A Controversial Quote

Maybe this will help: http://www.theology.edu/greek/gk22.htm

 

Okay, well thanks...how would you render it? (My point is the difficulty in rendering this kind of word into a concise, concrete English concept.)

Let's try one of the examples:

e0pelqontoj tou a(giou pneumatoj e0p au0touj e0labon dunamin

 

Sorry, if you were being facetious I didn't catch it. And if you were, and you knew the academic meaning of a literal translation, then you were being misleading about what you believe a literal translation is. (Surely this is not so! :saint: )

The quote I gave you was from a secular source, and secular experts in translation studies are much more likely to be professional translators. I myself am qualified to be a professional translator in the secular world, though of course I work for the Lord. (I'm not claiming to be good or bad at it, just qualified due to my diploma and experience.) So who should I believe, the amateurs in the world of Bible translation who say that "a literal translation is impossible," or the pros who, for the purposes of their livelihood, know how to distinguish a literal translation from a more free one?

Please go back and read and understand the professional definition I gave of a literal translation. The term does not at all mean that the source language and target language must have 100% the same syntax.

Now, in the case of an aorist passive participle, I have no problem in translating it literally into Japanese with full understanding, and have done so many times. The Japanese does not have an aorist per se, but it does have a passive, and it is entirely possible to translate the Greek into Japanese in a literal way without working at a rendering which aims for a reader response as in DE translating.

 

Why could this not be translated literally?? It's beginning Greek. :smilewinkgrin:

Happy New Year and have a great 2010.

 

Allow me to pull the book off the shelves and hopefully shed some light.

The quote in question comes from page 139. I think some context is helpful. Dr. Silva's quote cited is from his admonitions regarding extremes on both sides. Particular literal renderings may not in fact lose some measure of clarity, but we cannot be too free and thus miss the intended meaning since the receptor language cannot dictate the translation of a text. Dr. Silva opines:

When taken in context, I think Dr. Silva's words are more clear. I think his wisdom is sage. We must not assume a particular literal rendering is the most meaningful, but a desire to make a rendering understandable can result in a divorce from the author's meaning.

 

Thanks, Tom. This does shed light on the original quote. Knowing we were not reading the context, I deliberately used the phrase "as it stands" when originally criticizing the quote.

I agree with what he says about making a translation too simple, as if the original was written in a modern society. Silva is echoed by secular translation scholar Lawrence Vennuti, who argues from an ethical standpoint for the "foreignization" of a translation (as opposed to "domestication"), keeping the values of the original intact so that the reader understands where it came from. (Venuti does not equate this with the free vs. literal debate.)

On the other hand, I'm not sure even from this expanded quote that Silva completely understands where a literal translator is coming from. He fails to distinguish clearly between an interlinear translation (his Spanish illustration about cold feet) and a normal literal translation as per the definition I gave above (called formal equivalence by Nida, but literal by secular scholars).

I also still object to his statement, "approach can degenerate into an excuse for not doing the hard exegical and literary work." The word "degenerate" is very negative, so if Silva is trying to convince literal translators to change their ways, he is failing.

 

I don't think Dr. Silva is disparaging literal translations or translators. He worked on both the NASB and ESV. I think I get what he's saying. In my Grk and Heb classes, we would face serious consequences if we just translated interlinear style, totally ignoring receptor style. Yet if we altered meaning by putting the word order into receptor style, we'd face even more serious consequences.

 

Well, if he worked on both the NASB and ESV.... :smilewinkgrin: Thanks for that information. Obviously he doesn't oppose a good literal style. I guess I'll just have to read him myself. I've been reading some articles by him found on the Internet, and will do my best to keep an open mind.

I admit I have a bit of a negative impression of him right now. I had to read Evangelical Hermeneutics by Robert Thomas for a directed study class some years ago, and Thomas decries the influence of modern linguistics in conservative hermeneutics. Silva is apparantly one of the sources of that influence, and in turn Silva was influenced strongly by James Barr, a liberal strongly opposed to verbal inspiration (though Silva evidently is not). I have Fundamentalism by Barr, and it's nasty stuff--Barr's meaning for the term of the title is not the historical meaning, but he means anyone who believes in verbal inspiration, then he castigates us.

 

Dr. Silva's book is available on Google books.
http://books.google.com/books?id=k3...resnum=1&ved=0CAgQ6AEwAA#v=onepage&q=&f=false

 

Thanks, I'll check it out.

 

I don't think we can take a single quoted sentence on page 149 of a particular book, and make a generalality about what the author is saying in his entire book.

 

Transalation: commentary

 

I will freely admit before all that I have learned much about Bible translation since first posting on this forum. I'll even admit that you, Rippon, have driven me on occasion to study more on the subject. Kudos.

My use of the term "receptor language" has changed in the past year or so as I've researched scholarly sources in the fields of both secular and Bible translation. I now use this term differently than than I used to, having learned what secular scholars think of the term. Somne secular scholars have researched Nida's theories probably more than the typical Bible translator, believe it or not, and they almost invariably use the term "target language" instead of "receptor language." Why? They recognize the implications of Nida's term (based on the code theory of communication), whereas many Biblical translation scholars do not.