540 - The Translation Task

The Translation Task

By Patrick D. Miller, Jr.

Defending the translation results of An Inclusive Language Lectionary is not my primary intention here, though that may come through indirectly. It is better for those outside the process to assess its results (though it is highly desirable that this be done empathetically and without arrogance). Here, however, I want to identify some aspects of the translation enterprise that have come to the fore as I have worked on different translation projects and reflected on the results and reactions to the results.

I

One of the translation realities that presses itself upon me is the degree to which translation is: (i) a level of interpretation that (ii) has to take account of the context in which the translation is set. It is a low level of interpretation, theoretically, when compared with commentary and exposition. But some translations may in fact assume a rather large interpretive task in behalf of communicating clearly to the reader the translators' understanding of what a word/sentence/text means and not just what it says. For example, in several places where the Hebrew text clearly says "from Dan to Beersheba," Today's English Version hides the specific place names (ancient sanctuaries and major towns or cities) and loses a classical biblical figure of speech by translating the phrase as "from one end of the country to the other." This is a perfectly good interpretation of the expression that arises because of the context in which the translation is set, namely, the general biblical ignorance among the readers of the translation. So the translators make their decision and shape their translation to fit a perceived audience.

To take another example from the same translation, we can cite verse 5 of the familiar Psalm 23. It reads literally, "You have made my head fat with oil," and more familiarly, "Thou anointest my head with oil." TEV translates: "You welcome me as an honored guest." From one translation perspective, that simply is not what the text says; it is an interpretation of its meaning. From another perspective, it may be exactly what the text seeks to communicate. But the translation seeks to overcome the historical character of the text, which was composed in a period when anointing the head was a familiar and important custom that would seem bizarre as a welcoming gesture to most English speaking readers today. The translation thus seeks to overcome the

Patrick D. Miller, Jr., is Professor of Old Testament Theology at Princeton Theological Seminary and Book Editor of THEOLOGY TODAY. Dr. Miller serves on both the Inclusive Language Lectionary Committee and the Revised Standard Version Old Testament Committee. Readers may recall his previous article on "The Inclusive Language Lectionary" in THEOLOGY TODAY (April, 1984). His most recent publication is Interpreting the Psalms (1986).

541 - The Translation Task

strangeness of the text and hides from the reader what the text actually says, seeking instead to give a modern equivalent.

There really are different possibilities for expressing what one finds in the original text. One can choose ways that emphasize certain things while de-emphasizing others; or one can express a particular nuance in one translation that is not clearly indicated in another. In many respects, that is exactly what has gone on at the basic level in the work of the Inclusive Language Lectionary Committee. In an enterprise in which translators have no sense of (or are indifferent to) the reality that heavily masculine-centered modes of expression function in an excluding way, there will be no effort to translate phrases and clauses or create syntactical constructions which make minimal or no use of male pronouns-even though the Hebrew or Greek may be expressed without using such pronouns. Translators who are sensitive to such matters will pay attention, and often find that they can express the original text in such a way that the heavily male-oriented language simply disappears.

In An Inclusive Language Lectionary, one encounters a clearly and admittedly mixed text-and as such one that is obviously on some grounds unsatisfactory. It uses the Revised Standard Version as a base text, and thus tends very much toward the formal end of the translation spectrum. At the same time, it also translates in a more inclusive way, and thus tends to move toward the dynamic end of the spectrum. As is generally the case in dynamic translations, the results reflect a greater sense of linguistic change and contemporary sensibilities (or some contemporary sensibilities) about language than one finds in more formal translations.

A case in point are the Hebrew and Greek expressions commonly translated as "son of man." A recent commentator observes: "The term son of man is difficult to change because of its long established use in the Bible from Old into New Testament." ¹Here traditional usage serves as a basis for a translation decision. That is well and good. But contemporary usage in part can and does argue in precisely the opposite direction. A term that has something to do with transcendence or humanity or both, depending on the context, does not connote that to the uninformed reader who encounters "son" and "man" in a genitival construction. Filial and male connotations are conveyed quite clearly. Hence, the search for an alternative to "son of man" becomes not only possible but increasingly desirable.

