Difficulties in translating_Shanghai Translation Company
E-ging Solutions is a world-leading Shanghai translation company with specialties in language translation.
To appreciate some of the difficulties, we need to take a look
at the actual process of translation, and at the human languages with which a
translator works. God gave us language as one of his greatest gifts. But it is
not only a great gift — it is an exceedingly rich and complex gift. That very
richness makes translation a challenging operation.
Words take different meanings
A single word like
"dog" or "trunk" in English reveals vast complexity. One
dictionary lists no less than four distinct words "dog." It has only
one entry for "trunk," but six distinct senses listed under it. 1 How
do we decide among these senses?
Native speakers of English
usually decide instantly and without effort which sense of a word is right.
They use hints deriving from the grammar (is the word a noun, a verb, a
direct object, etc.? And what grammatical construction does it fit into?), the
relationship to the larger context — that is, the other words, sentences,
paragraphs, and the whole communication ("discourse") and the
situation (about what circumstances is the speaker talking, and what does he
expect us to do in response?). These three factors can be called the
grammatical context, the discourse context, and the situational context. They
reveal which of several senses of a word the speaker is using.
But occasionally there are
ambiguities. At times it is a challenge to know which sense of a word a speaker
is using. In fact, when breakdowns in communication occur, it is often because
two people are using the same word in different ways.
When we try to translate
between two languages, the challenges become even greater. Suppose that we are
translating the Old Testament from Hebrew to English. We must deal with the
dictionary definitions for both Hebrew and English words. Though two words from
the two languages may roughly correspond in meaning (Hebrew ben and English
"son," for example), they seldom match exactly.
In many cases, because a word
has several different possible meanings, no one word in English may match all
the uses in another language. For example, consider the word ruach in Hebrew. A
beginner may be told that ruach means "breath, wind, spirit." 2 He
might naively assume that this means that the word ruach means an amalgamation
of "breath, wind, spirit" all at the same the time. But no—in any one
occurrence, only one of these meanings occurs. For example, Genesis 6:17 says,
"I will bring a flood of waters upon the earth, to destroy all flesh in
which is the breath [ruach] of life from under heaven; everything that is on
the earth shall die" (RSV). The Hebrew word ruach is correctly translated
"breath" in the KJV, NASB, NKJV, RSV, and NIV. Next, 1 Kings 18:45
says, "And in a little while the heavens grew black with clouds and wind
[ruach], and there was a great rain" (RSV). The same Hebrew word ruach
occurs, and KJV, NASB, NKJV, RSV, and NIV all correctly translate with
"wind." Job 4:15 says, "A spirit [ruach] glided past my face;
the hair of my flesh stood up" (RSV). KJV, NASB, NKJV, RSV, and NIV all
have "spirit," in the sense of a ghostly apparition.
In each case the context
clearly indicates which of the three main meanings is appropriate. In general,
we seek to find the appropriate English expression that matches the meaning of
Hebrew in a particular context.
Sentence formation differs from
language to language
In translation we also must
deal with the meaning of whole phrases, sentences, and paragraphs, not simply
isolated words. Each word in a sentence contributes to the meaning. But we want
to translate the message, the meaning of the whole, not simply words in
isolation. Translators must take into account the many ways in which word
meanings interact when they occur in discourse.
We find, for example, that
languages differ in the way they put words and sentences together. Greek may
use long sentences: Ephesians 1:3-14 is one sentence in Greek. Current English
style prefers shorter sentences. Hebrew sentences tend to be shorter still.
The normal order of words in a
sentence may differ between languages. For example, if we translate Ephesians
1:15-16 woodenly, word by word, it comes out like this:
On-account-of this also I,
having-heard the in you faith in the Lord Jesus and the love the to all the
saints, not I stop thanking about you mention making at the prayers my.
That is not how we would say it
in English! Many factors contribute to the difference. In English, we
distinguish subject, predicate, and object mostly by word order. "Man
bites dog" differs from "Dog bites man." In Greek, the difference
between subject and object is not usually shown by word order, but by the
endings that attach to nouns (called case endings). This device leaves the
Greek speaker free to rearrange the word order while keeping the same subject
and object.
We find also that grammatical
features in one language do not match those in another language in a one-to-one
fashion. The beginner learns that the Greek aorist tense means "simple
past action." For example, Matthew 4:21 says, "Jesus called them"
(NIV). The simple past tense "called" in English corresponds to the
Greek aorist tense. But in other cases the Greek aorist tense has nothing to do
with past time. In Matthew 5:16 the commandment "Let your light so
shine" (RSV) uses the aorist tense, referring to what the disciples should
do in the future. The more advanced student has to learn that such a thing
regularly happens with the Greek aorist imperative, which is used to issue
commands.
Form and meaning
The naive person may think,
"Just translate by putting in equivalent words, one by one." But as
we have seen, such a procedure often does not adequately capture the meaning of
the original. In fact, translators want to express the same meaning in English
as was expressed in the original. To achieve this goal, they find that many
times they must not simply translate mechanically, word for word. That is, they
do not preserve form. A single word in Hebrew (like ruach, "breath, wind,
spirit") is not always translated the same way in English. A single grammatical
tense (like the Greek aorist) is not always translated the same way. A single
construction (like the Greek conjunction hina) is not always translated the
same way. The translator alters these forms in English, precisely in order to
express the fullest possible meaning most accurately in English.
