Article on Functionalism in BT

Thank you, Seth Vitrano-Wilson , for this article. For those who believe that the Scriptures are authoritative, how do you balance that view with the functionalism view that you can define the audience and function of your translation?

Hi Jim,

That's an insightful question. Of course he can use the terms familiar to him as a Buddhist! What other terms does he have? To say otherwise would be to deny him the ability to obey the Great Commission.

However, the discussion here is about Bible translation, not a person sharing their personal testimony. Some terms are Buddhist in origin, but can be applied universally. So, for example, the Thai ธรรม derives from Sanskrit "dharma," but it's used in the Thai Bible and in Thai Christian worship all the time by everyone, because it's been a normal Thai word for centuries. It has Buddhist origins, and certainly Thai people must grapple with understanding the biblical meaning and usage of ธรรม and how it is both similar to and different from the Buddhist concept of ธรรม. Similarly, the Arabic Bible rightly uses الله ("Allah") all the time when translating "elohim" or "theos" to refer to the one true God of Israel. Arab readers have to think about the similarities and differences between the Muslim concept of الله  and the biblical concept, but that's how you say "elohim/theos" in Arabic.

But there are other cases where certain words or phrases are not just "how you say" something in a language, but are instead highly specific to a certain religious worldview, and carry unnecessary theological baggage, and other more neutral terms are available. An example of this would be the inclusion of the first half of the Shahada ("There is no god but Allah") in several recent Bible translations, which naturally evokes the second half, "and Muhammad is the messenger of Allah." This is not just "how we say" a phrase like "YHWH--hu elohim! YHWH--hu elohim!" (1 Kings 18:39). It includes a very different idea, with very different meaning.

The problem with functionalism, as I describe in the article, is that it tries to make it impossible for anyone to critique translations on this basis. If someone doesn't like it, it's "not for them."

It's certainly true that a word or phrase having a certain religious origin doesn't inherently mean that it's wrong to use it in Bible translation. But it would be foolish to ignore the danger of syncretism, of adopting more than mere etymology. There needs to be an important space for considering and debating whether a given translation has the same meaning as the original language text. Functionalism closes off that debate.