How Old is your Bible Language?

No I'm not talking about the age of the biblical languages used in biblical texts. I'm wondering about the 'age' of the kind of language translators use in translations.

In other words I'm interested in discussing: How recent or how ancient does a Bible translation sound? 

One of the reasons I ask is to follow up again (already followed up briefly here) on a postscript from my second blog post where I said:

The question of the first Bible translations in modern speech will of course depend on one's definition of "modern" and "modern language." Suffice to say here (other posts will pick it up) the King James Version (1611) simply consolidated (revised) the earlier 16th century Bibles and avoided modern speech in preference for archaic speech--it was not (contrary to misconceptions) either a completely "new" translation, nor was it a "modern language" version

That is, the King James Version chose to use archaic mid-sixteenth century language (mid 1500s English) rather than contemporary English. One reason was that the translators were attempting to produce a single version out of the many sixteenth century English versions:

Truly (good Christian Reader) wee never thought from the beginning, that we should neede to make a new Translation, nor yet to make of a bad one a good one, (for then the imputation of Sixtus had bene true in some sort, that our people had bene fed with gall of Dragons in stead of wine, with whey in stead of milke:) but to make a good one better, or out of many good ones, one principall good one, not justly to be excepted against; that hath bene our indeavour, that our marke. 

But in creating a 'single version' by using old-fashioned English, the translators are doing something quite different to what Tyndale did. It's not that they differed much from Tyndale's version at all. But Tyndale's English was more contemporary at the time he translated. So the result of the KJV's use of Tyndalian English would seem to suggest that a Bible translation should sound archaic, right from the very time it comes off  the press.

So how old should a Bible translation sound? 

I have also pondered (from a Christian perspective) whether a translation of the Hebrew scriptures should be made to seem/sound 'older' than the way the Greek New Testament is translated...given that a Christian approach to the Older Testament develops from first century (Christian) readings of OT texts. I cannot fully bring myself to accept that approach. It would be a kind of anachronistic approach (the OT Scriptures were not Christian scriptures prior to the first century). Yet the different Testaments need some kind of coordinated attempt to explain the different approaches to their reading audiences. 

For example, although the NRSV translated the Greek ὁ υἱὸς τοῦ ἀνθρώπου as the formal and stilted 'The Son of Man' the translators went with a less literal mode for OT verses that mention בַ֥ר אֱנָ֖שׁ ('Son of Man' in Aramaic) and בֶּן־אָדָ֔ם ('Son of Man' in Hebrew) and instead translated these as 'Mortal'. It could be that the NRSV translators had particular reasons for this, or that the translation approaches differed between the OT and NT.

A related question is the given perceptions of the source language in relation to how the target translation might/should sound... should something translated from biblical Hebrew sound like it was translated from a more archaic language (more exotic?) than texts translated from Koine Greek? If so, how obvious would the results of such translation need to be?

I would be interested in what other people have to say about these questions.

Truth and Myth in the Literal-to-Paraphrase Diagram (part 3)

Now that I've critiqued what such diagrams claim to display, by looking at what is “literal” (part 1) and at “relative positioning”(part 2), it’s appropriate to mention some things that the literal-to-free diagram does not account for. 

For now let’s discuss: “reading level” and “register.”

“Reading level” is to do with the range of vocabulary (and complex sentences) that a Bible version employs, and therefore it may have an “age level” suitability (identified as a school-grade reading level). These recommended “reading levels” will not be agreed upon by all. I tend toward the more optimistic side of the Australian-based reading levels.

The NIV, for example, is suited for about a grade 6 competence reading level which is lower than the NRSV (approx 10th grade). But differences in reading level are not always very noticeable, so Mk 5:25-28:

NRSV: Now there was a woman who had been suffering from hemorrhages for twelve years. She had endured much under many physicians, and had spent all that she had; and she was no better, but rather grew worse. She had heard about Jesus, and came up behind him in the crowd and touched his cloak, for she said, “If I but touch his clothes, I will be made well.”

NIV: And a woman was there who had been subject to bleeding for twelve years. She had suffered a great deal under the care of many doctors and had spent all she had, yet instead of getting better she grew worse. When she heard about Jesus, she came up behind him in the crowd and touched his cloak, because she thought, “If I just touch his clothes, I will be healed.”

