Ambiguity as a Translation Value
“I like how you translated that verse. It’s very ambiguous.”
These are words you might not expect to hear from a translation consultant. They seem to fly in the face of the ‘clear, accurate, natural’ mantra that so many of us champion. But from time to time I find myself saying something along these lines. While we uphold clarity and accuracy, these values assume that we can always be sure of the text’s meaning. The reality is that there are often places where we are not sure, due in large part to the gaps between our time, culture, and language, and those of the ancient world. One solution to this dilemma is to make a firm decision on what interpretation the translation will follow, and make that meaning clear. However, this often feels like the wrong decision, especially if the evidence is evenly divided between two options. In such cases, it would feel a bit deceptive to translate one interpretation clearly while leaving the reader oblivious to other possibilities. A second solution is to prioritize the need for the reader to be aware of an interpretive difficulty. At this juncture, ambiguity in the translation becomes a friend, allowing the reader to wrestle with the difficulty themselves, and enabling them to come to their own conclusions. Such an approach may feel safer for the translator who wants to avoid inserting their own opinions into the text.
The question of when to employ ambiguity (if at all) becomes complex when considering the varying degrees of certainty we might have concerning the text’s meaning. Some translation philosophies try to preserve as much ambiguity as possible so that the translation exhibits the same exegetical potential as the source, while others uphold clarity most of the time and only attempt to preserve ambiguity in rare instances where there is a great deal of uncertainty. These two values of clarity and retention of exegetical potential are often in tension with one another.
The question I want to ask here is this: how effective is ambiguity in achieving its desired result? In order to work, the reader must 1) discern that there is ambiguity in the text, and 2) arrive at the same interpretive options available in the source language, no more and no less. Ensuring ambiguity with no distortion can prove to be even trickier than translating a clear meaning, considering that we are now concerned with multiple meanings instead of one. It should also be said that the determination of which interpretive options are legitimate is itself an interpretive process, so even if ambiguity achieves its goal, the translator is not freed from interpreting the text.
Read the rest of the post here:
https://findingrightwords.wordpress.com/2016/05/10/ambiguity-as-a-translation-value/
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There are various things that can be said about ambiguity. One is that writers (including translators) often unintentionally have ambiguous passages in their work. Something they have written can mean something they did not mean to say at all. There are various things that can be said about this. One is that this is one of many reasons why a text should be checked orally. We often pick up ambiguous or misleading passages when we hear them being read. Another is that experienced readers are aware of this problem and take it into account. "I knew he couldn't have meant that, even though that's what it sounded like at first." So if readers of the translation see an ambiguous place, they will not know whether you purposely left it ambiguous, or if it is just one of those places you expect to find when reading. I think a distinction should ideally be made as to whether the ambiguity is intended or unintended. Is it just a place where modern scholars cannot work out what was meant, but there is no reason to think the confusion is purposeful? In places where we believe it was intended, perhaps an ideal translation should try to be ambiguous in just the same way. In other places, it is probably more honest to use footnotes, and admit that we nowadays are not sure whether the text means A or B. One place where ambiguity is clearly intended is irony. When the high priest said "For the good of the nation, this Jesus must die", he meant one thing by it, but the Gospel writer quotes it because of the deeper way in which the statement is true, a way which the speaker himself did not intend or realize. Ambiguity is an important part of meaning, but it is almost certainly one of the areas in which to translate is to betray. We need to understand as much as we can and to do our best, but at times intended ambiguity will make a perfect translation impossible.
I don't have time to give this an adequate response, only to say that you are asking a very important question. As I work on handbooks for translators or as I work with translators trying to achieve poetic renderings, the issue of ambiguity is HUGE. My personal ideal is if there is ambiguity in the source text then it should be reflected in the translation. As you point out, this is very tricky and depends on skopos: does the community expect this to be part of the "truthfulness" of the translation? If I see a team who has successfully navigated through and portrayed ambiguity, I also always say BRAVO.
We need to distinguish between ambiguity which is simply lack of clarity, and what is the deeper meaning of ambiguity, capability of being understood clearly in two ways. The former is a problem, the latter is a value. True ambiguity, such as John 1:5, where John seems clearly to have meant two different things, is hard to achieve in another language, and often requires a footnote for clarity and completeness. Ambiguity where a narrower or broader interpretation is possible, and the translator has chosen the broader interpretation which takes in the narrower one also, is a very good choice many times. But I also say with Lynell that this is a topic that is important and requires more time than this brief answer. I would need to do a better job of organizing and exemplifying my thoughts, which is not possible right now. I will take this as a topic to be reflected upon longer and more deeply.
