3 Common Misunderstandings about Translation

An enormous amount of time and effort is required in order to translate the Bible into a language. Over the years, people have developed ranging ideas on this endeavor. Here are 3 common misunderstandings about Bible translation (each one would take a whole book to cover in detail so this is just some food for thought).

Error 1: Bible Translation is not necessary in oral cultures. Some people are questioning how effective Bible translation is; considering unreached people groups are often located in illiterate communities. I think this is based on a few misguided assumptions. First, they assume illiterate communities have chosen to be illiterate, which is most often not the case. Illiterate communities often suffer from accessibility not having an alphabet, written material, or teachers willing to invest in their community. Second, if one assumes the faster a message is transmitted the better, then having oral communication exclusively might be the way to go. But there are other important factors in communication, like the accuracy of a message and the durability of the message. The belief that oral communities have better memories and therefore retain oral messages without error is a myth. There is no scientific data to support this. Oral communities are just like you and me, they forget, add details, and adjust messages sometimes accidentally and sometimes intentionally. That might be harmless with folk stories, but there can be serious consequences if we treat God’s Word like that. Third, Bible translation takes to long to be effective. It is true that Bible translation takes decades of investment and must be accompanied by a relevant Bible teaching ministry and a literacy program. But if God went through the trouble to give us His Word in written form, can’t we go through the trouble of sharing His Word with our brothers and sisters in their language?

Error 2: Word-for-Word translation is the best kind. Anyone who has learned more than one language realizes word-for-word translation is impossible if you still want to convey the intended meaning of a passage. All of us have seen the funny restaurant menus with word-for-word translations English speakers have found as they vacation overseas. For example, there was a kids menu with one of the options as “Deep fried baby”. In English that only means one thing and it is terrible, not to mention illegal, and just terrible. It is a silly example, that illustrates translating words is not the job of a translator. The job of a translator is to convey the intended meaning from your source language into the receptor language. Unfortunately, many Christians have bought the word-for-word translation myth because of Christian marketing for different English Bible translations. I am not against having different English translations, but the differences between the ‘literal translations’ and ‘non-literal translations’ have been exaggerated because of the marketing world. Which leads to confusion on the endeavor of Bible translation. If you want an in-depth look at this check out Dave Brunn’s book, One Bible, Many Versions: Are All Translations Created Equal?

Error 3: All you need is input from Mother Tongue Translators. Those who have rightly understood the limitations of the international translator, have stressed the importance of relying on Mother Tongue Translators. This is absolutely true. Mother tongue speakers are able to communicate in their language with greater fluency and range then one who has learned the language as an adult. However, even mother tongue translators will tend to retain language forms they see in the source language and convey that into their own language even when it doesn’t make any sense. That is why Discourse Analysis is so important for the translation team to understand, not just word level analysis. If you want to look into those elements more consider looking at two books Holistic Discourse Analysis by Robert E. Longacre and Shin Ja J. Hwang and Man and Message: A Guide to Meaning-Based Text Analysis by Kathleen Callow.