Friday, June 12, 2009

Translation Research

Some time ago I was reading the Summer 2008 edition of the Journal of Early Christian Studies.  There were three articles, going from pp. 143-254, which provoked me to thinking about the history of translation.

Here's the concept.  Many ancient works were continued, edited, or expanded by others while retaining the original identity.  This was an accepted practice when "translating" a text.  As a result of this practice, in some instances, it may be impossible to tell what is original to an author in antiquity.

My question?  To what extent, if any, does this practice carry over to the Scripture?  What information do we have specifically of "translations" and other editorial efforts over the near 2000 year history of New Testament transmission?

My theory is that the New Testament documents have historically been treated as documents to be translated literally as opposed to documents to be paraphrased, interpreted, or rephrased, as opposed to other early Christian texts, as well as from other, less orthodox documents.

Now, how to test this theory?  I plan to compare various historic translations to the Greek New Testament to evaluate the level of literal treatment.   Of course, I will not be able to compare the entirety of the New Testament to a very comprehensive list of translations, and my target languages will be fairly limited, as I don't happen to have adequate fluency to make adequate judgments in languages other than Latin and English.

Why do I mention this on my blog?  There are a couple of reasons that I think are worthwhile.  The biggest reason is that this blog is about a theological voyage.  This is part of the sailing.  Maybe it will be encouraging to someone.  Maybe someone reading will have an idea to throw into the mixing pot of ideas.  Maybe someone will be provoked to search out a topic.  And who knows when someone who is fluent in a language that I don't know will read the blog and decide to help out?  

How about a procedure?  I suppose I'll create some sort of a spreadsheet with columns for versions and comments.  Due to copyright restrictions I can't start with my standard - the latest USB edition of the Greek New Testament.  But I can use a version that is in public domain and make some comments about how it compares with the USB.  The differences are very slight.  I'm always impressed with the quality of preservation of the New Testament text.  We'll pick some different translations and make some comments about the level of interpretive language as opposed to literal language in use.

This sounds like something I'll probably get some of my advanced students involved in as well.  After all, something we need to learn to do when learning a language is to evaluate our own translation work as well as someone else's.

--
Dave Spotts
blogging at http://capnsaltyslongvoyage.blogspot.com and http://alex-kirk.blogspot.com


2 comments:

Isaac, the masterofweirdness said...

From what I understand about the NT it passes the bibliographic test pretty well. The bibliographic test involves comparing various versions of NT or NT sections to each other and keep in mind the differences of their ages. Supposedly, the NT passes this test much better than some other, commonly accepted as reliable ancient texts (such as stuff by Aristotle I believe).

Still, have fun. :)

RebekahC said...

^^ what he said. Quite a project, though! I guess, if you ever need someone with Hebrew skillz, I could donate those, even though I am sadly *far* from fluency. . . .