Bible Translation: March 2011

What is development? Many used to see it as modernising the ‘Natives’
• How much does development work actually cause problems rather than decrease them?
• Does our involvement in literacy work, or our (informal) medical advise encourage modernisation?
• How does that affect people’s faith?

Superiority
• [Mission] assumed the superiority of European races, supported by an evolutionary idea of history (European nations are the height of civilisation), and therefore justified their mission.

Power relations in translation
• Translation is not an innocent, transparent activity but is highly charged with significance at every stage; it rarely, if ever, involves a relationship of equality between texts, authors or systems.

In what ways might Bible translation be part of neo-colonialism?
Does it…
 Promote Western values?
 Aid the acceptance of global capitalism?
 Smooth the way for exploitation?
 Make colonialism look more moral?

e.g. The Reformation
• The Bible was one tool that helped free the Dutch, Germans and English from the colonialism of Rome
• The Geneva Bible was particularly useful for this (They believed that ‘…God’s word spoke immediately to their context, and that biblical texts could be utilized profitably in the ongoingness of daily life. Within their pages they imagined the reflection of their national destiny, and conceived themselves ad replicating and re-living the trials and tribulations of ancient Israel and the Church of the New Testament times. More significantly, the production of the Geneva Bible, the translatory content, and its technical layout were an attempt to free the Bible from ecclesiastical control. In Hammond’s view, “of all English versions the Geneva Bible had probably the greatest political significance, in its preparing a generation of radical puritans to challenge, with the word of God, their tyrant rulers” (Hammond 1982:136). The title page is illustrative of this. There was a woodcut of the Israelites about to cross the Red Sea. Encircled in this were the words: “Great are the troubles of the righteous, but the Lord delivereth them out of all” (Ps. 34: 19). On the top were the words: “Fear not, stand still and behold the salvation of the Lord, which he will shew to you this day” (Exod. 14: 13), and at the bottom: “The Lord shall fight for you: therefore hold you your peace” (Exod. 14: 14).’ p143)

• Can Bible Translations achieve this in the developing world? Is it part of our agenda?

The Bible as a Political Tool
• King Henry VIII used the AV as colonising tool – to get rid of Roman Catholic beliefs (especially papist teaching), and to increase his own power
• Do we ever do the same with our Bible translations?

Are some colonial approaches good?
• ‘Unruly languages were now turned into manageable propositions so that they could serve the interests of the colonial project.’
• Some terms in receptor languages didn’t carry the correct biblical idea, so translator’s were encouraged to discard such terms and use a more neutral term.
• ‘To rectify pagan associations, or to remedy any lack of a proper Christian correspondent, the translators remedy was to convert and baptize these languages into “a Christian sense”’

Colonialism in South Africa
• The conquest of the promised land by the Israelites has been used as justification of Western expansion into many countries, including S. Africa. The extermination of indigenous peoples has tended to go hand-in-hand with it. This has particularly been a problem in Palestine.
• The application of the biblical teaching to colonisation today is ‘not sustainable’. We do not carry on circumcision, the killing of adulterers and other teachings from Torah. Why would we carry on colonialism?

Colonisation of Dialects
• Attempts to promote, or unwitting promotion of a standard dialect are also colonial
• ‘…translation can play an important part in subverting values, practices, modes of life quite independent of critique’ Asad

Relationships in a translation project (some things to think about):
Who does the translation belong to?
What effect does the translation have?
How do we talk about translation?
What can be done to ensure Bible translation is not colonialist?

Comments from India
• Many translations in India have been influenced too much by foreigners
• The problem of translation from English or other LWC with resulting influence of those languages and cultures on the RL
• The answer is to focus on training mother-tongue translators in Hebrew, Greek, and Biblical Studies. This will enable them to become ‘independent translators’

Transculturation
• ‘This datum in the past [talking about words we used for ‘God’, ‘sin’, ‘love’ being different in Greek and Hebrew] is also, and has been since large numbers of Jews first began to speak habitually in languages other than Hebrew, a datum in a foreign language and a different culture. Between us today and the men of the Bible, and between the men of the NT and those of the Old, there was a problem therefore not only of translation but of transculturation…
• …We have to consider therefore a linguistic gap between a Semitic language… and the corresponding cultural gaps between the ANE, the Roman Empire, and the modern world. It is doubtful whether any other sphere of life than the theological has common people without special training so continually attempting a semantic transference across such gaps.’ Barr

Translation as Cultural Mediation
• Interpreters during colonial era interceded between colonial leaders and rebellious tribal leaders
• Could there be a parallel between this and Mother-tongue translators who intercede between exegetes (some who are literalist and some who want to express meaning clearly)?

The ‘other’
• What expats create
• What ‘natives’ used to become
• What some local friends still become – ‘one of us’
• Are we still creating ‘the other’?
• Can we get away from this?

