Why Is Biblical Translation So Controversial?

Faith & Science Conversation
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It seems I’ve been [proven] guilty of posting stuff that raises questions of translation. So, I thought we might have some fun learning a bit more about how translations get written, i.e., they are written by committee and here is a glimpse into the making of this kind of sausage.

It’s a short video of a group of scholars on the ESV’s translation committee debating the meaning of the word eved. To me, these guys are the gods of translation - Wayne Grudem, Gordon Wenham, Peter Williams, and others.

For those of you who watch the video, I have two questions:

  1. What do you think the right choice is?

  2. What role did ha’adam (the man created in Genesis 2:5d), 'avad (a qal infinitive construct form of eved)?

...and there was no man 'avad the ground

Was he a slave? Was he a servant? was he owned by YHWH?

Blessings,
M

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It’s my professional opinion that the ESV would not have gotten past a consultant check if it were in a minority language. But English-speaking Evangelical academics play by their own rules. Mark Strauss once wrote an article with all the things that would have been flagged in a normal consultant check in the rest of the BT world.

The semantic ranges of words in two different languages never overlap in exactly the same ways. Doulos should be translated slave in some places and servant in others. Making up a word like bondservant is a cop out, because no English speaker uses that word or has a concept attached to it. There are good arguments that the ESV committee’s choices of servant instead of slave in some places was motivated by their patriarchical agenda and intended to obscure unwanted analogies between women and slaves. Modern Bible interpretation arguments that denounce slavery and argue for the trajectory of redemption also work against patriarchy, and that was inconvenient for them.

Check out this article by sociologist Samuel Perry
Samuel L Perry, “Whitewashing Evangelical Scripture: The Case of Slavery and Antisemitism in the English Standard Version,” Journal of the American Academy of Religion 89.2 (2021): 612–43. https://doi.org/10.1093/jaarel/lfab054

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One advantage of reading the Bible in Hebrew or Greek, is that one can have no one to blame but oneself when screwing up.

M

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Impressive, both in the detail and the patience required to write that!

This brought to mind a conference where I was “the Greek guy” for a Bible study session. I discovered it’s one thing to translate at leisure at home or office, another entirely to try to do it on-the-spot and in-the-moment for a group.

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I am sorry but that is a fallacy unless you ae thinking in Hebrew or Greek because that is your own language.

Even so, our understanding is still a translation. it is how we understand the word. . Chances are it will have been taught and learned. As we use language we get feedback as to whether what we say is the same as what others would say. We conform. we have to . There is no other way to be understood. it is no use thinking a word means one thing when to everyone les it means something else.

There was a round in the English Jeopardy that involved Del Boy’s malapropisms… The fact that he misuses French phrases is deemed funny., but in reality, misunderstandings of that sort can cause major problems. The wrong gesture or action can be enough let alone a poorly chosen word or phrase.

Whether we like it or not, language is subject to individual understanding supported by the local culture.

There is no perfect translation of Scripture, and without asking them, we cannot be certain of the intent of the writers either. The net result will always be consensus. And humanity is not known for getting that sort of thing right every time. And language understanding changes with time and culture.

Richard

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Everyone who has learned to read Hebrew or Greek has learned from resources that were translated and prepared by the same (English-speaking) academic community as the one doing the translation. No one is learning ancient Hebrew or Koine Greek and becoming encultured in their worldview from a community of speakers. So learning the original languages will not shelter you from incorrect assumptions/translations you have internalized from your teachers and learning resources and in most cases you aren’t going to be making better or more informed choices than the translation committees. You may understand the debates and ambiguity more thoroughly, but the problems for modern English speakers are going to be problems for all of us, no one gets around them.

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Flagged in a “normal” consultant check? I found his treatment pedantic and misguided. He goes verse after verse after verse, critiquing the ESV over and over and over, and in each case claiming that the ESV “erred” because he would have preferred a more “dynamic equivalent” rendering in English rather than the ESV’s literal/formal-equivalent rendering.

But this is just his dislike of their translation philosophy in general. It is always a choice between keeping close to the original word-for word, or translating more thought for thought. The ESV’s philosophy, for right or wrong, was to translate literal word-for-word wherever possible, and avoid changing the original words even knowing it would not make for smoother or more natural English…

The ESV is an “essentially literal” translation that seeks as far as possible to reproduce the precise wording of the original text and the personal style of each Bible writer. As such, its emphasis is on “word-for-word” correspondence, at the same time taking full account of differences in grammar, syntax, and idiom between current literary English and the original languages. Thus it seeks to be transparent to the original text, letting the reader see as directly as possible the structure and exact force of the original. … we have sought to be “as literal as possible”

It was the intent of the ESV to be “as literal as possible.” What then was the point of going verse after verse after verse after verse complaining of “errors” because the ESV’s rendering is too literal?