This kind of flexibility in
translation is not always easy for beginners to achieve. Hence, teachers of
translation summarize it in a simple way: "translate meaning, not form."
Naive Bible students can easily
make a mistake here. They believe, rightly, that every detail in the message of
original manuscripts, including every individual word, was breathed out by God
(2 Tim. 3:16). But then they may wrongly infer that a translation must proceed
on a strict, mechanical, word-for-word basis. Such reasoning does not recognize
that in the original languages, God himself combined the words into sentences
in order to convey a message. We do not do justice to God's speech unless we
recognize that he spoke the words in sentences and paragraphs, not in
isolation. Faithfully rendering his speech in another language means attending
all aspects of God's speech, not just the words in isolation. When we read a
letter to a friend, we read the message using the words. Just so when we read
God's Word, the Bible. 4
The theory of dynamic
equivalent translation
Linguists and teachers of
translators developed the theory of "dynamic equivalent" translation
to spell out in detail the differences between form and meaning, the
differences between different languages, and the kind of practices that lead to
sound translation. 5 Central to the theory was the principle of translating
meaning in preference to form.Thus, "dynamic equivalence" means
choosing an expression that yields equivalent meaning in the target language.
"Formal equivalence," by contrast, means choosing an expression that
has one-to-one matching forms in the target language, regardless of whether the
meaning is the same. The standard theory of dynamic equivalence thus advocates
translating meaning rather than form.
Such a summary is clearly on
the right track. It encourages translators to concentrate on what is important,
and to restructure the form when it is necessary to convey the meaning. Such an
emphasis is especially helpful in a situation where communication is difficult,
because it is better to transmit at least a minimal core content than to
produce a formal equivalent that does not work at all.
In addition to this basic
principle, early "dynamic equivalence" theory spelled out the
implications for various kinds of special cases. For example, it said that you
may make explicit in the target language information that is linguistically
implicit in the original. For instance, suppose that there is no noun for
"love" in the target language, but only a verb. When you have a noun
for "love" in Greek (agape), you may have to translate in a way that
includes an explicit subject and object in the target, "God loves
you" or "you love God."
Consider another, more complex
case. Compare two translations of Ephesians 1:18:
... that you may know what is
the hope of His calling, (NASB)
... that you may know what is
the hope to which he has called you, (RSV)
The underlying Greek,
word-for-word, runs like this: "the hope of-the calling his."
Strictly speaking, neither the NASB nor the RSV (nor the KJV nor any other
major English translation) is purely "formally equivalent." A pure
word-for-word matching results in ungrammatical English. The NASB has done a
minimal rearrangement of the words, in order to achieve grammatical English.
But now there is still a
difficulty. "Of" in English is not a perfect match for the underlying
Greek construction, which uses the genitive case rather than a separate word
like "of." "Of" is not an exact equivalent. And in fact, in
this case at least, it introduces the possibility of misunderstanding. English
readers may easily understand the NASB as meaning "the hope that he will
call you." But that is not what Paul means. In Greek the actual meaning is
closer to "hope arising from his calling" or "hope pertaining to
his calling." The RSV, NIV, and GNB all have "the hope to which he
has called you," which heads off the possible misunderstanding, and is one
useful solution. They have restructured the form, and thereby clarified the
meaning. In the process, they have also put in the extra word "you."
That word is not there in Greek. So is it illegitimate in English? No. It is
linguistically implicit in Greek. If the Greek explicitly speaks of "his
calling," that is, God's calling, it implies that God is calling someone.
Who is "the someone?" By implication, it is "you."
The theory of dynamic
equivalence allows even more. At times, because of cultural differences, target
readers within a particular language and culture are almost bound to
misunderstand, not so much the words as the cultural significance of the act.
In one target culture, meeting someone with palm branches signifies scorn. So
what does one do with Jesus' Palm Sunday entry in John 12:13, where the crowds
"took branches of palm trees and went out to meet him" (NIV)? In a
case like this, the theory allows the translator to put in the necessary
cultural information that was not linguistically there in the original. Instead
of saying "they went out to meet him," one says, "They took
branches of palm trees and went out to welcome him." The translator
compromises on linguistic meaning here (the Greek text does not specify that
people were welcoming Jesus), but the theory says it is right to add "to welcome"
in order that the total act of communication may be successful.
Dynamic equivalence theory was
a useful tool to encourage translators to reckon again and again with meaning,
not simply form. It is particularly important when one is training people who
start out with a naive understanding of language. Their impulse is often to
translate mechanically, word for word, especially when they have a very
imperfect grasp of one of the two languages with which they are working. They
have, perhaps, learned a simple beginner's rule, such as "Hebrew ben means
son." The temptation is just mechanically to replace the word ben with
"son" everywhere, ignoring context and ignoring the nuances of
meaning to which the context points.