Translation is therefore inevitably an interpretive enterprise. It is and must be carried out within a hermeneutical circle: both the circular relationship between part and whole and the circle that incorporates the text, the translator/interpreter, and the audience/situation. At the same time, it is not the case that anything goes, anymore than that is true at any level of interpretation. In any interpretive enterprise, plausibility and acceptability by a wider audience are necessary controls. There are

¹ C. Stuhlmueller, Psalms I (Wilmington: Michael Glazier, 1983), p.89.

542 - The Translation Task

boundaries, and these are narrower, generally, for translation than for other levels of interpretation. They are narrower for a philological commentary than for a literary reading of a text. The perimeters are always there and always somewhat fuzzily defined. Debate is appropriate about where translation steps outside those fuzzy boundaries. But as an act of interpretation, translation requires a debate rather than the assumption of self-evident truth about right and wrong, good and bad translation decisions.

II

A second aspect of the translation enterprise that has become sharper for me in working on both the RSV Committee and the Lectionary Committee is that translation takes place in the tension between the Bible as historical document and the Bible as living word. It is the tension between the Bible as a written record out of the history of Israel and the early church (fully comparable to many other such records) and the Bible as the Word of God that transcends the temporal context out of which it rose without ever being divorced from its original shaping.

This double-sided character of Scripture has been perceptively discussed in a recent essay by Sandra Schneiders. ² Though not writing with reference to the issue of inclusive language, Schneiders contrasts the perspective of the historical critical biblical scholar with that of the informed believer. For the critical biblical scholar, the text is understood as a historical artifact whose distance from the contemporary reader is large. For the believer, however, it is a classic enjoying "an immediate contemporaneity with all people of all times who can read it" and thus a work that "itself suppresses the distance between its own time and ours by virtue of its profound rootedness in our common humanity. What draws us to Scripture is precisely that in it the Word of God is very near to us, in our hearts and on our lips, as Deuteronomy tells us." ³ As a result of this, the scholar's primary task is to maintain the distance between ancient text and modern reader, while the reader/believer wants to understand what the text means for the community of faith here and now. Schneiders goes on to discuss how these differences affect the approach to the text and the approach to the tradition of both scholar and believer, claiming that these perspectives are not the same even though they may exist within the same person. They are, however, complementary and necessary to each other if one is to arrive "at meaning that is both critical and salvific." ⁴

Reflecting on Schneiders' analysis, I think it is no accident that the RSV Committee, seeking to revise a translation that has had wide and varied use in the last forty years and has probably been the most

² Sandra M. Schneiders, "Church and Biblical Scholarship in Dialogue," Theology Today 42 (1985), 353-58.

³ Ibid., p.354.

⁴ Ibid., p.357.

543 - The Translation Task

common study Bible in schools and colleges, works at the task of inclusive language fairly conservatively, while the Lectionary Committee, which is preparing a form of the text for use in worship, has gone at the inclusive language task more liberally. For it is in the context of worship that the community gathers to hear the Word of God, and many pastors and preachers-myself included-have long ago begun to give a more inclusive translation in worship as they have felt the power of the Word over its form as it addresses the contemporary community of faith.

If it is the case that the Lectionary Committee has in some ways overdone the contemporizing of the translation task, then it must be asked with equal vigor if its critics have not frequently overdone the distancing task. Somehow the two perspectives must be kept in tension with each other.

III

The final aspect of the translation enterprise that has come into focus more clearly in my work on these committees is the social context of the translation of sacred Scripture. I have in mind here its character as a social act. This is a subject that takes much more development than this brief essay permits or than I am prepared to give, but let me simply identify a few facets of it.

First, linguistic change is itself a social phenomenon. This is reflected in changing norms of racial language (black instead of colored, Asian instead of Asiatic) as well as in our gender expressions and terms for persons with a handicap. All of these linguistic constraints are thoroughly shaped by changing social contexts. This is true even of the shift from Thee/Thou/Thine to You/Your. These reflect a structure of society in which personal status and class distinctions are not as sharply present as once was the case.

Second, ecclesiastical context is a social factor that affects translation. Ideology comes out in the open in several recent translations. In the New International Version, the stated aim of translation is to "reflect the unity and harmony of Scripture." The translators are "committed to the infallibility of the Bible" that is "inerrant in the autographs." An Inclusive Language Lectionary is committed to reducing male bias as much as possible. The translator of The Living Bible indicates that "the theological lodestar in this book has been a rigidly evangelical position." The aim of the translators of the New American Standard Bible is to "give the Lord Jesus Christ His proper place," so 'almah in Isa 7:14 is translated as "virgin."