If he wanted to critique the ESV’s literal/formal-equivalence philosophy and argue in preference for a “dynamic equivalent” philosophy, then he should simply have done so. But what would even be the point of that? Different Bibles can’t have different translation philosophies?

Therefore, going verse after verse after verse after verse after verse, pointing out each place where the ESV opted for a strictly literal translation, and claiming that a more dynamic equivalent translation would have been better at that point, and claiming these examples as “lexical errors” or “idioms missed” is tedious, pedantic, and rather ridiculous.

One could do the same thing with the NASB: go verse by verse and show all the places where something sounds like “strange English” or complain that a Greek idiom was translated literally instead of just using a similar English idiom that would have made more sense to English readers. But what would be the point? The NASB intended to keep things strictly literal rather than translate thought for thought or make for smoother English.

I personally far prefer reading a dynamic equivalent version like the NIV, but I also very much appreciate the value of reading something like the ESV or NASB where I can get a better sense of what the original words were.

But for this writer to go verse after verse after verse after verse to complain that the ESV - *that was intended to be “as literal as possible” - chose to render said verses in a literal, rather than in a more dynamic-equivalent manner, is frankly ridiculous.

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I agree that the amount of time spent on archaisms or unusual phrasings for modern English that sound completely normal to me because I’m used to older styles and to reading formal-equivalence translations seems excessive. I think from the introduction that those were intended more as a counter to “This is the perfect Bible translation into English.”-type claims.

The critiques of instances of excessively rigid word choice for the semantic range of the original or of inconsistent word choice are reasonable, though.

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I’m not sure what you mean exactly about “excessively rigid word choices”… there is a place for Bibles that are strictly literal like that ; the NASB had a place on my shelf for in-depth study and being able to better follow the original words. And the ESV is in the same category for me. I just don’t understand the point of going through verse by verse and critiquing a Bible because they translated everything strictly literally, when it was the intent of the translators to translate everything strictly literally.

Some of the critiques of inconsistent word choices were reasonable, granted, if lost in a sea of absurd and pointless critiques of the ESV translating things literally.

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I was thinking of the cited issue for doulos; or issues for some words with really wide semantic ranges in Hebrew where multiple senses may be intended at once, where really what’s probably needed is a long footnote explaining them (like hevel).

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Yes. Mark Strauss does consultant checking on minority language translations sometimes. He was vice-chair of the NIV translation committee and this paper was presented at ETS. “Literal” renderings often fail to communicate, especially when they don’t use real English. And it’s not just about the ESV translation philosophy. They failed to follow their own translation brief in ways that have been widely discussed. Deciding you want to do a highly “foreignizing” translation is all fine and good, just don’t try to market it as readable standard modern English that all churches should switch their pew Bibles to. Plus, although they claimed to re-translate, it was basically just a revision of the RSV in line with their gender theology because they didn’t like the gender accurate inclusive updates in the NIV and the NRSV.

“Essentially literal” is a made up thing to sell Bibles to Americans, it’s not something real from linguistics or translation theory. The only reason they can pretend to have word for word correspondence is because both Greek and English are Indo-European languages and the development of literary English was highly influenced by both Greek cuture/thought paradigms and transliterated Greek words in the earliest English Scripture translations.

Because there is a point where you haven’t translated, you have provided a gloss. And figures of speech and idioms don’t make sense when you gloss them, you need to actually translate them. Plus in some parts they failed to use English grammar. A collocational clash is considered a translation error in the field of translation. It is just not good translation to insist you can say “He came before his face” in English instead of “He appeared in front of him.” The first is not an English translation because no one says that, it’s a gloss that native speakers have to guess the meaning of.

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That is what translation consultants do on every minority language translation produced by UBS or SIL or Seed Company or LBT or World Teams or PBT or any other Bible translation organization that follows FOBAI best practices.
https://thedigitalbiblelibrary.org/get-involved/fobai-translation/

I think the point Mark (and I) was trying to make is that English translation committees don’t hold themselves to the same levels of iterative checking as minority language translators are held to. They don’t do community checking. They don’t do consultant checking. They just assume that the guys with the PhDs in biblical languages are obviously competent translators. Sometimes they aren’t. Some of these guys have precious little training in linguistics, translation theory, or literacy. They just make stuff up as they go. Many are really old too, and operate with outdated understandings of Hebrew and Greek linguistics. The English-speaking Evangelical world has created its little clubs and they pick who sits at the table and are not all that conversant with inter-disciplinary or international scholarship.

