Featured How Possible Is Word for Word Translation?

Are these articles somewhere on the Internet? Please give links, if you have them.

I'm going to guess that the author/authors are connected with Bible translation in some way and not secular translation studies. Oddly enough, "word-for-word" is passionately opposed by Bible translation folk, but secular folk are more practical. For example, the founders of Skopos Theory make the point that a word-for-word strategy reveals information about the structures of the original language (Reis & Vermeer, translated by Christiane Nord, Towards a General Theory of Translational Action, p. 75).

So anyway, notice again that I am saying it is about 95% possible, not 100%, and I think that is a more realistic way to look at it, rather than "can" or "can't."

 

You gave a one line reply to a post with several paragraphs. Please elaborate. I can do what?

 

Well, I love puns, but can't see this one yet. I'm feeling like a failure right now who needs to be pun-ished.

 

We certainly do have more helps for translation than at any time in history. I'm very grateful for the software we can use and the many lexicons, exegetical commentaries, and grammars out there. There are also several programs designed to help with the actual translation work.

Unfortunately, most people groups are not blessed with all of the reference books we have in English. For just one example, there is only on study Bible available in Japanese, and that is the one for the JW Japanese translation.

 

I'm finally able to get back here. I'm taking a course by live-streaming this week, 5-6 hours a day, and it's intense. But I have a small window of opportunity here.

I have mentioned particles, and there are quite a few untranslatable particles in Greek as well as Hebrew. Here is a Greek one from my lecture notes for "Translation Issues in Hebrew and Greek." (Lest anyone think I'm a Hebrew expert, my son teaches the Hebrew and I the Greek.)


I. The Particle ἄν

A. This particle should not be translated, but delivers a strong nuance to a sentence that includes it.

B. Friberg has carefully delineated for us the effects of having ἄν in a sentence: “ἄν an adverb incapable of translation by a single English word, denoting that the action of the verb is dependent on some circumstance or condition; its effect upon the meaning of its clause varies with the construction.[1]
1. “With the indicative—a. impf. or aor. to indicate repeated action in past time, in relative and temporal clauses: ὅσοι ἂν ἥψαντο αὐτοῦ, ἐσῴζοντο whoever touched him was cured Mk 6:56; cf. Ac 2:45; 4:35.—b. In the apodosis of contrary-to-fact (assumed as unreal) conditions, with impf. tense for present time, aor. or plupf. for past time: εἰ ἦν προφήτης, ἐγίνωσκεν ἄν if he were a prophet, he would (now) know Lk 7:39. εἰ ἔγνωσαν, οὐκ ἂν ἐσταύρωσαν if they had known him, they would not have crucified him 1 Cor 2:8. Plupf. 1 J 2:19. ἐλθών Lk 19:23 and ἐπεί Hb 10:2 are equivalents of a protasis.”
2. “With the subjunctive—a. in the protasis of conditional relative clauses of the future more vivid type ὃς ἂν ἐσθίῃ…ἔνοχος ἔσται whoever eats will be guilty 1 Cor 11:27, or the present general type ἃ ἂν ἐκεῖνος ποιῇ, ταῦτα καὶ ὁ υἱὸς ὁμοίως ποιεῖ whatever he does, the Son does also J 5:19. Similarly with temporal clauses ὅταν = ὅτε + ἄν whenever Mt 15:2. ἡνίκα ἄν as often as 2 Cor 3:15. ὡς ἄν as soon as 1 Cor 11:34. ἕως ἄν until Mt 10:11.—b. in purpose clauses with ὅπως, with no appreciable change in meaning Lk 2:35.”
3. “With the optative: rare and literary in the N.T. In a main clause εὐξαίμην ἄν I might wish Ac 26:29 (potential optative); in a rhetorical question πῶς γὰρ ἂν δυναίμην how could I? Ac 8:31; in an indirect question τί ἂν ποιήσαιεν τῷ Ἰησοῦ what they might do with Jesus Lk 6:11.”

C. Sometimes the nuance may be inserted into the target language with just a small dose of doubt, since an is part of ei an, which equals ean.

[1] Timothy Friberg, Barbara Friberg, and Neva Mille, Analytical Lexicon of the Greek New Testament (Bloomington: Trafford Publishing, 2005; accessed through BibleWorks).

 

This may be true sometimes, but I checked and existed in classical Greek before it did in koine Greek.

Thanks for sharing this. I'll have to say that Hebrew is not my strong point. I really need to relearn it, but that will have to wait until later, maybe until I get serious about translating the OT. I've got a lot of irons in the fire right now.

 

We might also say, how important is word-for-word translation? Yesterday and today I've been going through the changes in our Japanese "John" recommended by one of our proofreaders. Several times this wonderful lady has recommended simplifying either the grammar, or leaving out a word to simplify. However, in a number of these cases, important nuances would be lost if we followed her recommendations.

John 4:22--To not translate the relative pronoun would be a mistake.
John 4:50--To change "lives" to "is healed" would lose an important nuance.
John 8:44--The Greek is not saying that Satan is a deceiver in this phrase, but that he himself is actually a lie.
John 10:39—To translate as "escaped" when according to the Greek Christ simply “went away,” would add a nuance of difficulty, when Christ had no difficulty simply walking away without them being allowed to touch Him.
John 13:19—To change our rendering to a more sensible rendering would lose the fact that this is one of the “I AM” statements of Jesus.

And there are other places, but you get the idea.

 

Been with friends in Iowa, with no Internet (kind of nice), for a brief vacation. Back now!

Yes, you have hit the nail on the head. Translating idioms, such the several that use "break," may be the most difficult part of translation.

Thanks for sharing this. As you figured, I'm well familiar with this incident. It is a great example of what we are talking about.

The thing is, mokusatsu (黙殺) is a powerful word in Japanese, with that second Chinese character meaning "kill"! So IMO the Japanese side is completely at blame. Furthermore, as you know, the Potsdam Declaration gave no wriggle room for the Japanese to worry about the Emperor (who I believe was complicit in the war effort). It called for unconditional surrender. The Allies were fed up.

 

YLT is indeed word-for-word, but I think it depends on how one defines the term. I'm sure most of us on the BB would say that the YLT is too literal. One thing it does wrong from a normal word-for-word is to habitually translate by concordance, using the same English word over and over for a particular Greek word. Normal word-for-word methods don't do this.

 

I'll have to disagree with you on this point. It is almost impossible to translate the Greek perfect tense with the proper aspect into English. (The Hebrew perfect has pretty much the same aspect.) Here is one definition of perfective aspect: "The Greeks could regard an action as a completed event with ensuing results, in which case the aspect is said to be perfective" (David Alan Black, It's Still Greek to Me, 96).

The YLT translates the perfect in John 19:30 as "It hath been finished." That's fine as far as it goes, but it doesn't reflect the perfective aspect of tetelestai.

 

Here's another Greek particle:

I. The Particle ge,
A. This particle is used to intensify the statement.
B. “γέ an enclitic particle intensifying a word, always adding emphasis but not always translated; (1) as limiting at least (LU 11.8); (2) as intensifying indeed, even (RO 8.32); (3) often combined with other particles: εἰ δὲ μή γε otherwise (MT 6.1); καί γε as limiting at least (LU 19.42 ); as intensifying even (AC 2.18); though (AC 17.27 ); καίτοιγε and yet, of course, although (JN 4.2); μήτιγε not to mention, let alone (1C 6.3)” (Friberg's lexicon).
C. Note that this particle does take on translatable meaning when combined with other words. In general, though, the rendering should only take form as intensifying the statement. (This is not possible in some languages.)


[1] Ibid.