How to Read a Translation. 1.2

Añadido: 2026-05-05

[00:00:03]Hello everyone and welcome to the second session of the first week of how to read a translation. The theme of today's session is in the beginning was the translation.

[00:00:17]So what will happen is I'll just do a quick precap recap and then I will get into the the three main points of today's session. First one is about the Bible and its translations. The second point is about the the ideas of domestication and foreignization.

[00:00:35]And then the third is about the idea of equivalence theory. And then I'll end with some food for thought.

[00:00:46]So in the first session I laid out many different definitions of the word translation and brought a brought attention to how these definitions can range from very broad and very literal to very specific. I also discussed the phrase lost in translation and how the claim of translation's impossibility is a red herring in a way. Not only is translation radically possible, it happens all the time. Both in everyday life and through the fact that there are many works of literature that have been translated many, if not hundreds of times. Therefore, we have to always think about translation in at least two simultaneous ways.

[00:01:29]First, translation as a practice and second as translation as an ideal.

[00:01:36]I briefly mentioned that there have been many dozens if not hundreds of attempts to clarify what translation is by comparing it to other activities such as acting or rewriting or paraphrasing which is a result of translation and metaphor being very close to each other conceptually if not edologically.

[00:01:57]I then concluded by sharing a long quote by the Swedish poet Thomas where he contrasts a rigid view of poetry as something that can never leave its original language with an open view of poetry where even the so-called original is already a translation not from one language into another but from the poet's mind into the poet's language.

[00:02:22]I will come back to the question of the original in the third session and then again to transa in a few weeks.

[00:02:29]However, the topic of today's session is arguably the most daunting one, the Bible. It's probably impossible to overestimate the influence the Bible has had not only on Western civilization but on the entire world. While Christianity is historically a western religion, it has of course spread throughout the across the globe. When it comes to the amount of influence that religion, including Christianity, has had on politics, I don't even know where to begin. One need only take a brief look into American politics to see that even when it's not being quoted, the Bible is everywhere.

[00:03:06]So, section one, the Bible and translations.

[00:03:10]There are over 3,600 translations of the Bible.

[00:03:15]The Complete Bible has been translated into over 740 languages, while just the New Testament has been translated into 1,600 additional languages. Smaller parts, such as like a single book or a gospel, are available in a further 1,200 languages.

[00:03:34]So, why are there so many? Depending on your background, the reasons for this might seem either immediately obvious or totally opaque or perhaps somewhere in the middle.

[00:03:45]Probably the most consequential reason is that Christianity has historically placed a lot of emphasis on colonization and mission work to bring more people into the religion. Major colonial powers such as Spain, Portugal, England, France, and the Netherlands were all predominantly Christian and when they sailed the globe to conquer other peoples and lands, Christianity and the Bible came with them. When Martin Luther's landmark translation of the Bible into German was published in 1522, Portugal and Spain were were well underway in establishing colonies in the Americas and along the coasts of Asia and Africa. When the famous King James Bible into English was published in 1611, the Dutch, the French, and the English were well on their way to catching up with their Spanish and Portuguese rivals.

[00:04:34]The Bible thus became one of many colonizing tools employed by both colonial powers and religious leaders in collaboration.

[00:04:43]Even though the age of discovery of the early modern era is over, new forms of colonial activity such as missions keep the wheel turning with missionaries still committed to bringing the word of God to every nook and cranny of the world.

[00:04:58]It's also important to keep in mind that the age of exploration and col colonial colonization also coincided with the rise of Bible translations into ver vernacular languages.

[00:05:09]This shift not only uh uh not only severely compromised the church's Latinon grip on the word of God, it also led to the rapid development and formalization of vernacular languages.

[00:05:24]For instance, modern German would not at all be the same without Luther's Bible.

[00:05:30]Nor would modern English be the same without the King James Bible. And since language, land, and national identity have historically been closely connected and therefore unified groups of people, the effect of a Bible translation into this or that language has an has a major impact on the shared sense of belonging amongst a nation amongst amongst a group of people.

[00:05:54]Take for instance the Pharaoh Islands which today is part of the Kingdom of Denmark and where everyone is more or less bilingual in both Farohies and Danish. The Bible has been translated in several times into Danish since the first one in 1550. But the Bible was first translated into Farohise only in 1948. Until then it was in Danish that Pharaoh Islanders read and from the Bible.

