michaelaubrey November 6, 2009 Books, Translation

Translating the New Testament: Text, Translation, Theology

Eerdmans just published:

Translating the New Testament: Text, Translation, Theology
Series: McMaster New Testament Studies
Stanley E. Porter (editor), Mark J. Boda (editor)

And I’m seriously considering requesting a review copy — though Eerdmans seems to be much more picky about who it sends review copies to. But I’ll probably give it a try.

At this point though, I’ll taking a rather standoff-ish stance regarding the book.It’s a book on translation. Right?

So why aren’t there any professional translators in the list of contributors.

Barbara Aland
Mark J. Boda
Philip Comfort
Alain Gignac
Edith M. Humphrey
Luke Timothy Johnson
Richard N. Longenecker
Matthew Brook O’Donnell
Stanley E. Porter
Maurice A. Robinson
Elsa Tamez
Francis Watson
Khiok-Khng (K. K.) Yeo

We’ve got theologians, text critics, NT scholars, OT scholars, but not translators. There is not a single scholar on this list whose central academic specialty is translation. Why couldn’t Mildred Larson have contributed? Ernst-August Gutt? Katherine Barnwell? John Callow? Peter Silzer? Ronald Sim? Peter Unseth? Ernst Wendland? Catherine Rountree?

Yeah, you get the idea.

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1

John Hobbins on November 7, 2009 at 7:33 am
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I think it’s because the volume treats “the translational implications that follow from choosing a particular textual tradition or type over another.”

In short, this is a volume with seeks to work out the implications of text-critical choices for translation. Translation here will be understood in this setting in terms of more formal translation, that is, translation that seeks to transfer into a target text the kind of minute differences text critics traffic in. Nonetheless, it is possible to make a lot of hay out of these minor differences. It’s not just Bart Ehrman who does so.

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- 2
  
  Mike Aubrey on November 7, 2009 at 8:04 am
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  That’s not the impression I get from the publisher description, but I’m willing to give them the benefit of the doubt.
  
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  - 3
    
    John Hobbins on November 7, 2009 at 8:17 am
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    I now see, by looking at the book in Google, that the volume is extremely wide-ranging. There are extensive discussions of Nida, Venuti, etc. So yes, an essay or two by a professional Bible translator would have been helpful.
    
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4

Davis on November 11, 2009 at 10:29 pm
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Have you seen this book: http://www.wtsbooks.com/product-exec/product_id/6585? Looks pretty good I think.

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  Mike Aubrey on November 11, 2009 at 10:30 pm
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  I have a review copy coming.
  
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  Mike Aubrey on November 12, 2009 at 2:47 pm
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  Being that it’s currently in the mail, I can’t say anything definite about it. According to the PDF available from WTS, there’s a lot of theological musing, but not much linguistics — not even linguistics packaged in layman’s terms. That’s disappointing to me. Hopefully the rest of the book rectifies that.
  
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7

Translatin Affirmation « ΕΝ ΕΦΕΣΩ on March 25, 2010 at 11:40 am
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[…] Translating the New Testament: Text, Translation, Theology, where I questioned the benefit of a book on translation that doesn’t include any professional translators. The volume does not claim to offer (and does not, in fact, offer) any kind of unifying perspective. I found several of the essays helpful and stimulating. But, as a translator of Scripture, I found very little in the book that was, in fact, directly useful for my own work. Porter’s survey of new methods was interesting but failed to show how the methods could, in fact, be put in service in the task of translation. The basic essays of Gignac and Johnson illuminated some of the challenges faced by the translator but offered little specific methodological help in overcoming, or at least in dealing with, those challenges. Nevertheless, it is useful to be reminded of all the issues (from nitty-gritty text-critical decisions to the dangers of cultural embededness) that the translator needs to take into consideration if his or her work is to be done faithfully. […]

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