Actually both NRSV and NIV have simplified this single long sentence in similar ways, by breaking it into three sentences to make it easier to read. “For she said” (NRSV) also belongs to a more formal “register” than NIV’s “because she said.” 

(NOTE "Formal register" is nothing to do with "formal/literal method of translation"--"formal register" has a very different meaning. "Register” refers to the kind of language suited to a particular purpose or setting. The kind of language spoken among friends tends to be much less formal than the kind of language one is expected to use in a high-school essay which is still not as formal as that of a PhD thesis. So "formal" as in "not casual" or "not informal." 

Sometimes, a more advanced reading-level corresponds to a more “formal register.” Compare, however, Eugene Petersen’s The Message (at the furthest extreme on the right of the diagram) and the Good News Bible (fourth version from the right-hand side). The Message was written in contemporary American English for adult readers, using highly idiomatic English phrases that try to engage modern readers with a more “casual” tone. By contrast the Good News Bible (GNB) was made for low-level readers, especially non-native English speakers (whose first language is not English). What is interesting about this comparison is that even though these two are positioned closely together on Bible version diagrams, they are quite different in both register and reading level.

The GNB was written in the kind of English “commonly used by people most of the time” and uses a moderately formal register (not colloquial style) and so it tries to avoid informal language (slang and colloquialisms). It also tries to avoid “big words” (theological jargon). It is generally aimed at a moderately low reading level (about grade 4 or 5 [Australian grades]). Likewise its replacement version, the CEV (made in 1995), was aimed at quite a low reading level (about grade 3 or 4) so that reading aloud could be done easily and fluently. By contrast, The Message requires a much higher reading level (grade 6+) and deliberately uses informal (American) language.

Yet the literal-to-paraphrase diagram does not display any of these factors. Simply adding reading levels to the diagram would appear rather jumbled:

By now it should be becoming clear that arranging English Bible versions on a two-dimensional scale does not do justice to the complexity of Bible translation philosophy. Such diagrams are more useful for exposing them for what they fail to show.

I could go on critiquing such diagrams . . . For example, the degree of “literalness” means different things to different translators. For example, the KJV is usually considered to be quite “literal” (that is, relatively closer to the left-hand extreme). However, it lacks one of the most common components of "formal/literal" methods--the use of “word consistency” whereby the same source words are consistently represented in the target text by the same corresponding words in English. Instead, the KJV translators tried to avoid the overuse of stereotypical correspondences so as help make the translation more readable (by employing a variety of English words for the same Hebrew or Greek word).

So that’s about it folks for the literal-to-free diagram!

Oh, here’s one more picture showing the lack of correspondence between word counts and alleged “literalness” (care of epistlesofthomas based on stats from a paper by Karen H. Jobes “Bible Translation as Bilingual Quotation.”):

But stay tuned for plenty more snippets on Bible translation theory . . .

 

Truth and Myth in the Literal-Free Diagram (part 2)

Part 1 of this series discussed a basic notion within the alleged “translation philosophy scale”, namely “literal” translation (at the left extreme, see part 1 for two example diagrams).

In part 2, I will discuss briefly another basic notion of the diagram, namely “placement” (relative positioning) of certain English Bible versions (within the literal-to-free diagram).

“Placement” or “positioning” is what appears to give such diagrams their basic utility. It enables people to make quick judgments about various well-known Bible versions by positioning them across an alleged “translation spectrum” in order to do two things:

1.  to note how close (or how far) each version sits to the extremes (“literal” on the left side or “free” at the right side), as well as 

1.  to observe where a particular version sits relative to other versions.

The key problem, however, is that in reality not every verse of a particular Bible version will satisfactorily maintain its “position” according to the alleged scale.

For example, if we take the two most “polarized” versions (in the traditional diagram)—NASB and The Message—we would expect that every verse would always be radically different in each. And for most verses their relative positioning appears accurate, that is, in most verses the NASB translates much more formally (“literally”) than The Message. But we don’t always find the alleged extremes we would expect. That is, when we look at a list of names, such as the names in Lk 6:14, we find that The Message is barely much less literal or more “freely paraphrased” (“though-for-thought”) than NASB in that particular verse.

