesticate' the expression into something like ‘he spoke loving/comforting words’ or ‘he spoke tenderly’. Even the translations that have tried to keep the construction foreign and ‘literal’ (‘he spoke to the heart’) also fail to identify what is foreign about the Hebrew expression since English already has this expression but it means something different—the English expression ‘speak to the heart’ identifies a speaker who speaks from a soft/tender place of consideration for what is soft/tender in the addressee with no necessary connection with power asymmetry (a speaker more powerful than the addressee who is of much lower rank and highly vulnerable to exploitation).

So translators have failed to identify that the construction concerns power of persuasive speech by a speaker more powerful than the addressee. Consequently they have overlooked the confrontational nature of the construction (the context of the personal asymmetry of power; the particle על ‘concerning’ ‘against’ following ‘speak’ and preceding לב (‘heart’); and the reasoning/intentional/intellectual quality of the body part ‘heart’).

This has huge ramifications for how we present our English translations as translations, since what counts as foreign needs to be constantly under review. At the extreme we should not presume that a simple biblical expression, for example one that appears to say ‘he went into the house’ necessarily means what it means in English! We would first need to see if there are particular grammatical constructions or patterns associated with a particular type of verbal object ('house') and particular type of subject ('person') who might be expected (socially) to ‘go into’ the house! All this might seem a little too extreme but I feel it makes the point well.

In fact, within biblical studies, there is a whole new field of grammatical investigation being currently developed called ‘verbal valency’ which studies the grammatical patterns associated with particular biblical verbs. I say ‘new field’ because so far it has attracted studies that have been relatively linguistic rather than include the social-scientific background that Leeb brought to bear. I am very excited to see what other studies might reveal about verbal valency.

I recognise that it is more difficult to achieve clear results with biblical verbs than it is with verbs in current languages, since many biblical constructions only occur a few times, which is often not enough to detect clear patterns.

I hope to discuss more examples in future.

What Should Translation Look Like? To Surmise a Summary

Today I jump head first into theory and then next post get straight to the practice. I won’t get bogged down in jargon. I’ll try here to simplify everything. I will begin with one of the most important questions: Should a translation look like a translation?

It is a key question within Translation Studies, namely how much a translation should or should not appear to be a translation. In other words should a translation read like it is a translation? This question penetrates to the core of what it means to translate, and how one answers the question tends to align with one of the two sides of the paradox of translation itself (its possibility/impossibility).

At one extreme, is the view that a translation should aim to appear as if it were not a translation at all – it should instead appear to be an origin composition. So if we are thinking in terms of an English Bible translation the question from this extreme basically says: if Paul had written to the saints in Rome in English how then might he have put his whole letter ‘To the Romans’ in English? (if the Romans were English?) The obvious problem with this approach is the fact that Paul did not speak English because English did not yet exist and consequently neither did many of the cultural aspects that make a language a cultural phenomenon. Is there really a way to know how someone unfamiliar with a particular culture might speak if they had been familiar with that culture? To some degree the question is unanswerable. But the ramifications are significant. Do we expect that someone can understand a foreign text (and a foreign culture) without learning the language? (And yet this would be expected, to varying degrees, of an English reader reading a biblical text in English).

Therefore we come to the other extreme viewpoint, that is, what a translator should ideally be doing is to try to avoid eliminating the foreign aspects of the text, in other words, try not to make it appear to be an original composition (in our case, not make it resemble a composition made in English). From this perspective, it is considered dishonest or deceptive to make a translation that doesn’t look like a translation.

However, how can translators always detect when they are accidentally ‘domesticating’ the foreign text and eliminating essential elements that should not be eliminated? But if all foreign elements are left intact (and the text remains in its foreign language) then translation has not even occurred!

So the question about how much a translation should appear to be a translation brings us to the heart of the paradox of translation: translation remains impossible but remains possible. In other words: (complete) translation is not possible but (some) translation is obviously possible (it has been occurring for millennia!).

I want now to point out two things. What I notice about the nature of both sides is that each position is basically self-fulfilling. That is, the view that translation is by nature impossible or the view that believes translation should not eliminate the foreign by nature makes sure that the foreign remains foreign. Conversely, the view that believes translation is possible (and seeks to replace the foreign with what’s not foreign) is naturally destined to replace everything that is foreign.

At this point I notice something of further interest, namely that each extreme position is united in its purpose of having to work hard to determining when something is or is not foreign. Let me explain.

The hard work within the ‘domesticating’ perspective is working to detect every single element from the foreign language that can or should be translated (and then deciding how successful it has been in putting this into practice within its ‘replacement’ text). Conversely, for the view that the foreign should not be eliminated, the hard work there is in working to detect any kind of domestication of the foreign altogether (then working out how successful it has been in putting this into practice within its resulting ‘foreignizing’ text).

Notice that the work of both positions actually depends on the same goal: successful identification of what counts as a foreign element in the first place. Further to this goal is the fact that they both then have to work out to what degree the desired result (practice) has been achieved in the new text (translation).

In the next post I will discuss a Bible example. The example suggests that neither the domesticating approach nor the foreignizing approach are yet proficient at determining what counts as foreign.