Translation
• Was all from Western texts into Indian languages
• ‘Such intelligible and unambiguous literary production assumed the tone that translation was a one-way flow from a superior race to an inferior one, and aimed at the moral and intellectual improvement of the natives.’

Textual Cleansing
• ‘…they basically agreed on the following:
 Indian texts are defiled and in need of theological cleansing…
 Native interpreters are unreliable…
 The colonizer has an inalienable right to explain and speak on behalf of the natives…’
• In conclusion, ‘Translation, thus, is more than a mere linguistic enterprise. It is a site for promoting unequal relationships among languages, races, religions, and peoples. It brings into focus the manipulative position of a translator.’

Textualisation
• ‘The other legacy of colonial hermeneutics was the replacement of the narrativel approach, which is widespread in Africa, Asia and Latin America, with the historical-critical mode of interpretation. Hindus tend to view texts as authorless narrative wholes, without any undue concern about their sources, or the situation in which they were written. The text is seen as a medium and not as a means to understand the truth. A narrative is seen as expressing emotive meaning… The text is seen for its beauty, grace, and emotive power. The task of the commentator is seen [in terms of]… creating new stories.’
• This view, has of course been backed up by the recent focus on narrative approaches in the West (Alter, Berlin, Sternberg…).

Words, words, words
• Indians had less of a focus on the meaning of individual words, and more on the effect that the sounds produced. E.g. ‘… a Brahmin chanting in Sanskrit at a sacrifice did not entail meaning in the European sense; it was to have one’s substance literally affected by the sound.’
• They had less of a focus on accuracy, and more on poetic features.
• Question. How much is our focus on ‘accuracy’ (as well as clarity, naturalness and acceptability) colonialist in its stance?
• Should we tell Mother-tongue translators to ‘keep it simple’?
• They want to use all the richness of their wonderful language!

Low Style, Low Acceptability
• The style of many translations – low, easy to read translations – actually made the translations less acceptable to Hindu audiences, who expected poetry and beauty. Not only that, sometimes the content made Hindus want to throw the book away and go to the river to perform purification rites for having read it! e.g. Solomon’s dedication of the temple (22,000 oxen slain), or the story of the Prodigal Son, with the ‘fattened calf’. Such things make Christianity look like a low-caste religion to upper-caste Brahmins!

There is no end to books…
• ‘The assumption of the missionaries was that oral cultures were empty and were waiting to be filled with written texts. They saw their task as transforming oral cultures into literate ones. The missionaries were not preoccupied with the tricky dichotomy between orality and literacy, or the competing merits of oral recitation and silent reading. Their mission was premised, after all, upon a book, and they regarded the text as a prime transmitter of divine revelation. One consequence is that biblical interpretation has now become a private, solitary activity…
• …In India, hermeneutics used to be a public activity undertaken by professional story-tellers and singers. Their mode of presentation, as Philip Lutgendorf has highlighted, included, “simple recitation, recitation plus exposition and dramatic enactment”. The legacy of colonial hermeneutics is that interpretation has become a literary activity confined to the urban educated class, and a private activity that effectively replaces the oral transmission of a story.’

Historicization of Faith
• Biblical theology – castigated idolatry amongst ‘the natives’, while idolising the theology of Barth, Brunner and Bultmann (The Jesus of history vs. the Jesus of faith, etc.).
• ‘That the whole programme of demythologization was aimed at Europeans, who had lost a sense of awe and wonder and the feel of the numinous as the result of modernistic tendencies, went unnoticed.’
• i.e. Indians hadn’t lost that sense of awe and wonder, and were being ‘modernised’ by the missionaries, who tended to have a Barth, Brunner and Bultmann-influenced reading of the Bible!

The Extra-biblical Factor
• Often translation contains interpretation e.g. the coming of the kingdom of God. If you read C.H. Dodd, absorb his teaching, then advise translators, the translation will come out with phrases such as ‘already’ and ‘having seen’, espousing Dodd’s realised eschatology.
• Is that a kind of colonialism?
• What kind of theology should they be following?

Mission from where to where?
• AV was sent round the world as a colonialising text. Now it is experiencing a revival in the West, perhaps symbolising an empire lost that needs reforging.
• Ironically now the tables have turned and the West needs saving from secularism etc. The South and East are seen as those who can help in this process.

Good News to the Poor
• The whole idea of ‘justice’ (cf. ‘righteousness’ – same root in Greek), is often mistranslated
• This makes it less relevant to the poor and needy in the developing world
• e.g. ‘Blessed are those who hunger and thirst to see right prevail’ NASB
• ‘Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness’ NRSV

There is hope
• Globalism is the next trend:

(to be continued...)

Bible Translation

Tuesday 8 March 2011

Globalism

Translation and Post-colonialism