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“Good” translation by whose standards? Those are all translation philosophy choices. If their method doesn’t meet with your personal approval, then use another Bible. Some of us, though, value tools like the ESV and NASB specifically because they relay more of exactly what was in the original rather than giving us idioms or sentence structures that, admittedly, sound much better to us English speakers.

For myself, I rarely use an ESV or NASB unless I am doing word study, I far prefer using my NIV just to read the Bible. But when I want to do a more thorough word study (and don’t want to painfully work through the original languages, rusty as I am in them), then I grab my ESV or NASB. And then I want to know that the original actually said, “Came before his face.”

But critiquing the ESV, line by line, and making a list of all the places that the ESV “erred” by being literal would be akin to me taking The Message or The Living Bible and critiquing it verse by verse and pointing out all the places it failed to convey the word-for-word literal meaning of the original by being a paraphrase.

But my goodness, why all the heartache about a Bible translation being too strictly literal? Let that group of scholars so translate it literally if they want, if they felt people wanted a strictly literal translation… why do you care? Did people exhibit this kind of heartache when the NASB was introduced?

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Seriously? The FOBAI standards that I linked.

Because I have worked in minority language Bible translation for 15 years and the unrepentant sexism, racism, and unbridled arrogance exhibited by some members of the ESV committee and their big fans will never cease to bother me. They lie to people about what makes a Bible translation good to sell more Bibles and prop up their damaging theology and politics. I hope they don’t prosper.

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Woah there…id be very careful making that kind of judgement…Albert Einstein was very old and you rely on his science extensively even within your own world view.

On a lighter note (also important because of the issue of gender equality you appeared to raise earlier) given its most of his brilliance came during his married days and little “new” brilliance came out of the man after his separation, the underlying claim is that most of his scientific genius came from his wife!

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Thats exactly what we should always do Daniel…great point.

I get a little suprised at the criticisms against single bible translations when they are used to earbash beliefs…such as literalism in Christianity.

My denomination actively encourges members to use a wide variety of tranlations…its doctrines are never founded on single versions that “conveniently” suit prexisting beliefs. Thats not how sound theology is done in our church nor in our universities around the world, so im somewhat miffed when other denominations members grumble that their group isnt translating or using a translation correctly…these people are involved in deminational fools errand in my view. They need to go to a church with more ecclectic biblical habits.

We know what happens for example in KJV only groups…fundamentalist extremism.

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The original doesn’t. Those are all English words. English - Hebrew/Greek dictionaries are themselves the product of usage, and usage is unavoidably cultural and idiomatic.

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This might help Bill

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But the point was he did his best work when he was young, with or without help.

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I value the minority language Bible translation work much. I also think that many English translations represent a particular theology rather than an objective attempt to translate the original text to another language. Yet, you manage to give the impression that your approach suffers from a bias caused by living within a particular kind of bubble for a long time.

I heard a story of a missionary that went to an island where people did not eat or know bread, their daily food was turtles. When the missionary told about the prayer ‘give us our daily bread’, he translated it as ‘give us our daily turtle’. Was this translation ok?
If the purpose was to transmit a particular understanding about the original text, changing the ‘bread’ to ‘turtle’ was ok - the receivers understood the intended message better than if the missionary had used the word ‘bread’.
If the purpose would have been to tell about the original text and context, ‘turtle’ would not have been an ok translation.

We need translations intended for differing purposes. When we want to transmit a message (as we understand it) to people who have not heard the message earlier, then using a ‘dynamic’ translation might be the best possible alternative.
When we want to translate the original text to those who have already heard the message but want to know what the original text was and cannot read Greek or Hebrew, then a more ‘literal’ translation is better than a ‘dynamic’ translation, assuming there are also ‘dynamic’ translations available for comparison purposes.

Personally, I prefer a translation putting more emphasis on a ‘literal’ than ‘dynamic’ translation philosophy. I cannot read Hebrew text and know only a few words of Koine Greek, so a ‘literal’ translation gives for me a better oppportunity to see what the text is behind the ‘dynamic’ translations.

The potential pitfall behind the ‘dynamic’ or even more liberal translations is that we are not translating the original text, we are translating our understanding about the message in the original text. Usually our understanding about the message is ok but there is a possibility that our understanding is biased in a way that twists the translation towards to the direction that we support.
I have noted that translation work by groups that represent multiple denominations, including the Catholic, Orthodox, Lutheran, Free churches, Pentecostals and others sometimes stumbles to passages where a denomination would want an alternative translation that would support their doctrine better than some other translation alternative. Often, the largest churches get their hopes heard better than the smaller churches, even when there might be reasons supporting another translation alternative.
That is one reason why we also need translations that follow a more ‘literal’ translation philosophy.

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