Featured Books on Bible Translation

We just had David L, Scovill, a great missionary Bible translator in chapel. He reached the Dani people group of Papua Indonesia, translating the Bible into their language. Ultimately, the great majority of the 200,000 or so Dani people were saved. My wife and I get to take him out to supper!

He has written two books which we bought but have not yet read: Out of the Dark Jungle, which is the biography of a Dani preacher, and The Amazing Danis, the story of how he and his wife reached them for Christ. I don't know how much he says about his Bible translating experience, but I'm sure it will be a blessing.

I love to read the biographies of Bible translators, and have 10 or so of them. Another great one about a Papua effort is Jesus Led Me All the Way, by Margaret Singer, an amazing woman who reached another people group in Papua Indonesia. A helicopter dropped her right into the middle of the village in her first contact, and they were headhunters! But they did not kill her, because unknown to the missionaries was the fact that they only went headhunting for men!

 

Let me get back to Eugene Nida. I believe that no one is truly educated on modern day Bible translation without reading Eugene Nida's works. So I have ten of his books, and have fully read eight. (I have a ton of reading to catch up on in this field.)

I've already posted about his first major work on DE, Toward a Science of Translating (1964). He followed that one up with a book co-authored by Charles R. Taber, The Theory and Practice of Translation (1982). This is an improvement on the previous book, better thought out and written, IMO. But the theory did not change a lot. In Ch. 1, "A New Concept of Translating," it still touts reader response as being crucial: "The new focus, however, has shifted from the form of the message to the response of the receptor. Therefore, what one must determine is the response of the receptor to the translated message. This response must then be compared with the way in which the original receptors presumable reacted to the message when it was given in its original setting" (p. 1).

There are some other notable things about this book. First of all, it has a monstrous bibliography! Secondly, it has a wonderful glossary. In any study of a theory, it is crucial for one to know the meanings the proponents give to terminology. I would certainly agree with most of their definitions, and can learn from the others.

P. S. What makes DE unusable without further elucidation is the idea that we can actually know the response of the original readers--almost 2000 years ago--and duplicate that response!

 

A very informative book on the history of translation is The Bible in Translation, by Bruce Metzger. The subtitle is, "Ancient and English Versions." As I recall, Metzger is said to be somewhat liberal, at least in the area of inerrancy. However, this book does not deal with theology, but is simply an excellent book of history.

 

I've read a little bit on Pickering's theory about f35, and had a friend who is a textual critic explain it some to me. If I get his theory correctly, It doesn't seem reasonable to me that only one mss can carry the whole correct Byzantine text.

I graduated in 1976 from Tennessee Temple College in Chattanooga, later called Tennessee Temple U. Is that where you went? When I was there they did not have a wrestling team, or I might have joined it, since I wrestled in high school.

 

Thank you for the kind words. Maybe I'll do a thread in the near future highlighting books on textual criticism.

I wrestled at Horlick HS in Racine, WI, where my father pastored for five years while I went through high school. Really enjoyed the wrestling and the friends I made.

 

Next, here are two basic textbooks on Bible translating:

1. Katherine Barnwell, Bible Translation, 3rd ed. Subtitle: "An introductory course in translation principles." Barnwell is in the DE/"meaning based" camp, but this textbook is quite usable and informative for any aspiring translator, or just someone who wants to learn more. It has chapters on culture (both the translator's and the target culture), meaning, testing the translation, forming a team, learning the target grammar, etc. This is all practical stuff with exercises for the student to do. The author is a well-trained translation consultant, with a PhD in linguistics.

2. Charles V. Turner, Biblical Bible Translating. Turner is a genuine Bible translator in the KJVO camp. (I have little patience for some recent authors in that crowd who write books about this subject though they have no experience, not even as a consultant.) He was well trained at the graduate level, with an MA from SIL back in the day. Oddly enough, the SIL influence is there in the book, seen right through the KJVO slant. For example, there is a chapter on componential analysis. Like the previous one, though from a very different viewpoint, this book has good exercises for the students. One thing this book has, though, that the SIL people don't worry about, is chapters on theology.

 

My personal view is that the translator should choose his source text, and then translate it, not doing textual criticism on his or her own: UBS, Nestle's (same as UBS nowadays), TR, Byz., Maj., whatever. The translator is only very rarely a trained textual critic. These are two very different skills with very different training.

In the two books just mentioned, Turner is not going to do any textual criticism at all, but will simply go with the "received texts." For her part, Barnwell doesn't even have a chapter on the source text. I'm assuming that, as is the general practice among SIL/Wycliffe translators, she'll work from an English version.

 

I agree that there are problems with that quote, but tell you what, it is mild compared with some statements you and I both have seen. I'm currently reading a book on translating which says that not only is the KJV perfect, translations into other languages can be perfect also!!

 

I don't downplay the importance of the text, but I'll just say if someone has not come to a view on textual criticism before translating, he's in the wrong business. This is where translation schools or programs that teach and do double translations (and there are such) are lacking--their graduates have insufficient knowledge.

So I would put choice of text and method of translation as both quite important. Both depend on the skopoi (translation goals, as in Skopos Theory).

 

Indeed. Double translations are prone to error multiplied.

 

Dictionary of Translation Studies, by Mark Shuttleworth and Moira Cowie (Routledge, 1997) is an excellent resource for Bible translators. Though it is a secular book, it does deal in various places with Bible translation, in particular with Nida's work, and Beekman & Callow's book.

It is not a typical dictionary, with complete essays for most entries. This is perfectly natural, since many of the entries are about various theories. Entries to look for that are helpful to a Bible translator: equivalence, translationese, word-for-word, etc.