So for all the other versions not at the extremities of the diagram we find that not every verse of a particular version will maintain its alleged position in relation to another version. So, for example, the NRSV will not always more literal (less free) than the NLT for every verse (even though the diagram places them at some distance apart). If we compare Prov 16:3–9 in the NLT with the NRSV it is difficult to say which version is always more literal. So for verse 8, for example: Better a small (amount) with righteousness than great (amount) without justice the NRSV is hardly much more literal than NLT:

NRSV: Better is a little with righteousness
    than large income with injustice
NLT: Better to have little, with godliness,
    than to be rich and dishonest.

Whilst NLT uses “to be rich” to correspond to the phrase “great produce”, the NRSV has “large income.” Both are trying to relay the overall implied sense of “to be wealthy” or “to have riches.”

In all, the notion of relative positioning (and therefore the entire diagram) can be misleading, particularly as it suggests that translation philosophy is simply a two-dimensional enterprise, as though a “literal-to-free” scale can satisfactory explain the translation philosophy of all Bible versions.

The main reason why no version will maintain its alleged relative position for every verse is that translation is not primarily done with an eye on keeping any alleged relative position on the diagram! The translation philosophy in most contemporary Bible versions is primarily set by a mix of other agendas.

I will briefly discuss two of these in part 3, namely “reading level” and “register.”

What's "New" about My First Bibles?

I've been thinking lately about the names of my first eight Bibles, and I'd like to comment on what exactly is “New” about these versions. 
My first Bible versions, beginning from when I first learned to read at age 7, were:

1. New Berkley Version (age 7)
2. New King James Version (age 9)
3. New Century Version (age 14)
4. New International Version (age 17)
5. New Living Translation (age 21)
6. New Revised Standard Version (age 22)
7. English Standard Version (age 25)
8. New English Translation (age 27)

I won't here talk about the relationship between my age and my Bible version. I want instead to discuss the fact that 7 out of the 8 versions contain the word “New” in their titles. What is meant to be “New” is not the same for each.

The “New” in the “New Berkley Version” (I think my edition back then did not have “New” in the name but my 1969 edition does) was meant to indicate that it was “not just another revision” but presented “a completely new translation” (i.e. not based on any previous English versions).

By contrast the “New” in the “New King James Version” indicates that it was simply a new edition of the KJV (replacing "thee, thou, and ye" with "you" etc.), that is, it is only a light revision of the KJV.

The “New” in “New Century Version” is apparently meant to indicate that it was (like the Berkley version) a new/fresh translation using contemporary language—however the NCV is actually one of two versions (along with the International Children’s Bible) published by Word Publishing Company that were developed together (the simpler version, the ICB was released a year earlier, in 1986) and it is not clear if the NCV was developed (revised) out of the ICB or whether the ICB was revised from the NCV. Both the ICB and NCV may have been revised from the earlier 1978 “English Version for the Deaf” which was also marketed as “A New Easy-to-Read-Version” (and the revision has recently continued with the “Expanded Bible”, 2011). So perhaps the “New” in “New Century Version” was actually meant to refer to the new century (20th century) and its use of modern (20th century) language.

The “New” in “New International Version” is more complex and represents a bit of a contradiction. The NIV was conceived and intended to supplant the apparently “liberal” Revised Standard Version as a replacement “Authorised” or “Standard Version” (before deciding on New International Version several other names were considered two of which were “Twentieth Century Authorized Version” and “Twentieth Century Standard Translation”) so in many ways it tried to position itself as standing in the same legacy (just like the RSV) of the Tyndale-KJV-RV tradition of Authorized English revisions (it sought to “preserve some measure of continuity with the long tradition”). But at the same time it intended to promote itself as “a completely new translation”. It may make sense then to see it as a version that was (somewhat) both “International” and “New” but not necessarily as (mutually) distinctively both (it was “new” because it was somewhat interdenominational and international). But it was not really “new” in the sense of being a (particularly) modern speech version. (Although “Contemporary English Version” was another name considered during the task of finding a name for the future NIV, the degree to which the NIV was not a truly modern speech version is partly due to its conflicting purpose of providing a “standard”/ “authorized” version and partly due to its being largely a product of translation done in the 1960s–early-1970s).

The “New” in the “New Living Translation” is also not very simple. It is meant to identify it as a version sailing on the fame of Kenneth Taylor’s “Living Bible” paraphrase but with little to no relationship to it other than in name (it was undertaken by Tyndale House Publishers which was founded by Taylor, and originally the NLT began as a project to revise Taylor's Living Bible). It is therefore entirely new and not a revision of a previous English version (the 2004 version of the same name is of course a revision of the 1996 NLT version).

