Skip to main content

A History of Bible Translation: Chapter 5 - Early Missionary Translations

During the 17th and 18th centuries some Bible translation was carried out in non-European languages, but the main movement forward was in the 19th century. William Carey, of the Baptist Missionary Society, and known as the father of modern missions, began translation work in Hindi and Urdu, and later this was completed by Henry Martyn, the complete Bible being published in 1843. Henry Martyn was a prolific translator, working with local colleagues, and translating the Bible into several languages: Hindi/Urdu, Persian (Farsi), and Judaeo-Persian. Urdu is an artificial language based on Hindi grammar with many Persian and some Turkic loan words. It was needed by the Moghul hordes from Central Asia who invaded Northern India and built and empire resulting in edifices such as the Taj Mahal.[1] Martyn passed away[2] aged only thirty-one. It’s extraordinary to think that he achieved more before the age of thirty than most of us do in a lifetime.

There were many other translations carried out in the 19th century. A new translation was made in Turkish and published in 1878. After Ataturk’s reforms in the 20th century this version was republished in the new Latin script. The Bible was translated into Russian by the Russian Bible Society, who began work in 1813 and finally published the ‘Synodal Bible’ in 1876. Today it is available in several different formats, for Orthodox and Protestants alike.[3]

The British and Foreign Bible Society was formed in 1804, and although it wasn’t the first ‘Bible Society’, it became the most influential. It’s first project was to publish the Bible in Welsh, the language of Mary Jones, who walked twenty miles to her nearest town, Bala, to obtain a Bible in her mother tongue. The BFBS had a policy of publishing Bibles ‘without note or comment’ due to their non-denominational stance. The Bible should be available to all, no matter what their background, they believed. After the BFBS many other Bible Societies began around the world, all them loosely connected by a global network called the United Bible Societies. The Bible Society exists in many countries, and is locally owned, and exists to publish the Bible in the national language and larger minority languages. In some cases they carry out new translations into those languages, as and when they are needed.[4]

The focus during the 19th century tended to be on word-for-word translations, sometimes called ‘literal’, ‘modified literal’, or ‘form-based’ translations. These are not necessarily more accurate, however, and as a result there has been a shift to meaning-based translations over the last century or so. In practice any translation is somewhere on the spectrum between form-based and meaning-based, and also on the spectrum between literary[5] and colloquial. It’s quite possible, however, for a translation to be both meaning-based and literary (and poetic, in places), or form-based and colloquial.

It’s impossible to translate literally. That’s because languages vary in their features: some are separative, some agglutinative.[6] Some tend to put the verb first in a phrase, others last. People use idioms and metaphors all they time when they speak, as language is inherently figurative, and on top of that we now know that communication is pragmatic – we tell people what they need to know and no more – i.e. a lot of communication uses implicatures. Recent studies into cognitive linguistics, relevance theory, and speech act theory show us that communication involves way more than words used in a certain grammatical construction.



[1] They were led by Timur, known as Tamerlane, who was Turkic and Mongol in ancestry, but also spoke the language of wider communication of the area, Persian.
[2] From fever, or exhaustion, or both.
[3] The Orthodox version contains the Apocrypha.
[4] For instance there is a new Russian Bible Society translation known as the Contemporary Russian Version. It is a meaning-based translation, and complements the Synodal translation.
[5] A focus on high style of language, and perhaps a greater emphasis on using poetic forms where appropriate.
[6] These stick affixes on words, making them very long, not like German, but like Turkic languages, which often  have words eight to ten syllables long. On top of that they are very ‘productive’ in that a certain affix, such as the pluraliser -lar/-ler can be used in a variety of places adding to both nouns and verbs.

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Asset Based Bible Translation (ABBT)

Many of you will have heard of asset-based community development (ABCD). How can Bible translation programmes be asset based, rather than deficit based? The best way to look at this is a comparison table: Deficit based Asset based Driven by outsiders Driven by the community Outside funding Community funded Done to meet a need Done to help the community grow Quality control done by a consultant Community checked and approved Control from outside-in Lead by stepping back Products not accepted? Products are accepted Little engagement Engagement with products Scientific Organic Not sustainable Sustainable Of course many translation programmes these days are neither one nor t'other, they are somewhere between these two extremes. Nevertheless, this illustrates a point, and shows that the current

A Flow Chart for Bible Translation (a Relevance Theory Approach)

One of the current theories behind modern translation work is Relevance Theory. [1] Here is a flow chart that explains the process often used to produce a draft when using such an approach: *Make sure your translation committee makes the decision as to what kind of translation they want. A domesticated translation is one that submits to dominant values in the target language [2] whereas a foreignized translation is one that is happy to import foreign terms and ideas from Hebrew, Greek, or the language of wider communication such as the Greek term baptizo . The chart looks something like this: Text                                   Communicated Ideas                  Context A sower went out to sow  A farmer went out to sow grain   People scattered/threw seed etc. The text has very little information, but behind it is the idea that seed was scatted by throwing it from a bag carried round the farmer's shoulder. This could be explained in the para-

Asking the Right Questions in Bible Translation and Scripture Engagement Planning

If you want to get useful answers you have to ask the right questions. Do you agree? Yes, of course you do. In the Bible translation world we often ask a very narrow question when planning for the next stage of work: 'What would you like to see translated next?' Now, if you simply want to translate, and that's it, that question is fine, but what if you want to see some kind of result from your translation work? What if, for instance, you want to see transformation occur? Then a more powerful question to ask the community and positive stakeholders in the project would be: 'What kingdom goals would you like to see reached?' These kingdom goals should meet felt needs of the community - they should solve problems that are apparent to most or all in the community. See below on how those can be met. If that's too abstract, then try, 'What kinds of things, in your extended family, do you tend to worry about?' This will help establish some felt needs, from which