I agree, there are several types of ambiguity, and I've only touched on one here. I'm suggesting that even the "problem" type of ambiguity (lack of clarity, which is exacerbated due to our distance from the text) can give rise to ambiguity as a legitimate translation value. So when we say we want translations to be clear (even clearly representing intended ambiguity), we don't always mean that. Sometimes we want to obscure the text's meaning, because as translators we want to be honest about what we aren't sure about.
A hugely important part of the picture is vagueness, where rather than clear and (at least apparently) unrelated alternatives you have 2 or more non-prominent alternatives along with a prominent more general (less specific) meaning uniting them, which the communicator is more likely to have meant. Vagueness and ambiguity are not strict alternatives, but rather endpoints on a cline, and there are any number of cases in between. Two examples: I understand some of the Hebrew words for a sacrificial animal can refer either to a lamb or a kid. English pushes us to chose, but the original author probably didn’t have the difference in mind, or if he did, he pretty clearly meant “either will do just fine”. He was not being ambiguous, but vague. But because of English categories, we face a similar situation as if it had been ambiguous. Another example: Jesus said “ask, and it will be given to you”. He did not say by whom: he left that point vague. Some, pointing to Jesus’ wider teaching and to nearby contexts involving prayer, advocate filling in God as the giver: “Ask and God will give to you.” In one sense that is not wrong: I certainly would not want to deny the truth of it, or deny that Jesus had it in mind. But in a different part of the context, “pressed down, shaken together, and running over, shall men give into your bosom.” If you had asked him, “Do you mean God, or do you mean people?” He might have said “Yes.” (More likely he would have launched into another parable: “Therefore the Kingdom of Heaven is like …”) In other words, it could well be (and seems to me likely to be) that Jesus, by being vague, was purposely not limiting who might fulfill his saying by giving. Very often, the answer is neither “A and not B”, nor “B and not A”, but “I want you to think of both A and B. I get very uncomfortable when my translation limits the reference where I think the original author had a more general reference in mind.
I quite agree with you, but I don't like the term "vagueness." I would prefer "expansiveness." The text and its meaning is larger than we think. On another subject I was talking with several about the term "prince of peace." Especially the Hebrew construct can have several meanings, if we unpack it too much we lose the expansiveness of the meaning. This is an area where the meaning-based approach, while very useful, must be used sparingly lest we diminish the value of the text's expansiveness in our zeal to make only one meaning clear.
amen and amen, "the text's meaning is larger than we think". By our choices to be "clear and natural" we often come down on ONE meaning while there are many meanings. However, when we try to recreate the text and its subtilities, leaving room for reader interpretation, for the un-ravelling of parables, proverbs and poetic lines, we are in fact being "more faithful" (old parlance) than following old guidelines and approaches. The point is well taken with the example "ask and it will be given to you"....with the explicitness of "God", we take away the reader's part in the communication, to ask, who do we ask? We take away the possibility that this saying has a proverbial history (I sometimes wonder what percentage of the words in Jesus' mouth can be attributed to OT and common wisdom). We take away the possibility of the "packed down and full measure" METAPHOR to take wings and fly to other contexts. But Ben, I don't think we want to talk about OBSCURING the text, but rather REFLECTING the obscurity in the text, ALLOWING for it and BEING OK with that....of course this would put any number of believers in a tizzy...concerning the infallible, unchangeable word of God. As my mentor Gilbert Ansre told me over 30 years ago in my training, "this (whole exercise) demands more faith from us (the TC-exegetes) than for those reading this (the reader-hearer-receptors)". Bible translation approaches-principles-ideals-mehtods MUST EVOLVE. I could not believe when I read U Eco on literary translation. I am going YES YES YES! Yes and "amen"!
I agree that meaning-based approaches do not inherently have to limit to one meaning, but I have seen it happen often in practice. True meaning-based should seek the schematic/expansive nature of the original. The term "schematic" in this context is new to me. I'll have to think about that. I grew up with and electronics engineer for a father, and always think of "schematic" as a wiring diagram. I would assume in linguistics or semantics it would be a way of diagramming the meaning of a term to take in all its senses and relations. The problem with "vague" is that it only appears that way to an outside observer. I doubt a native speaker would ever think of his mental representation of the meaning of a word as vague.
