Translating the English Bible: From Relevance to Deconstruction

238 Pages·2013·1.782 MB·English

by  Philip Goodwin

Translating the English Bible
For my beloved wife Estelle
Translating the English Bible
From Relevance to Deconstruction
Philip W. Goodwin
C
James Clarke & Co
James Clarke & Co
P.O. Box 60
Cambridge
CB1 2NT
www.jamesclarke.co
[email protected]
ISBN: 978 0 227 17391 6
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
A record is available from the British Library
Copyright © Philip W. Goodwin, 2013
First Published, 2013
All rights reserved. No part of this edition may be reproduced, stored
electronically or in any retrieval system, or transmitted in any form
or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording,
or otherwise, without prior written permission from the
Publisher ([email protected]).
Contents
Preface 9
Note to the reader 11
Abbreviations 12
Chapter One – The Holy Marriage 15
David Daniell and the lost art of translation 15
The rules of the art 17
The problem of fidelity 21
The curse of the Holy Marriage 24
The need for theory 35
What kind of theory? 38
Chapter Two – Challenging the Holy Marriage:
Relevance Theory and translation 42
What is Relevance Theory? 42
Interpretive resemblance 51
Relevance Theory of Translation (RTT) 52
Why Relevance Theory? 54
How RTT is used in the present work 64
Chapter Three – Start as you mean to go on?
Syntax in Luke 1.1-4 75
The Source text: relevance in context? 75
Contextual implications from Luke’s preface 86
Translating Luke’s preface 90
Some other translations 110
Towards a relevant translation 113
Chapter Four – When is a priest not a priest?
The semantics of i9ereu&j in Luke 1 121
The case of a certain priest: i9ereu&j tij 122
Achieving relevance in context 123
i9ereu&j in translation 127
Challenging the consensus 128
The persistence of the i(ero_j ga&moj tradition 131
Alternative translations for i9ereu&j 136
Chapter Five – Still looking for clues 150
Clues arising from semantic representations 151
Clues arising from syntactic properties 152
Clues arising from phonetic properties 154
Clues arising from semantic constraints on relevance 160
Clues arising from formulaic expressions 161
Clues arising from onomatopoeia 165
Clues arising from stylistic value of words 167
Clues arising from sound-based poetic qualities 170
Are there other clues? 171
Uses and abuses of communicative clues 183
Chapter Six – Repetitive texture and four kinds of literalism 186
Repetitive texture 186
Repetitive texture in translation 189
Concordance: a non-topic? 190
Concordance and literalism 192
Four motivations for literalism 193
The perfect translation 209
Final remarks: The experimental translation 214
Appendix: Experimental translation of Luke 1-2 216
Bibliography 226
Index 237
Figures and Tables
The Story of a Marriage 27
Conceptual Address in Relevance Theory 47
Processes in Relevance Theory 49
Context-sharing Matrix 63
Costs and Benefits of Contextual Implications 67
Processing for Relevance 68
Types of Misreading 73
Formal and Topical Features in Luke’s Preface 78
Interpretive Resemblance:
Wright’s translation of Luke 1.1-4 94
Interpretive Resemblance:
Nolland’s translation of Luke 1.1-4 103
Nolland, Wright and Luke on the Relevance Curve 110
Interpretative Resemblance:
the Experimental translation of Luke 1.1-4 118
Translation history of Cohen and Zaqen 133
Possible translations for i9ereu&j 148
Relevant translation of proper names 159
The Fantasy of Gametic Literalism 198

Preface
This work forms the substance of my thesis for a PhD, awarded in
2010 by the University of Manchester. Perhaps more importantly, it
represents a thorough (if, perhaps, not final) scratching of an itch I
have felt practically as long as I can remember an intellectual life. The
problem of translation has always fascinated me, and translation issues
seem to me to form the knotty, many-stranded interpretive puzzle at
the centre of the puzzle of puzzles that is the Bible. As an earnest and
bookish young Christian in the 1970s, I learned to love the Bible –
especially the one I was given by my parents on my sixteenth birthday.
I have it in front of me now, inscribed 1977. It is a black-bound RSV,
with Metzger’s Oxford Concordance in the back. To me, the heft
of the thing, its smell and feel, and above all the words inside, with
their quiet, firm insistence, are the Bible. The calm assurance conveyed
by these dignified words, though, gave way to confusion, doubt and
anxiety as I matured intellectually; this doubt was compounded during
my time studying philosophy, politics and economics at Oxford. It
continued during adulthood, though covered over by many things, as I
found a path through life. I always had a thought that ‘one day’ I would
get to the bottom of some of these doubts. Certain developments in
my career led at one stage to a lot of long distance commuting and
being away from home, and (after exhausting the less edifying ways to
spend the time) I decided to learn ancient Greek, and later Hebrew.
The studies that this opened up led towards the present work, and in
2006 I finally had the opportunity to take an extended break from a
career in business finance to do something full time.
I would like to take the opportunity to thank my erstwhile
colleagues at Montagu Private Equity for facilitating that break. I
would also like to thank Tom Deidun at Birkbeck College (University
of London) for opening up the Greek language. Todd Klutz at the
University of Manchester supervised my PhD, and was a constant
source of criticism, observation, encouragement and, above all, sheer