Understanding Nida

This forms 'part 3' of my short series on Nida. (Parts 1 and 2 mention a few misunderstandings.)

The first thing worth understanding about Nida is that he advocated an approach towards translation as though 'translating up' rather than the usual approach of 'translating down'. Translating 'up' and translating 'down' are Bellos's terms for talking about the asymmetrical relationships between source and target languages:

Translation UP is towards a language of greater prestige than the source ... [or] towards a language with a larger readership ... [or] it may also simply be the language of the conquerors, or of a people with greater economic power ...

Translation DOWN is towards a vernacular with a smaller audience than the source, or towards one with less cultural, economic or religious prestige, or one not used as a vehicular tongue. [David Bellos, Is That a Fish in Your Ear? (Penguin, 2011), 172]

(So "translation from English nowadays into any other tongue" is an example of 'translating down'.)

Traditionally, translating 'down' has been one way in which a smaller vernacular language is enriched by means of a larger dominant one. Normally translating towards the more prestigious language ('UP') erases traces of the texts foreign origin "whereas translation DOWN tend to leave a visible residue of the source, because in those circumstances foreigness itself carries prestige." [Bellos, Is That a Fish, 173]

Nida, however, favored the approach which was "characteristic of translating up". Effectively Nida's approach treated the target language with the respect traditionally assumed for more prestigious languages.

There is something gracious in this assumption...Scripture (and God) speaks in the vernacular - shrinking the distance between text and message. Nida did not want to risk 'enriching' the vernacular languages (with biblical language) in order to prevent misunderstanding of Scriptural meaning.

But ultimately I find this approach quite patronizing. I cannot help feeling that despite Nida's intentions, the target language (and culture) not only misses out in this approach but it is also belittled by assuming that readers cannot be trusted to judge for themselves what to make of an ancient group of texts that speaks about things from a foreign culture in a foreign idiom. By 'unmaking' the foreign one inevitably oversimplifies and underestimates the benefit of grappling with complexities and realities unfamiliar yet ultimately necessary for sustaining healthy critique of societal issues past and present.

(That's only two points on understanding Nida, not three as originally promised.)

Misunderstanding Nida (part 2)

Misunderstanding the influence of Eugene Nida (1914-2011) is easy to do. I've never really been a fan of Nida's approach to Bible Translation but I am interested in avoiding and addressing misunderstandings.

Last post I admitted to my early inadequate understanding of Nida’s theory of Bible Translation. I would like to underline the same again here with three examples:

Example 1: One of my favourite lecturers mentioned one day that the current dominant method of Bible Translation is (was, in 2002) Nida’s Theory of Dynamic Equivalence. I went home confused because I knew that the majority of recent English Bibles did not favour such a theory. I also knew that Nida had since abandoned the term ‘Dynamic Equivalence’ in favour of ‘Functional Equivalence’ (see example 2 below). I then realised that my lecturer was not referring to Bibles made in English but Bibles made in languages other than English. The point is important: Nida’s theory of Bible Translation was primarily developed for, and within, the context of African languages. 

Example 2: The point is well captured by the following quote from Glenn J. Kerr, "Dynamic Equivalence and Its Daughters: Placing Bible Translation Theories in Their Historical Context," Journal of Translation 7, no. 1 (2011): 6:

By this point [1986] the term “dynamic equivalence” had taken on a life  of its own to such an extent that the originator of the term abandoned it. Most of the time when someone—even a scholar or translator—speaks of dynamic equivalence, they do not  mean what Nida meant. In fact, the principles  and  practices that are found  in Toward a Science of Translating and The  Theory and  Practice of Translation are unlikely to be understood by someone without significant experience in the multiple-language setting of Bible translation or a linguist experienced in translation theory. What seems to have happened is that readers of Nida ignored the specific methodology,  applying  dynamic equivalence  broadly. Any  style of translation that is not overtly literal, that has any degree of equivalence, whether paraphrase, summation, cultural adaptation, or even  free  variation, has been called dynamic  equivalence. The term had become so imprecise as to be unusable. Therefore Nida, repudiating those imprecise applications, rejected “dynamic equivalence” in favor of “functional equivalence.”

Example point 3. The primary example of a Bible in English that employed Nida's Theory, was The Good News Bible (originally Today's English Version) which in the United States had to change its name again to The Good News Translation. The name change reflected the fact that English Bibles that were not using formal equivalence (word-for-word approach) were being perceived as 'paraphrases' rather than as translations. This perception still remains somewhat (particularly in the US) namely that idiomatic attempts at translation are not legitimate forms of 'translation proper'.

Three examples are enough (for a whole series of misunderstandings perpetuated by Roland Boer and opposed by Ernst Wendland and Stephen Pattemore see their article mentioned in my previous post). 

Next post I would like to give three positive 'understandings' concerning Nida's theory and approach.

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 . . .