The “New” in “New Revised Standard Version” is meant to indicate that it is a revision of the “Revised Standard Version” (but obviously they couldn’t call it the “Revised Revised Standard Version”! – the RSV had already to overcome the same issue when it revised the “Revised Version”. So both “New” and “Standard” here overcome the problem of a having a “revised revised revised version.” However, the NRSV is more than simply a revision, Metzger explains it as “another step in the long, continual process of making the Bible available in the form of the English language that is most widely current in our day” so the “New” is meant to represent the use of modern language (hence the inclusive use of “brothers and sisters” and gender neutral pronouns). Despite being a revision of a revision (of a revision etc.) the NRSV is actually in several ways a "new" (fresh) translation.

There is no “New” in “English Standard Version” for good reason (no accident). The ESV was by nature somewhat “anti-new” and “pro-old”. The ESV was a very light revision of the RSV made by (and for) those who still prefer the old RSV to the New RSV. I find it somewhat ironic that the NIV largely succeeded in ousting the RSV from the popular market (as the "new" standard version) for the very same reason that the ESV is likewise doing now (to capture the conservative market). So it seems that in the 1950s the RSV was too new for some churches but is just about right for those same churches (in the form of the ESV) (probably as it is not “new” anymore).

I will finish, for now, with my eighth Bible, the “NET” or NETBible. The “New” in “New English Translation” plays a double role. It indicates a “new translation” (not a revision) and it also helps create the abbreviation NET indicating that it began life on the Internet. It was the first (new) Bible translation to be published online (1996) before being published in print (2005).

Looking at the different kinds of “New” in the titles of my first Bibles has afforded an interesting way to begin thinking about how Bible versions are named and the translation philosophy to which such names belong.

Next post, I plan to try myth-busting the most widely held myth about translation philosophy...

First English Bibles in Modern Speech

Bruce Metzger, The Bible in Translation: Ancient and English Versions (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2001), 95, asserts that it was the “publication of the Revised Version (1881–85) and the American Standard Version (1901) . . . [which] stimulated the production of modern-speech versions.” Metzger’s two reasons were: (1) both the RV and ASV had “offered a strictly formal rendering of the original texts,” yet (2) through the discovery of many Greek papyri it “became clear that the New Testament documents were written in a plain, simple style to meet the needs of ordinary men and women.” Consequently “Should [the NT documents] not then be translated into the same kind of English? This was the argument of translators of modern-speech versions.”

Metzger thus implied that the first “modern language” Bibles date back to the early 20th century. Indeed he discusses the history of The Twentieth Century New Testament: A Translation into Modern English Made from the Original Greek (Westcott and Hort’s Text) published in 1901 and 1904, whereby the committee that produced this NT (formed in 1891 in Manchester and Hull and working at first only by mail correspondence), produced a version that “In more than one passage, the translators clarified the meaning so admirably that later revisers [i.e. NRSV and "all the important translations"] adopted their rendering.”

Metzger also discusses the influence of Weymouth’s New Testament in Modern Speech (1903), Moffatt’s Translation of the whole Bible (1913; 1924–25), and Smith and Goodspeed’s American Translation (NT: 1923; OT: 1927; Apocrypha: 1938).

However, in Harry M. Orlinsky and Robert G. Bratcher, A History of Bible Tramnslation and the North American Contribution (Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1991) one catches glimpses of earlier “modern speech” translations of the Bible (and Bible portions). There is of course much agreement with Metzger in that they follow Cheek’s suggestion that Frank Ballentine’s [incomplete] NT, in 1901, begins a new period (of modern speech Bibles). And similarly, the majority of the “modern language” Bibles (including “simplified” versions and “paraphrases”) are to be found in their so-called “Fourth Great Age” (1960s–).

