Wisdom and Translation (General)

by dhw, Sunday, December 11, 2011, 17:12 (4539 days ago) @ dhw

As there has been a lull in the Wisdom and Cheese discussion (which I hope is not a sign that Tony has lost patience with me), I’d like to comment on another, closely related issue which he has raised. This is the “philosophy” of translation, which is of prime concern to me, and may also be of interest to others. Our ultimate reference point will be the “mechanical” translation of the bible (most people would label it “literal” or “word-for-word”) to which Tony drew our attention, and which changes the conventional English terms good and bad/evil to functional and dysfunctional.

Before I begin, I should mention that like most people I’ve read translated books, but unlike most I have well over 40 years experience as a professional translator who has worked closely with innumerable authors and editors, and also as an author who has worked closely with translators of my own books. This doesn’t mean that my opinions are any less subjective than anyone else’s, but I have seen at first hand the disastrous consequences of a “bad” translation.

Some people think the basis of a “good” translation is that the new text should stick as closely as possible to what the author has written. On the surface, this may seem sound, but in practice it can lead to all sorts of trouble. For one thing, the target language may not have precise equivalents of the author’s original words; for another there may be a wide range of alternatives in the target language with nuances not available in the original; for another, every reader will form a different interpretation of the text – there is no objectively correct version – but a translator has to fix his/her version through the words he/she chooses; for another, as all of us know only too well, very few people are able at all times to convey the exact meaning they set out to convey. The latter problem is particularly acute with writers who may be experts in their subjects, but are not experts at expressing ideas through written or even oral language. And so as I see it, the translator has to stick as closely as possible to what he thinks the author intended to say. (Already you can see the large degree of subjectivity involved.) If he’s lucky enough to be able to contact the author, and especially if the author happens to speak the target language, it will be possible to avoid major misunderstandings. This, of course, is not possible when the authors are dead.

In determining the author’s intention, we need to consider not only the literal meaning of each word, but also – as in all uses of language – the context on which the meaning depends. Another factor, not so relevant here, is the impact on the reader, which incorporates such factors as tone and style (e.g. vulgar or refined vocabulary, the flow of the sentences). If at any time the reader pauses and starts thinking about the nature of the language or style, the chances are that this is NOT what the author intended. (An exception would be when the original deliberately disrupts conventional use of language, as is often the case with modern poetry.)

So much for the “philosophy”. If we now take Tony’s example, the Hebrew equivalent of good/bad apparently is functional/dysfunctional. There is no word for bad in the sense of “evil”. But did the original Hebrew word mean dysfunctional in the sense of not working properly, or did it mean causing harm? For Tony, the use of these terms means that the author is not concerned with conveying a moral message but only with drawing attention to the objective results of certain forms of behaviour – i.e. they don’t work as they were meant to work. This raises the subjective question of who decides how something is meant to work. On the other hand, my suggestion is that the author’s intention is to stop the reader from performing the action, not because it won’t work (a lustful man will get the pleasure which is his purpose) but because its consequences may be harmful to someone else. Not causing harm to others fits in with the Golden Rule of morality, which is loving one’s neighbour. And so for me, in the context of human behaviour, the “meaning” of the Hebrew word for dysfunctional is a moral one – what nowadays we would call behaving badly – as opposed to the functional one of not fulfilling the intended purpose. I would therefore not hesitate to translate the words as good or bad, which I would take to be the modern equivalents of what I believe the author meant to say.

ALL areas of this discussion – interpretation of “(dys)function”, of the doer’s intention, of the author’s intention, of “good/bad”, together with the translator’s final choice of words – entail subjective decisions. And since the authors of the bible are not around to correct any misunderstandings of their words, none of us can claim any degree of objective authority for our interpretation/translation, any more than the authors themselves could have claimed objective authority for their versions of events and teachings. One can only opt for versions that seem (subjectively) most likely in each context.