What do you affirm about Bible translation?
The field of Bible translation is filled with theories, principles, frames and frameworks. When it comes to the relevance of the Scriptures themselves for the task of translation, little is heard beyond references to the Great Commission.
I present here ten affirmations about Bible translation drawn in large part from the Scriptures with the conviction that we should translate the Bible in a manner that respects its authority, sufficiency and inspiration.
I realize that these statements may disagree with some of your deeply held convictions about Bible translation. I held some of those convictions myself; yet careful study of the Scriptures and prayerful reflection on the history of various theories have lead me to formulate the following statements...
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Since instruction is a form of communication (affirmation 9), this seems like a false dichotomy. I think I see what you're saying, but it might be reframed in terms of concepts instead of terms, and dropping the rejection of a communication model. As for concepts and terms, it's possible to introduce new concepts with existing terms, if by terms we mean "vocabulary."
I wonder whether in the 10th Affirmation we might want to say "aim for" instead of "prioritize." Our team is aiming for a full Bible but prioritizing the New Testament (that is, we're translating the New Testament first, though with large portions of Genesis and Exodus early on).
I wonder, too, whether "public reading" is an absolute value. Public reading is enjoined on Timothy, so it's a non-negotiable, but there are other modes of "in community" reading that fall somewhere between "me and my Bible" and "me listening in the pew."
"Multiple readings" - here here.
Michael Aubrey Thanks for reading my affirmations. As for the 9th affirmation and all of them, for that matter, I'm trying to present them in a broad sense. I hope to develop the affirmations, and it appears the 9th might be a good place to start. If you want to look more into the simplification of the text, consider Hebrew 2:17, especially in the Contemporary English Version. But note more generally that William Wonderly and others who laid the foundations of common language translations had no problem with the idea of a "simplified" translation, as they were very explicit about translated for the marginalized and uneducated English speakers. Nida didn't like the description of "dynamic equivalence" as simplification, if I remember correctly. But what did he mean by translating the "message" versus the "content"? In practice, he was comfortable with more generic renderings because he thought the traditional theological terms in English Bibles was a burden on the specific audience that he envisioned as his readers.