The hearts of the fathers
On Monday one of the translators came to work a little down. His wife had made a trip to the village on the weekend to assess their crops, and had discovered that his drunkard father had sold all of it but about 4% to buy alcohol. Basically, they were left with little more than some travel money. I asked him what he would do about it, and he said, “What can I do? He’s my father.”
The next day we were consultant checking Luke 1, and got to verse 17:
And he will go on before the Lord, in the spirit and power of Elijah, to turn the hearts of the fathers to their children and the disobedient to the wisdom of the righteous—to make ready a people prepared for the Lord.
In our existing translation work we had written ‘to return the children to their fathers’, but this doesn’t really capture the Greek sense that fathers will be brought into reconciliation with their children, and both were probably in some sense in the wrong. I asked the translators about this, and they said that it’s not possible to translate as the Greek has it, because fathers are never in the wrong. If something wrong has happened, it’s the child’s fault, and he needs to return to the father for reconciliation.
So in the group I asked, “What would happen if, for example, you went to check on your crops and discovered that your father had sold the lot to buy alcohol? Wouldn’t he need to be reconciled to the child and seek forgiveness?”
They said “no” because a father can do as he likes. Even if he ’steals’ something from the child, it’s not really stealing because he’s the father.
I looked at my friend whose situation this described (he was nodding quietly in confirmation) and wondered to myself what it must be like to have an alcoholic father who’d stolen my year’s savings to feed his addiction, savings that he would have known I needed for everyday living, and at the same time for us both to be under the mindset that he had done no wrong, since it was his right as a father.
It’s amazing what comes out of translations when you start digging, and reminds you that a simple word-for-word translation can be dangerous and deceptive, since it could imply something completely different in a different language (there’s so much culture buried in language).
So, any ideas for translating “turn the hearts of the fathers to their children”?
May 21, 2009 at 9:29 pm
wow, hard one. maybe it’s something they need to learn tho. just coz it’s cultural doesn’t mean it’s right. christianity would be changing other parts of their culture too. strikes me as strange that it’s been slightly changed in english. shouldn’t you be translating exactly what God wrote rather than making it fit in with culture?
May 22, 2009 at 7:28 pm
“shouldn’t you be translating exactly what God wrote”
This is the crux of the argument of people who prefer ‘literal’ over ‘dynamic’ translations.
The problem is, it’s a misnomer. It implies that translating word for word does translate exactly what God wrote, and translating meaning for meaning does not translate exactly what God wrote.
If you want to write exactly what God wrote, you need to write the exact same words in the exact same language – essentially, a copy of the original.
Once you move into a new language, everything changes, because a language is more than just words – it’s words, discourse features, focus, style, genre, etc. ‘Literalists’ think that by simply using the same words it is a ‘faithful’ translation, but if you ignore the other features of those languages, is it really literal?
For example, if Greek puts words at the beginning of the sentence to give them focus, but another language puts words at the end of the sentence to give them focus, does a ‘literal’ translation follow the word order, or the focus?
If a language puts the topic of the sentence at the beginning and then discusses it after that, or discusses it first and then states what the topic is, do you just follow the word order of the Greek and write confusing language in the target language?
If certain words in Greek are usually used in certain genres (like poetry), but the equivalent of those words mark the target language as using a different genre (such as legal language), are you faithfully translating the original language by giving the readers of the target language the impression that the original was in different genre than it actually was?
I know that’s a long sentence, and perhaps that’s why people never realise how big this issue is; it takes some effort to get your head around it, but that’s how it is. It’s easier to say things like ‘literal’ and ‘not change God’s Word’ than it is to study linguistics, translation philosophy, and discourse. There’s so much more to language than just words.
Sorry, that’s not a personal dig (I can say it b/c you’re my sis
), but more a response to sentiments that I keep hearing and reading in other places.
I’ll throw in a quick example from our consultant checks this week in Jita and Kwaya.
We were checking Luke 1:60-61 which says:
but his mother spoke up and said, “No! He is to be called John.” They said to her, “There is no one among your relatives who has that name.”
In the phrase “among your relatives”, the word ‘your’ is singular in the Greek. Basically, it is saying that no one among Elizabeth’s relatives is called ‘John’, although everyone agrees that it refers to Elizabeth’s relatives on her side and Zechariah’s side of the family. But if you translate it as singular in Jita and Kwaya, readers will think that it’s referring to just Elizabeth’s relatives on her side of the family, and doesn’t include Zechariah’s family. So what do you do?
We translated ‘your’ as plural, so that people understand the correct meaning of the original, which was to say that there was no one related to Elizabeth, through her side or through marriage, who had the name ‘John’, and thus the choice of the name ‘John’ was unusual in their culture.
Did we change the words of God? That’s not the right question, since every translation changes the words of God. It’s how did we change the words of God? and we think that we changed it to reflect the correct meaning of the original, a meaning which doesn’t misguide the reader into an incorrect conclusion that the original author would not have wanted them to make.
A so-called ‘literal’ translation would have given a different impression than the original, and in cultures which don’t have access to study guides and commentaries, that is especially dangerous (it’s also dangerous in cultures that do have access).
So that’s my long post on translation philosophy. Hope it clears some stuff up for anyone who should stumble upon this post.
May 22, 2009 at 10:39 pm
well, actually i was meaning don’t you need to keep the essence of what was being written. as in, if it says that fathers need to be reconciled to their children, then why should it be changed for culture?
May 23, 2009 at 4:27 am
The problem we’re having though is that the concept of fathers being in the wrong isn’t there in the culture, so if we write something like ‘bring the fathers into forgiveness with the children’ either it doesn’t mean anything, or it could mean ‘bring the fathers to the children to punish them’ or something like that.
Without turning it into a commentary, we’re not sure how we can simply translate it to get the meaning across, and we don’t think our translations are the place where we should ‘commentate’ on the text. There’s got to be a simple way to do it though. Perhaps like ‘bring the sinful fathers into forgiveness with the sinful children’. It’s something we’ve just marked for now to look at later.
We definitely want to say the same thing as the original, but if in saying it they take a completely different meaning, then we’re not really saying in their language what the original said in its.
May 23, 2009 at 7:09 am
wow! and I thought getting my head around my Theology A class was a headache. Praying for you as you continue to do such an important task for the Kingdom! catherine mackenroth
May 23, 2009 at 5:08 pm
Thanks Cath! Nice of you to stop by.
June 10, 2009 at 9:11 am
If it truly is untranslateable using a direct translation, I would probably try something like “reconcile or bring together children with their fathers” and leave out the “agent” who needs to do the turning, or changing. This may be an acceptable solution. However, if you feel that this is an area where the culture needs to be challenged, I would write it as it is and let the people struggle with the biblical “fallibility” of fathers.
June 11, 2009 at 9:02 am
Tim, the issue with ‘writing it as it is’ is that they don’t interpret it that way. If we write it as it is, they think that the fathers are disciplining the children, which is not the intent of the author.