Absolutely, reflecting obscurity in the text is a much better way to say it.
Thanks for sharing your post. Great insights. I really like the value that ambiguity contributes to some readers' understanding of the Bible and even how a Bible translation is made. Intentional ambiguity where a translator sees it in the source text can be a good strategy to get readers talking about what the text means, and, as you say, give them more power to come to their own conclusions. But when evaluating ambiguity in translations, I don't find it helpful or explanatory to describe the ambiguity or lack of it in a translation without reference to that translation's brief. This lack of explanation is compounded when comparing translations, as is done more than once with versions of the NLT and the ESV, without reference to each translation brief. One could argue that the NLT must supply acceptable readings in difficult places because the task of the NLT is to simplify. Further, one creates a logical problem for oneself when one claims that such strategies invite misinterpretation because the context of the discussion is ambiguous/polysemous readings of a text. A response might be that actually translations like the NLT are more reliable for some readers (especially new Bible readers) because they actually make decisions in hard places. True, one can get educated in biblical languages and ancient cultures and learn how to disagree with the NLT's decisions, but that would have to be done on a case-by-case basis. Who is ambiguity (and its more philosophical way of being framed "alterity") useful for? Its clearly useful for translators, when a translator is unsure of a decision. It can be useful for skilled readers who are doing Bible study. But is ambiguity ever useful for a new Bible reader? Is it more important that the translator cover their butts with every decision or that a new reader actually enjoy the reading experience? Again, this isn't an either/or, its an issue for the translation brief.
Daniel, thanks for your thoughts! You make a really good point about viewing translation decisions in light of translation briefs. In evaluating the effectiveness of certain ways to handle an opaque text, audience is certainly important to take into account. I'm a little confused about what you're saying in your second paragraph. Can you give an example from my post to illustrate?
I was thinking of your example of 1 Cor 11:10 comparing ESV with NLT. No matter what one thinks of NLT's decision, it makes for a more comfortable reading experience, which helps the reader want to keep reading. Since the NLT is for kids and new Bible readers, they do a perfectly acceptable job in this verse given their task. Personally, even in a translation like ESV, I don't like ambiguous translations. I much prefer a translator who takes a position on a matter, even though it might be "wrong" (which is something that can't be established in a text that all agree is "ambiguous"), and then footnotes alternative readings. Not making a decision tastes uncooked to me.
Who is ambiguity useful for is a good question. What are the translators’ and readers’ varied interests in clarifying (disambiguating) or being ambiguous (reflecting obscurity, intentionally camouflaging, or being expansive)? I am currently working on a paper on Ruth where in a Contextual Bible Study I explore the characterization of Naomi, Boaz and Ruth especially in chapters 2-3 with young “at risk” women in school in northern Ghana. Reading from the perspective of these young women helps me to recognize just how vulnerable Ruth and Naomi were. The narrator leaves a lot of “juicy” details out there, but also seems to try and not fully explicate those details. When given the freedom to read and interpret from their own experience, the young women pick up on these details and connect the dots in clarifying ways. And yet the logical conclusion is not explicitly drawn in the narrative. And there was some hesitance (fear?) to be too explicit in the contemporary conclusions as well. I believe this ambiguity is a narrative strategy. Is reflecting this ambiguity useful? For who? Why? Is clarifying useful? For who? Why? And How? What about leaving space for other sub-groups within the contemporary intended audience to read this text with their own contextual interpretive potential? One benefit of doing real live Bible study with contemporary people in different but analogous positions to the characters in the story is that the translators can explore these questions outside the confines of their own heads and potentially draw their own positionalities into question.
One of the things I find most fascinating about this topic is how many different versions of "ambiguity" may be in play: intentional/unintentional (would we know the difference?), clearly ambiguous between different alternatives vs. simply unclear in a general way (vague is still a good word for this, I think), and so on. Bringing in the translation options makes things even more interesting. I personally prefer clarity in the text, with an explanation of options or confession of uncertainty in a footnote. But others like it the other way around, or choosing one clear option or the other (if such exists), or leaving it "expansive," either without notes. Of course there is no"right" answer here, but only negotiations around the brief and our own values/preferences.