[00:06:20]So in short, the initial explosion of Bible translations came as a result of the goal to bring the word of God both to those who were already believers as well as those who were yet to be convinced and converted into Christianity. As time went on though, there arose different reasons for more translations and different versions of the Bible within a single language. This is not only because language changes over time, thus requiring texts to be updated and kept accessible for newer generations of readers, but also for other reasons. I've already mentioned that the Luther Bible marked a major moment in history for the development of vernacular languages, but it was also of course a major turn in the history of Christianity because it played an essential role in the reformation and the origin of Protestantism.

[00:07:11]If there is a disagreement in a denomination, a group can simply break off or not so simply, but a br a group can break off and form a new denomination.

[00:07:21]Of course, even before the reformation, theological debates about what what should or should not be included in the Bible were frequent. Nonetheless, according to the Center for the Study of Global Christianity at the G at the Gordon Conwell Theological Seminary, there are over 45,000 Christian denominations in the world as of 2019.

[00:07:45]While the pa the pace of new Bible translations cannot keep up with the pace of new Christian denominations, there are nonetheless major theological and translatorial differences which lead to an assortment of versions within a given language. Take for instance English, which is the language with the most translations, with over a 100 complete versions and hundreds more partial or adapted translations of the Bible.

[00:08:12]Aside from the benchmark early modern King James Bible again from 1611 which which was a literary achievement rivaling Shakespeare as much as it was a theological achievement. There are numerous others other other translations of the Bible which emphasize different things in their translations. The new the new American Standard Bible aims for the word forword accuracy while the New International Version aims for thought forthought clarity. Other versions such as the New Living Translation place their focus on readability and modern phrasing. Still others are paraphrased or adapted for different groups such as children, teens, new believers or English learners.

[00:09:01]In the end, what all the different translations and versions have in common is the shared goal of communicating the word of God in a way that the translators and editors and and and and church leaders believe to bring the reader closest to the truth that is found in the word of God.

[00:09:20]I will come back to the concept of truth and related ones such as the original and faithfulness in this session.

[00:09:27]But in short, when we combine the global history of Bible translations with the philosophical and theological issues that are connected with and through it, it's not surprising that the Bible has had not only an enormous influence on how we understand translation, but also how we understand language itself.

[00:09:47]So the history of the Bible is both a history of translation and a history of language.

[00:10:00]second section.

[00:10:02]So for the context of this course, we can use actually the example of the Bible as a case study or at least a jumping off point for three major concepts in modern translation studies.

[00:10:16]The first two actually are a pair each of which are are poles on opposite ends of a spectrum. On one end of the spectrum is what's called domestication and on the other hand is foreignization.

[00:10:31]The last concept is equivalence or equivalence theory particularly in the context of the Bible translation. These cont these concepts come into contact in one of the most influential books ever written on translation studies, Lawrence Venuti's scholarly monograph, The Translators Invisibility, which was first published in 1995 with a second edition in 2008 and then a third edition in 2018.

[00:10:57]The overarching concept of the book is evident in its title, The Invisibility of the Translator. For Venui, the invisibility of the translator refers to two entangled phenomena. The first is an effect of a translator's manipulation, he says, of a source text in such a way that it erases any hint that the translated text is in fact a translation.

[00:11:25]The second is the dominant practice of reading and reviewing translations not just in the US or the UK but also in other angophone and non- angophone cultures.

[00:11:37]An example of this is offered by Venui as the epigraph of his very first chapter.

[00:11:44]So this this next quote is not Venui, it is somebody else.

[00:11:48]I see translation as the attempt to produce a text so transparent that it does not seem to be translated. A good translation is like a pane of glass. You only notice that it's there when there are little imperfections, scratches, bubbles. Ideally, there shouldn't be any. It should never call attention to itself.

[00:12:12]for Venui that the translator should be invisible or that a translation should never reveal itself as a translation is a necessary a component and effect of what he calls the regime of fluency.

[00:12:28]He describes describes it like this.

[00:12:32]A translated text, whether pros or poetry, fiction or non-fiction, is judged acceptable by most public by most publishers, reviewers, and readers when it reads fluently. When the absence of any linguistic or stylistic peculiarities make it seem transparent, giving the appearance that it reflects the foreign writer's personality or intention, or the essential meaning of the foreign text. the appearance. In other words, that the translation is not in fact a translation, but the original.

[00:13:04]This is Venui, by the way, just to be sure. Put simply, the regime of fluency demands that the translator be invisible and produce a text that reads as if it were the so-called original all along.

[00:13:18]Put yet another way, this view of the task of translation is that a text should be completely domesticated, that no foreignness sneaks in.

[00:13:30]The translator's invisibility is as much a result of a structural pressure as it is of individual actors such as editors, reviewers, CEOs, and even translators themselves. And I'll do a quick sidebar.

[00:13:43]Indeed, this epigraph um here is a quote by a translator uh who's now dead, but a translator nonetheless. Even if translators have become much more visible in the last decade, it's not a given that all translators want to be visible, nor that all translators see themselves as creating something new or uh when they translate. For instance, Anne Goldstein, who was uh most famous for being the translator of Alena Fante, was quoted in a 2016 interview in the Guardian as saying, quote, "I'm not creating something new. I don't feel it's my job to do that."

[00:14:20]And sidebar, so the pressure for translations to be fluent and feel as if they are the original is most obvious when read when one reads reviews. You can find this today. Uh I I can't guarantee that every review will say something because the other half of the problem is that the translators are not even mentioned which feeds into the same problem that it's a deception that the book you know in question whether it's by reviewer or how it looks on the outside on the cover it's trying it's trying to hide the fact put it simply to put it simply that it is a translation. It's try it's tried to be covert.

[00:14:59]Um, so it it so it becomes the strongest and most obvious when you read a review. So here are just a few phrases from the examples that Benui quotes.

[00:15:13]The pros is always natural, brilliant, and crisp. The translation is a pleasantly fluent one. The translation of the title of this book is faithful.

[00:15:22]The translation by Frank is fluent and natural sounding.

[00:15:26]This is translated with uh translated with fluid uh translation. That was a typo on my part.

[00:15:47]Ah, yes. It is not translated with fluid translation. It is translated with fluid grace. Apologies for the typo.

[00:15:56]So in these examples, we see very obviously that it seems to be the highest praise that a translator could the translation could be given is that the book doesn't sound like a translation, whatever that might mean, which you know, we we can get into that and talk about it more, but why is it a bad thing? You know, this is this is the the elephant in the room. Why would it why is it so so problematic or so bad or so negative that a translation be acknowledged as a translation? Because it is one. There are a lot of other scholars that I mean if you're curious about this, I can talk more about it. Um who really take this kind of this theme of being a of of desiring a fluid translation and a domesticated translation in terms of something that is uniquely American or uniquely British too, I would say. um or I wouldn't say that but we we could we can um expand on that um such that it's actually a kind of a form of xenophobia that there's some type of fear that must that must arrive from experiencing something that is foreign experiencing something that is other which is something that motivates the the imperative that something sounds natural. God forbid that we that uh reading a book or reading a text might be a little bit challenging because it is different than what we might expect. But I'll leave that there. I won't go on. Um so in addition to these this high praise that one that that that that a translation can receive um there's also the pjorative uh kind of trope which is that if if a if a book is not super super fluid and super natural and super super fluent, it must then be translation or translator ease or translate which is to say the translator must have done something wrong because it's it's not easy for me to I'll leave that there. Um, so the these kind of phrases and these kind of words are designed to criticize the lack of um designed to criticize translations that appear that might lack or god forbid dare to resist the demand of fluency.

[00:18:02]I won't even get into to to the question of poetry translation because it's really a different ballgame with different standards, different expectations and really um different readerships than than than those who read pros.

[00:18:14]So what I just described is rhetoric of the dominant but waning status quo of translation where naturalenness is the primary metric by which a translation is judged to be successful or to succeed or to be good. However, the interplay between domestication and foreignization of a literary text is much more complex.

[00:18:39]In his introduction to the third book to the third edition of the third book, Venui emphasizes that translation itself is inherently domesticating in the very basic sense because it brings a foreign text into a new linguistic and cultural context in terms that are intelligible for new readers. You are bringing a foreign text, a text written in a language that most people, you know, many people, most people will not understand and then you're making it understandable for them there. thereby it domesticates it because it makes it into something that is at home for them.

[00:19:13]Right?

[00:19:15]So, but even if even if a translation feels like a 100% original text, it is still a translation no matter how much one tries to hide it. Luckily, oh, this is not always the case though, but luckily there's copyright. So, if you really want to know, you know, sometimes it will happen too that you cannot figure out if something's a translation unless you look at that the small writing on that first inside page where it has all the copyright details in the fine print.

[00:19:39]That does happen still. Um, so so it is still so even if it feels, you know, and the publishers have done everything they could to to hide the fact that it's a translation, it will still be a translation. Um, still a foreign text in the most basic of senses. However, and the the reason why the this this book is so influential and so and and also controversial too. Not everybody agrees obviously not everybody agrees as I said before that a translator should be visible. No, but not everybody agrees that the that a translation is something new even if it's related to you know an original.

[00:20:16]Ultimately then the the the domestication and foreignization of translations are effects that are in constant interplay in tension. So they're not necessarily individual choices. It's generally is a structural question as well. Um you might be able to pinpoint certain choices but you know that's not necessarily those are those are small and minor whereas the bigger the bigger question the bigger problem is this kind of structural um context.

[00:20:43]And so domestication and foreignization are ethical because they are in relation to the source text.

[00:20:52]This is because Venui argues translation is an inherently violent activity.

[00:20:59]This might sound hyperbolic at first, but it makes more sense when he explains further. This is Venui.

[00:21:05]A translator is forced not only to eliminate aspects of the foreign text starting with the orthographic and acoustic features of the language in which it was first written but also to de dismantle and disarrange those aspects in accordance with the structural differences between languages so that both the foreign text and its relations to other texts in the foreign culture never remain intact after the translation process. Translation is the forcible replacement of the linguistic and cultural differences of the foreign text with a text that is intelligible to the reader of the new text.

[00:21:42]So thus in other words to foreignize a translation is to restrain the violence of translation by maintaining a degree of the source texts cultural, social andor linguistic contours.

[00:21:56]In turn, this means that a translated text will be less domesticated, less original.

[00:22:05]So this is for example, this is for just to take a very very basic example that might not even count uh depending on how you look at it is for example what you might there's different many different ways to call to call to to for where children would call their mother or father or something else. like mama, papa, more far. There are many different ways that one example of of keeping some foreignness and foreignizing that this is a very stereotypical even a cliche is you keep the word m or mama or whatever it might be whatever whatever the child will say in in the in in the n in the in the foreign language you keep that in the English translation and so it sticks out because it's not mom or dad um as we would as many people would say in English that's just one very basic example and so that also you know it it renders and it makes legible that this text is is or not necessarily but it does um there there's of course the case where a tech text can be written in English but also take in these other things too but the point being is that it's a small it's a small um it's a small cue that the text may not be entirely angophone in one way or another.

[00:23:16]So yes, now we'll turn to equivalence theory. So I'll repeat what I said that the translated text if some if it is foreignized to to whatever degree will therefore be less domesticated less original and it's also very important too and um I think I might mention it again in a minute but that venui emphasizes that this is not a dichotomy it's not something that's either or it's a constant thing that is that is that is very complex and is very much something that is specific to each individual text um but it's it's it's more about these kind of how these two different ideas of domestication and foreignization are in relation to each other and how they establish a tension that is indicative not just of a given text but also of the entire context of of translation as something that happens.

[00:24:07]Okay. So, but what about the Bible? So, to repeat, British and American cultures have for a long time been dominated by the principles of domestication that demand fluent translation.

[00:24:20]This creates what Venui calls an quote illusion of transparency where quote a fluent translation masquerades as a true semantic equivalence which unquote um which biases it towards the English language values and reduces if not simply excludes the very differences that translation is called on to convey.

[00:24:47]which is to say that by making the text transparent, it erases the difference.

[00:24:53]And so it it tries to have its cake and eat it too in a way. For Venui, a paradig paradigmatic example of this translational violence is found in the work of Eugene Nida who was a linguist and one of the founders of of translation studies whose work focused ex extensively on Bible translation. He is famous for his development of what he calls equivalence theory which in his own words quote aims at complete naturalness of expression so that the receptors of a translation can comprehend the translated text to such an extent that they can understand how the original receptors must have understood the original text.

[00:25:40]This is problematic for several reasons.

[00:25:42]First is that such a view, and this is my opinion, first is that such a view presumes an unlimited insight into the context of the source text, no matter how temporally, geographically, or culturally distant the context of the source text is. It, for example, it presumes that that that a modern day reader um of well of the Bible can get into the mind of of somebody who was speaking Hebrew 20,000, however many years ago. that. So the Brit kind of takes that assumption that that is possible.

[00:26:14]Second, it does so only to eventually erase all indicators of foreignness because it is the focus is entirely on the reader of the new translation.

