Featured A Skopos Version of John 17

Skopos theory does not have techniques per se. It is descriptive of the translation process rather than prescriptive. In other words, looking at a document, the theory will ask, "Does this rendering fit the goals and purposes of the translator?" instead of, "Did the translator render this correctly?

With that in mind, my skopos being a document that will help me teach translation theory in the future, my renderings may seem somewhat awkward in places. I'm not aiming at smooth English, but at English that will help class discussion.

As for the καὶ and the second σου, I just missed them, that's all. (Oops.) Thanks for pointing it out.

 

I think "to give" would be adequate for a purpose hina--it depends on the skopos.

Point taken. This is just a first draft translation, so it is going to have these kinds of errors. Thanks for pointing them out. :thumbs:

As said above, there is not skopos technique per se. If the skopos were a NT for young people, for example, and the translator felt that contractions would give greater impact and understanding to young people, then contractions would be used.

 

5. And now, Father, glorify Me along with Yourself by the glory which I had with You before the world existed.
5 Καὶ νῦν δόξασόν με σύ, πάτερ, παρὰ σεαυτῷ τῇ δόξῃ ᾗ εἶχον πρὸ τοῦ τὸν κόσμον εἶναι παρὰ σοί. (Joh 17:5 BYZ)

In English we don’t start words with conjugations in formal writing, but often do so in colloquial speech. However, in 1st century Greek this was very common. My theory is that it was sometimes done to distinguish a new sentence, since they had no punctuation marks. At any rate, for the skopos of this translation I’ll render all initial conjugations.

The first verb is again the aorist imperative of entreaty. For the purpose of exegesis, note that the su strengthens the thought, “You yourself, Father.” But that is hard to portray smoothly in the English. In the original, “Father” comes sixth in the sentence, but in my translation I put in third since that sounds better in English and doesn’t change the meaning. “By the glory” is a dative of means. The Father glorifies the Son with the same glory the Father has, showing the deity of Christ.

“By the glory” and “with you” are both prepositional phrases with para, meaning “from” or “from the side of”—“along with you” in this case.

“Before the world existed” is the present active infinitive of the Greek “to be.” So a slavishly literal rendering would be, “to the (of) the world to be,” but that of course makes little sense in English, being an idiom, so I used suitable English vocabulary and syntax to render it.

 

My meaning was more like, "at the same time as," but if there is ambiguity in my rendering there was ambiguity in the original. This rendering might help my students work through the issue of ambiguity in the original: to preserve it in the translation or not to preserve it?

 

It's official--I'm an anachronism! The consensus on this thread and from a Greek prof friend seems to be that the caps are passe.

 

6. I showed Your name to the men who You have given Me out of the world; and they were for You, and You gave them to Me. And they have kept Your word.
6 Ἐφανέρωσά (aorist tense) σου τὸ ὄνομα τοῖς ἀνθρώποις οὓς δέδωκάς (perfect tense) μοι ἐκ τοῦ κόσμου· σοὶ ἦσαν (imperfect tense), καὶ ἐμοὶ αὐτοὺς δέδωκας (perfect tense)· καὶ τὸν λόγον σου τετηρήκασιν (perfect tense). (Joh 17:6 BYZ)

John uses another aorist to start out with, but then switches to several perfect tenses. The student may see that I showed the perfect aspect in the case of two of these with the addition of the English word “have,” but I did not think that sounded okay for the second δέδωκας, given that I had already used “have given” for the first one. The two perfect tenses make great (perfect?) sense in Greek, but sound awkward in English if they are both translated exactly the same.

Sometimes the translator must make this kind of choice: is it worth it to try to keep the exact nuance in the translation if the reader is confused by it?

You may notice that I translated ἀνθρώποις with “men.” In light of the controversies about gender neutral translations, it is worth pointing out that this word should normally be translated “man” or “men” but can mean “people,” depending on the context. (It never means specifically “woman” or “women.”) In this case the context apparently refers to the twelve male disciples, so “men and women” or “people” would be a questionable rendering.

Note that quite often when the Greek author meant “people” he used a plural article, such as oi` (nominative case) or touj (accusative case). This may or may not be followed by an adjective or participle in the substantival usage.

 

So Jesus actually lifted His eyeballs up into Heaven?

Whose "translation" is this? Yours? If so, please give a skopos as per the OP. Otherwise you are hijacking the thread.

 

8. Because I have given to them the words which You had given Me, and they received and truly understand that I came from You, and they believe that You sent Me.
8 ὅτι τὰ ῥήματα ἃ δέδωκάς (perf. act. ind.) μοι, δέδωκα (perfect) αὐτοῖς· καὶ αὐτοὶ ἔλαβον(aorist act. ind.), καὶ ἔγνωσαν (aorist) ἀληθῶς ὅτι παρὰ σοῦ ἐξῆλθον(aorist), καὶ ἐπίστευσαν(aorist) ὅτι σύ με ἀπέστειλας(aorist). (Joh 17:8 BYZ)

[Oti in this case simply gives the reason for the truth of v. 8. I used the English “have” and “had” to bring out the force of the perfect tenses. I used the simple past for the aorists, except for “know,” and “believe” where I thought “understand” and “believe” was better English and forgivable in this case considering the undefined aspect of the aorist.

The word for “know” is the common (learned first semester) ginw,skw, which I take here as Friberg’s first meaning: “(1) of intelligent comprehension know, come to understand, ascertain.” This meaning gives further reason to my rendering.

The su, in the final clause strengthens the “you” already in the 2nd person form of the verb “sent.” This form is usually hard to get into the target language, but it might allow for a rendering like “You are the one who sent me.” I didn’t feel it was vital to go that far.

 

Your "what if" is wrong. The inspired words did not mean that.

Wow. So you consider a polite request to follow the OP to be a dictatorial command. You never cease to amaze me.

 

To be more specific, a different verb would have been used for "looking into."

 

Where you blew it was using the English preposition "into." This made your English translation mean physically picking up one's eyes and putting them into Heaven (which is a real place). The Greek word you translated as "into" is eis, which has a wide variety of meanings, which even the obsolete Strong's dictionary can tell you. The rendering should be "towards" or "to," not "into."

If you simply wanted to say that Jesus was looking into Heaven itself, the word horao (to see) or maybe even theoreo (to gaze) would be used, not the phrase actually used, ephren tous ofthalmou, "raise your eyes." That phrase is never used in the NT for looking physically into something.

All clear now? :type: