Discussions around religion are often accompanied by a mix of different responses from fervent believers, non-believers and everyone in between. With these varying reactions, it goes without saying that content related to the subject of religion are usually paid an extra thread of carefulness. This attention is particularly higher when it comes to translating religious manuscripts, as misrepresentation of meaning caused “faulty” translations within these manuscripts can result in a severe backlash.
When it comes to whether or not it is possible for these religious manuscripts to be translated, it can be said that the context surrounding these manuscripts have more of a hand in their possibilities to be translated compared to their content. Back during the early years of around 300 A.D, punishment for translations of religious manuscripts that are considered undesirable by the public and those who were in charge; such as a high-positioned member of the Christian clergy, were much more ruthless.
Key Considerations for Translating Religious Manuscripts
They can range from mass book burning to the execution of the responsible translators. However, as people become much more developed and civilized throughout the age, these punishments became far less severe. This may be due to how the intention of spreading the general and significant cultural message contained within these manuscripts became stronger compared to the feeling of wanting the people and culture within them to be represented faithfully. These new translating conditions, in turn, encouraged translators to work on religious manuscripts; making the translation of religious manuscripts a lot more ubiquitous.
Therefore, a resounding “yes, it is possible” can be said on whether or not it is possible to translate a religious manuscript. However, the concern of religious manuscript translation does not just stop at whether or not the act is more widely available. Translation are nowadays not only concerned with word-for-word exchange between different languages, but also on transferring similar sense and style according to the source text. This is to say, how far translation can go within translating a religious manuscript is yet to be said.
Outside of the linguistic translation, it is also necessary for these manuscripts’ translation to consider how they relate to the life of people who abide by the belief written within them. Linguistic and conceptual ideas need to work together in tandem as the resulting translation will be used for ritual practices or devotional purposes; including the construction of poetry and music by religious communities within their social cultures.
In achieving this, many areas within translation studies have developed and contributed to the translation of religious manuscripts; more specifically the Christian Bible. Within this article, we will be mainly listing some of the ideas related to how a religious manuscripts are translated by Eugene Nida; an American linguist who was an expert in Bible-translation theory.
Cultural Message Reproduction
When it comes to translating in general, the resulting translation must be able to convey or “reproduce” the original message contained within the source text. However, in translating a religious manuscript, an adjustment of many grammatical and lexical aspect within the text is necessary and to a much higher degree compared to other kinds of manuscripts. This is due the great number of idioms that are usually contained within these religious manuscripts.
A great example of this is “bowels of mercies” taken from the original Hebrew version of the Christian Bible. A literal translation of this idiom would not be understandable to most people, which results in the translator needing to find a combination of words that are culturally equal to the message this sentence is trying to convey.
Equivalence Instead of Identity
While this point seems to reiterate the first point of this list, this emphasis on equivalence instead of identity is more on the need for radical changes to certain phrases within religious manuscripts. Some phrases within religious manuscript sometime need to be completely restructured or even omitted from the translation. Although such an act will result in more than a severe backlash back in around 300 A.D, nowadays it is necessary as certain phrases could be considered meaningless when translated into a certain language. An example of this is the word “it came to pass” from the Bible. While it served as a way to indicate a new chapter in the original text, it does not serve quite the same purpose when translated into English and may even confuse some of the believers who read it; which was why it was removed from the final translation. These radical changes to the passages are completely justified as long as they are still equivalent in meaning to the original source text.
In finding these equivalent meanings, translators would want to adhere to the naturalness of the translation. Which is to say that the resulting translation should not make it seem that the content of these religious text occurred around the same time period as the readers. This principle also applies in finding the closest equivalent of words within religious manuscripts. For example, the phrase “demon-possessed” should not be translated to “mentally distressed” as this would culturally reinterpret what happened and not take any care of the cultural angle of people during the time that manuscript was written.
Putting Priority into Meaning
Meaning or message behind words inscribed on these manuscripts should be given the highest priority. This would mean that the radical changes mentioned within the first point are not only justified, but may also be desired by many readers. As some sentences within religious manuscripts could be quite cryptic, changes in order to make the translated message clear and unambiguous.
Significance of Style
Religious manuscripts such as the Bible is no stranger to containing poetry. Therefore, while style is not considered as important as the messages these manuscripts are trying to convey, it is also quite important in their translation. However, as important as it is, certain subtle stylistic choices of the original text can be difficult and nigh impossible to reproduce. For these types of texts, translators would attempt to reproduce them while also providing marginal notes to assist readers in understanding these stylistic features.
It is important to note, however, that translating these stylistic peculiarities have the risk of not having the equivalent function presented in the original text. A good example of this is the literal translation of Mark’s use of conjunction at the beginning of his many sentences in the Bible’s New Testament. While this is considered an accurate employment of Semitic Greek, it instead gave the impression of Mark being “childish” when literally translated into English.
System of Priorities in Translating Religious Manuscripts
As shown in the previous points within this article, there are many instances where translators need to make the choice of literal translating, finding equivalence, and whether or not attempt to reproduce a certain style from the manuscript.
The basis for making these choices could be taken from a set of fundamental priorities; when a certain aspect of the translation should take a higher priority compared to the others. These priorities can be in the form of:
- Contextual consistency over verb consistency
Within religious manuscripts, certain use of words could be ambiguous, unnatural and even be misleading if they are taken from its literal rendition. With this priority, translators are given the question of whether or not to stick with contextual consistency (sentences are adjusted to be clearer and more unambiguous) or verb consistency (sentences deliver original meaning that may be cryptic) with priority being placed on which one serves to convey the message within the manuscript better.
In many scenarios, translators may want to opt for contextual consistency in order to reduce the risk of major distortion of meaning.
- Dynamic equivalence over formal correspondence
This priority is based on how the messages within the manuscript are understood by those who received it. Dynamic equivalence refers to how, while coming from different cultural-historical background, the resulting translation could be understood. On the other hand, formal correspondence refer to how translated content are only understood on a language basis.
When it comes to religious manuscript translation, priority should be placed on dynamic equivalence as one of the main purpose of a religious manuscript is to not only inform those who received them, but also so those who read it could relate and therefore act upon what they have read.
- Verbal form over written form
When it comes to religious manuscripts, at least in the case of the Christian Bible, they are often heard instead of read. These manuscripts are often read out loud during liturgy and group studies.
Therefore, priority should be placed on the ease of reading; this includes adjusting certain spelling to be easier to read within the target language’s context, not including information that can be considered vulgar when read out loud, reducing the amount of ambiguous content and many more.
- Audience comprehension over traditional or prestigious forms
This priority puts an emphasis on audience over the form of the language itself, as whether or not the readers could understand the message that is being conveyed should have greater prominence compared to whether or not the text contained longer linguistic traditions or literary prestige.
Analysis of Grammar
As with translating any other texts, religious manuscripts require the translators to understand the grammar of another language, how they affect overall sentence meaning and restructure it in the target language form in way that could be comprehended by those who read it.
However, translation of these manuscripts takes it a step further, as it included subtle connotative meaning that must be translated in a way that could affect how the readers would react upon reading them. Due to this, translators need to take three major steps when analyzing the grammar behind a religious text:
- Determine any meaningful relationship between words and combination of words
- Analyze referential meaning behind words and any special combination of words such as idioms
- Analyze connotative meaning contained within the source text and how readers would react upon reading them; whether they are positive or negative
Transferring Content
Once analysis of the grammar structure as well as any referential and connotative meaning within the religious text are done, a transfer from the source language into the target language need to be done. Difficulty in transferring religious manuscript content is more on the personal level of each translator. An example of this are translators who knew too much about the religious manuscript that they are trying to translate.
This could result in the translator to have trouble in placing themselves within the shoes of those who have never read these manuscripts, have a strong desire to maintain the cryptic nature of the manuscript, include their own religious presuppositions, and more. As this is the case, process of transferring is usually done with a group of people who work together to solve these personal problems as well so coming up with methods on how to transfer the content of these manuscripts.
Translating a religious manuscript could be daunting and tense filled experience. However, although the progression of their translation is quite convoluted and can be considered behind translation of other types of texts, they have contributed many perspectives in the field of translation studies. Therefore, when it comes to how far translation could go in translating a religious manuscript, there are still many unexplored paths in the horizon.
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