[00:26:28]Thirdly, it enforces and projects a cultural elitism. This is also Venut Venui's uh argument. It enforces and projects a cultural elitism of imperial violence of English language values onto all other languages and cultures. This is, you know, this is a consequence of everything. The entire translation is focused on the this mythical English reader which I'll come to back in a come back to in a minute. Fourthly, this is the last one. It also in my opinion offends the intelligence of English of the English language reader. I think this the probably the most confusing part of this to me is that it the kind of way that like it it assumes that that that that English language readers can't tolerate difference can't tolerate stranges you know which you know it's it's it's quite it can it's kind of offensive actually uh I would say and so it's like the publishers really do not seem to think that um think of their readers um as intelligent people which is that this is me just um um to this is this is me looking at it cynically, but it is kind of it's when you look at that, it's kind of lingering on there like when you when you peel back the layers like why do they assume that everything has to be so perfect and so clean um and so easy to digest for the reader. I mean it's also a capitalist question too. They want to sell more books etc. But we know that that that we can get into later if somebody's interested. So there's more to be said about this. Um but suffices to say that we find the same logic of fluency that Venui is criticizing and critiquing and also the same violence.

[00:28:07]So it may not be surprising then that Nidita's elitist and violent view of translation is closely is closely linked to the role of the translator or it it this Nidita's elitist and violent view of translation closely links the role of the translator to that of the missionary.

[00:28:27]As Neita writes in his 1952 book, God's Word in Man's Language, quote, "The task of the true translator is one of identification. As a Christian servant, he must identify with Christ. As a translator, he must identify himself with the with with the world, with the not with the world, with the word.

[00:28:48]As a missionary, he must identify himself with the people.

[00:28:52]For Nida, both the missionary and the translator have to establish the relevance of the Bible in the receiving c culture. They have to make it as relevant as possible for the people that they are trying to convert or speak to.

[00:29:06]Ultimately, Nidita's view of translation as dynamic equivalence goes in Venote's words handinhand with an evangelical zeal that seeks to impose a certain dialect of English, certain standard uses usage and a distinctly dogmatic Christian understanding of the Bible.

[00:29:25]So, this is one extreme example I should say too. I'm not trying to villainize Bible translators, but when we see the we see I'm trying to establish the connection between these different things. So just keep that in mind. So when we place this example against the broader backdrop of the 100 plus English translations of the Bible, it's probably not surprising why there might be such a rigid and prescriptive approach to translation amongst them. That's precisely why there are so many translations into the same English or you know the same into English in general. There are different kinds of English. There's English is not a monolith.

[00:30:03]But why the example of Nida matters though is both because his views on translation had an enormous effect on translation studies as an academic discipline and because it represents an extreme and explicit example of this regime of fluency that demands that every element of a translation be in service of what Korean to English translator Anton calls the mythical English reader in an essay with the same title which I've uploaded to the uh the the Google sheet or um not on the Google sheet is is in the description below. So you can find that there. Um so that's what where I'll end here. U I'm curious to hear your thoughts on any of this. Um and so in that sense I have one question and one suggestion which is what are your own thoughts about about these these connections and what are your own thoughts about how a translation should read sound feel and why? I think a lot of the a lot of the kind of frustration that you know people who are interested in translation or you know people that have an opinion about translation is is that it's a lot of it is about feeling and it's never something that's not that's necessarily talked through. And I think it also goes back to because we have this phrase lost in translation that we know we know what it means. It means that you don't understand. It means that that that something there was a miscommunication.

[00:31:25]So it's kind of baked into the way that we that we use the this the in the way that we use and understand what translation is. This phrase is I think maybe I'm over overestimating it but I think it has had a huge impact on how we understand literary translation and other forms of translation just as a metaphor. And then the suggestion is just for fun um go to biblegateway.com and compare different versions of of a certain verse. Um, they have a lot of ones in English, a lot of ones in Spanish. Um, and then they also have, you know, they have an Icelandic, Swedish, German. They have a lot. They have hundreds, I believe. Um, and so you can go and you can just pick a verse if you know one already. And then you can just select all the different you can I don't know if you can do side by side.

[00:32:09]Um, but you can you if you have the verse locked in, you can scroll through and click through all the different kinds of versions. Um, it's actually really quite fascinating, um, as a resource if you're curious. All right.

[00:32:22]So, I will stop there and uh we'll be back again shortly.