The background here is that Orlinsky and Bratcher chose to present their history as “Four Great Ages of Bible Translation” by viewing the four ages as the product of “the changing milieus brought on by social forces.” In other words, they have not simply provided a history of translation categorised merely by time but by impetus and origin (i.e. “the vernaculars that were involved [and] the role played by organized religion”). Basically (mainly from the “Introduction”, pages xi-xii):

• 1st Great Age: Jewish in origin – about 200 BCE–400 CE – Greek (Septuagint) and Aramaic (Targums);
• 2nd Great Age: Catholic in origin – primarily Greek and Latin – about 400 CE–1500 (Middle Ages);
• 3rd Great Age: Protestant in origin – about 1500–1960 – in the emerging vernaculars of German, French, Dutch, Spanish, Italian, Scandinavian, and overwhelmingly English;
• (Transitional Period—represent by the Revised Standard Version—toward the “fourth great age” of Interdenominational and Interconfessional translation) and ushering with it several “New” [non-“revised”] Bible Translations;
• 4th Great Age: Jewish-Catholic-Protestant in scope represented by the JPS’s New Jewish Version of the Torah (1962), the Catholic New American Bible (1970), and the British Protestant New English Bible (1970) all characterised by a more scholarly approach to exegesis with attempts to move away from sectarian eisegesis as well as mechanical “word for word” approaches.

Back to the question about the first modern speech versions in English. Orlinsky and Bratcher discuss several 19th century versions (within their 3rd “Great Age”). One of these versions is more interesting than their discussion fully admits. They mention the 1828 and 1832 editions of a NT produced by Irish-born Alexander Campbell (based on an earlier NT published in London in 1818) and they seem to accept the comment by Cecil Thomas that his “third edition "seems to be more exactly what one would call a ‘modern-language’ translation."” 

This comment seems somewhat out of place in their historical scheme and they do not explain how this might fit. Interestingly, Paul C. Gutjahr, An American Bible: A History of the Good Book in the United States, 1777–1880 (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1999) asserts that “Campbell’s version was arguably the best-selling bible translation by an individual prior to the Revised Version.” Orlinsky and Bratcher do at least speak about Campbell’s approach as though being quite modern, that is, they mention Campbell’s reasons for his NT as: “First, living language is always changing, requiring new and better translations. Second, he did not believe that the KJV was always a faithful translation” as we are now in a much better position to translate the NT “[i]n light of the better understanding of the Greek language, and with the discovery and publication of better manuscripts of the Greek New Testament.”

Not only does this sound very much like what Metzger has as the "modern" impetus in his account of the early 20th century of “modern speech” versions, but here’s the twist: Campbell was only lightly revising a version that was actually composed in the 1700s. His so-called 1818 base was merely a compilation of three earlier published portions of the NT by George Campbell (Gospels, 1789), Philip Doddridge (1756, 1765?), and James McKnight (Epistles, 1784–1795) published together in 1818 in London as The Sacred Writing of the Apostles and Evangelists of Jesus Christ, Commonly Styled The New Testament. Translated from the Original Greek, by George Campbell, James MacKnight, and Philip Doddridge, Doctors of the Church of Scotland. With Prefaces to the Historical and Epistolary Books; and an Appendix, Containing Critical Notes and Various Translations of Difficult Passages.

Suddenly we have jumped from early 20th century back to the mid-to-late 18th century in the search for the first “modern speech” Bibles in English.

At first, this was surprising to me, until reading Jonathan Sheehan, The Enlightenment Bible: Translation, Scholarship, Culture (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1995). Sheehan’s book should be compulsory reading for anyone interested in the history of modern Bible translation. Almost everything we might suppose as "modern" (in Bible translation theory and practice) is found already in 18th century Germany, and mid-nineteenth century in England. So it was, for example, between 1700–1800s that various “paraphrases” of biblical books were published in various attempts to go toward making the first Bibles in modern English.

Sheehan’s thesis basically exposes the inadequacy of seeing the Enlightenment Bible as a process of secularization. Rather, he says, “I have tried to show its [religion’s] malleability in the face of new challenges. To speak with Robert Alter, the invention of the Enlightenment and culture Bibles was "an attempt to recover the religious truth of the Bible through means of investigation compatible with secular categories."”


Probably what I found most fascinating in Sheenan was the deliberate scholarly avoidance of Bible translation in the century prior to the “Enlightenment Bible.” More on that another time . . . 

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Postscript: The question of the first Bible translations in modern speech will of course depend on one's definition of "modern" and "modern language." Suffice to say here (other posts will pick it up) the King James Version (1611) simply consolidated (revised) the earlier 16th century Bibles and avoided modern speech in preference for archaic speech--it was not (contrary to misconceptions) either a completely "new" translation, nor was it a "modern language" version.