Friday 10/10/14

This week’s LifeTeen Question of the Week comes from Alec DiFederico. Alec asks:

Do you think we have lost meaning and to what degree through the translation of scripture? And do you think that the new American translation will be the dominant translation until the decline of the English language?


Woah, woah, woah. One question at a time, Alec. Let’s start with the second one, because it’s easier. The New American Translation (Also called the New American Standard Bible, or NASB) is a great one, and it might become the dominant translation at some point, but at the moment, it’s not even in the top three. The exact order of translation by sale is under a lot of dispute, but almost every list has the top three as the New International Version (NIV), The King James Version (KJV), and the New King James Version (NKJV). Of these three, the NIV is by far the best version for serious Biblical study. That said, the KJV and NKJV are great Bibles to read for personal inspiration and prayer.

But why would one version of a Bible be better or worse for one purpose or another? The answer goes back to Alec’s first question.
We need translations of the Bible. Of the 73 books in the Catholic Bible (some other sects of Christianity use only 66) only about 0 of them were originally written in English. The rest of the all of them were written in old languages like Ancient Greek, Aramaic, and Hebrew. The number of people who can read and understand those languages is very small, particularly compared to the number of people who would like to read the Bible. This makes translation a necessary evil.

I say translation is evil because ideally we could all just read the original languages, but that would take a lifetime of study and most of us need to do other things, like go to work (another necessary evil), pay bills (another necessary evil), and study organic chemistry (I’m sensing a pattern…). Since we can’t read Sacred Scripture in its original language, we have to translate. The problem is that every time you translate a book, you lose some of the meaning.

Here’s an example straight from my favorite book of all time, John Steinbeck’s East of Eden.
Languages aren’t all created exactly the same. Some languages have words that just don’t translate very well into certain other languages. In this case, the Hebrew word “timshel” is the topic of some debate. The KJV translated it as “thou shalt.” The ASB translated it as “do thou.” Lee’s personal translation was “thou mayest.” The passage does a much better job of explaining why this makes such a big difference, but since I know how little patience most of you have, I’ll just do my best to paraphrase. “Thou shalt,” Lee says, is a promise, a prophecy. “Do thou,” on the other hand, is a command, an order. “Thou mayest,” is an opportunity. Since the Hebrew word “timshel” didn’t have any perfect English counterpart, the author had to make a decision.

Unfortunately, this means that when we read a translation we’re not reading the words as they were actually written, but rather how the translator understood them. We lose nuance and ambiguity. Clear passages become cloudy, and some cloudy passages become clear, though maybe not in the right way. We even lose jokes in translation. Take this German classic, for example:

Wundert sich ein Besucher im Wachsfigurenkabinett: "Das sollen Wachsfiguren sein? Seit meinem letzen Besuch sind die aber kein Stück gewachsen!"

Bahahahaha! That’s brilliant! Oh, you don’t speak German? Here it is in English:

A visitor at the wax museum thought: "That should be wax figures since my last visit but they are grown not a piece?"

Oh wait… something seems to have gotten lost in translation.

But wait! There’s more!

Sometimes we translate translations. Such is the case with the King James Version of the Bible. Some sections of the Bible have been lost and found over time. During the time of the King James Bible’s translation, certain sections, like the last six verses of Revelation, were not available in the original Greek text. As a result, the translators found a version of Revelation that had been translated into Greek from the Latin version, which had much earlier been translated from a Greek manuscript which had since been lost.

Let’s do that again, maybe a little more clearly. At one point, the last six verses of Revelation were written down in Greek. That Greek was then translated into Latin, and then the original manuscript lost. Another guy, who apparently really liked Greek, translated the Latin back into Greek. Finally, the translators of the KJV translated it to English. The total line goes: Greek to Latin, Latin to Greek, Greek to English. For those of you keeping score at home, that’s three translations. If you’ve ever played a game of telephone, you know the issue.
But hey, don’t take my word for it. Try this handy little experiment. Go to Google Translate. Enter an English sentence. Now translate it into Latin. Now translate the Latin to Greek, and then back into English again. What have you got? Does it make any sense at all? Of course not. You didn’t do it; your lack of patience is painful. Here, I did it for you:

Original: How much wood would a woodchuck chuck if a woodchuck could chuck wood?

Latin: Si marmota monax si marmota Quantum possit materiari?

Greek: Αν ένα τσοκ woodchuck αν woodchuck έκταση της ξυλείας μου;

English: If woodchuck chuck if a woodchuck extent of my timber?

You’re welcome.


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