Certain Bibles are more popular and used more in certain ecclesiastical contexts than in others. And ecclesiastical contexts are social contexts. NIV and NASB, sponsored and produced by conservatives, are popular and widely used by conservatives. (Many of my students were using New American Standard Bible before I even knew it existed.) The RSV, sponsored by a more liberal translation team (there are hardly any

544 - The Translation Task

explicitly conservative scholars on the team) is, not surprisingly, more popular in liberal, ecumenical, and academic circles.

Third, the socialization of scholar qua scholar may get attention in sociological circles, but it is a factor to which we pay little attention in the translation enterprise. Here, competence is the only presumed criterion. Objectivity, responsibility, and integrity are sought. Resistance to ideology is assumed. We have difficulty, therefore, seeing the extent to which the scholar's own socialization may already be a controlling factor. With reference to inclusive language translation, for example, it is accurate, I think, to say that the extent to which one's social context puts one in touch with and keeps one in touch with persons who care about inclusive language, are sensitive to language change, and feel the pain of gender-bound language affects the degree to which one is inclined to work rigorously at trying to translate inclusively. A member of the RSV Committee who, while teaching and working under the impact of encounter with students, presses for more inclusive language may upon retirement and out of such contact be less inclined to push that issue in translation. And such a person may be quite unaware that the decisions at both times are socially affected. It is, of course, no accident that some of the harshest criticisms of Lectionary have come from persons who themselves are little in touch with or affected by the issue of inclusive language generally.

Fourth, despite appearances to the contrary, translation is generally a more socially conservative than radical task. Putting the Scriptures in the speech of today presumes that it has not been that way. The King James Version was a good example of this. The RSV Committee is just now taking "thee" and "thou" out of the Psalms, long after that way of speaking has disappeared from much prayer speech. In translation, one does not ordinarily anticipate where language is going-much less where theology is going. Even though we may say, "this translation is for the next half century," we do not ordinarily translate in the language of tomorrow. The very nature of the translation task makes one cautious-seeking to represent as accurately as possible in one language what was said in another. The more official the translation, the more conservative the constraints.

From this angle, it is interesting to compare the RSV and An Inclusive Language Lectionary:

1. The RSV, while sponsored by a fairly liberal organization, is being revised by an independent team of scholars. With regard to inclusive language, change is acknowledged but fairly conservatively (the term is used descriptively not as a value judgement). "Man" is no longer used generically. The generic use of masculine pronouns is now also questionable, and so the Committee works at their replacement. But the English language has not yet developed a way to change the masculine pronouns easily, so the Committee tends to resist convolutions or circumlocutions, such as "such a one" or "that person" for "him."

In the early stages of RSV revision, when the Psalms were revised

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(1975 or earlier), there was no effort at inclusive language. Several years later, because of the expressed wish of the authorizing body and the translation team's own desires to keep up with the times linguistically, we moved to change the masculine nouns to gender free nouns but said the pronouns would be impossible to change. We have not returned to the Psalms and so as yet have not moved beyond that. But we have done so in other books as the rapidity of linguistic change on this issue has brought into question continued use of male pronouns. So pressure is mounting to go back to the Psalms a third time.

2. Lectionary is representing language change that is going on, but finds itself probably more affecting and shaping the language of the future than RSV. In that sense, the results are more catalytic (inevitably causing some backlash and upsetting some persons who are moving more conservatively). We did not, so far as I know, set out to affect and shape the language of the future. But we discovered that it is happening in various ways-in, for example, the wider use of "one," more use of collectives, the use of plural pronouns to refer to singular antecedents all of which I predict will become more common in the future. So Lectionary moves against usual translation trends by not only reflecting language change but also anticipating it. It is, therefore, translation for tomorrow as well as today, and thus not as conservative as most translations. It is translation both out of the present context and against or affecting the present context. There is an obvious tension here with the normal translation task; and more reaction from many of the audience-more shouts of anger and tears of joy than most translations elicit.