In praise of circumlocution
As translators and consultants, we often find ourselves searching for just the "right" word or phrase. It happened to me yesterday in a training session we are participating in this week in Antigua, Guatemala.
I wanted to say in Spanish that we need Paratext to allow the user to move around "seamlessly" at various points where it does not at present. I usually use circumlocution to solve problems of my relative "poverty" of vocabulary in Spanish. But here I got to a specific English word and got stuck looking for a precise equivalent in Spanish ("sin costura" would be the literal translation, but the metaphorical blend with "seam" representing an interruption in work flow does not work in Spanish as it does in English).
My colleague Marlon Winedt came to my rescue and said that what I wanted to say was "moverse con fluidez" (move about in a fluid manner). But it got me thinking about translation. Translators are often looking for "equivalent" terms where they either do not exist, or when they do, are not really the best way to express the original thought in the translating (target) language.
Lately I have been using more and more the biblical terms tool in Paratext with translation teams. But every tool has it's dangers; the biblical terms tool can tempt a team to translate SHALOM (in Hebrew) always as "peace," when in some contexts it might be better translated as "well-being," "tranquillity," or otherwise. Clearly this in part is a one-to-many problem, but it also represents our tendency to focus on a term-for-term translation, particularly when it comes to "key" terms (concepts we think are particularly important to get "right"-a subject for another post).
Circumlocution therefore should not be (as it is often thought to be) a last resort for when we cannot find "just the right word." Instead, it is the basic process by which we normally carry out translation in a natural and faithful way. Instead of thinking of circumlocution in a literal way as "taking the long way around", it should be seen as simply how most of us get from one language to another in a way that respects both.
Thus we are often on the wrong track when we find ourselves searching for just the right word. What we more often need is just the right circumlocution.
As always, comments are welcome.
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One way I often detected too much influence by an expat or other non native speaker was the appearance of too many circumlocutions. I remember working briefly at a workshop with translators in what was then Irian Jaya, now Papua Indonesia. Pioneering missionaries had done the New Testament 20 years earlier with a lot of circumlocutions for theological words - the missionaries didn't think the concepts existed in that language. But now there was a thriving church and the believers had found ways to express these ideas more naturally; hence they were doing a completely new translation. So although there may not be "just the right word," a phrase or word may emerge over time as the church matures.
Nicely put, Phil. The reason for using a circumlocution (or a specific "equivalent" term or phrase) of course matters. It should not be simply a poverty of vocabulary. And as you point out as well, a linguistic community's vocabulary (including borrowed terms) grows and changes over time. But what did the maturing church do: 1. replace circumlocutions with an "exact" term/phrase (maybe borrowed) or 2. replace circumlocutions with others? They of course have a right to do either or both, but it might be interesting to see the trajectory.
Another aspect to look at here is to remember the whole process of mediating the divide between original author/setting/audience and current setting/audience. Circumlocution is necessary and workable in some aspects of formal translation but there are constraints. For example, the various ways of expositing shalom into other languages like English still leave lots of stuff still hidden/lost. Fortunately in the case of evangelism and discipleship, the translation product is not the sole agent of translation. The translation is not the major "actor" in bringing the message to the world; the Body of Christ is. So, just as we use circumlocution in our products, teachers and preachers and parents and neighbors will also take the text and "preach" it. In the shalom example, how many times have you and I benefited from folks expounding and expanding our understanding of this term. Similarly, if we take the word "hesed," whatever word or phrase the translators use, we need to remember that this is just the start of understanding God's action and commitment to those who are in the Body.