In this clip, Cy Kellett welcomes Jimmy Akin to discuss the upcoming Catholic American Bible. Jimmy explains the complexities of translating biblical texts and why no translation can be considered perfect, highlighting the challenges that arise from language differences.
Transcript:
Cy Kellett: Will, thank you for waiting. Go ahead with your question.
Caller: Hey, Jimmy. And it sounds like we’ve got a new version of the Bible coming up or a new edition. Excuse me. The Catholic American Bible. And I’m excited about it. Sounds great. And I looked at the panel and the people that have contributed to the Midwest Theological Forum. I think it looks great. Looks like new translation of the Greek and updating the Old Testament as well from the Nabre version and a new version of the Psalms. But you know, looking at the Catholic American Bible when it comes out, you know, how should we compare or assess, a new translation when it comes out?
Jimmy Akin: Well, I guess the first thing is, we should be realistic in what we expect because there are no perfect translations. Languages, just can’t be mapped onto each other in a one to one fashion. an example I often use is, for example, the translation of idioms. for example, in English we have this idiom. And Cy knows, I’m sure Where I’m going, we have this idiom in English, roll out the red carpet, which does not mean. Does not mean there is a literal red carpet that needs to be rolled out. It’s a way of saying we need to take great pains because a dignitary is visiting if we need to roll out the red carpet for someone. But if you translated that literally into Spanish, it wouldn’t mean anything. People would think there is a literal red carpet because that expression is not, is not one that is found in Spanish. There is a Spanish equivalent idiom, though, and I wonder if Sa Kellet remembers what that one is. Do you happen to remember the Spanish equivalent of roll out the red carpet,
Cy Kellett: Throw everything out the window?
Jimmy Akin: Yeah, throw the house out.
Cy Kellett: Okay, yeah.
Caller: Yeah. Okay.
Jimmy Akin: Yeah. So that’s one example. And it doesn’t just operate on the level of expressions like that. It also operates even on the level of individual words. And we’ve seen two examples of that already in today’s show. Cy Kellett.
Cy Kellett: Yes, sir?
Jimmy Akin: When you asked me the question about, women teaching, what terms exist in Greek now, I’m not asking for the word, but what are their English equivalents that translators have to make a choice. Do we translate it this way or that? Just about 40 minutes ago, like wife
Cy Kellett: Or woman, husband or man?
Jimmy Akin: Exactly. When you encounter gune, which is the Greek word for woman or wife, you’ve got to make a choice. Which way do I translate it? And when you encounter the word aner, which means either man or husband, you’ve got to make a choice. How do I do it? We also saw another example of that in our most recent call, because we hit the word Torah, which you could translate law like the Septuagint translators did, or you could translate it instruction. So even just on the level of individual words, you’ve got to make choices. And humans, you know, most of them are human. Wouldn’t you agree? Psychalic? Most humans are human.
Cy Kellett: I’ve noticed most are, yes.
Jimmy Akin: Well, they have to make these tough calls, and there’s not a single right choice. You know, like in the previous call, if you go with the Septuagint translation and say, we’re going to translate Torah as namas or law, well, then that’s going to suggest something to the reader that’s slightly different than would be suggested by instruction. You’re going to lose some of the connotations and you’re going to create other connotations that the word law has so, there’s always a trade off and different translators make different trade offs and sometimes they make mistakes. So there are no perfect translations. As they say, in Italian, translator, traitor. In other words, every time you translate, you in some sense betray what was said in the original language. So we shouldn’t expect perfection, but how much can we expect? Well, we actually can expect a good bit these days. In fact, all professionally published translations by major publishers, they’re all pretty good. There aren’t any that are just horrible. Now there are, some translations that are just horrible, like the Jehovah’s Witness New World translation, that’s just a bad translation, but it’s not a professionally published one. when you have actual scholarly committees that are doing these things, scholars today are very competent and they use the best scholarship that we have available. And so all the translations are pretty good. What they differ on is the choices they make in translation. And there are a variety of these. Kind of at the top level you have to make a decision of are we going to use what’s called a formal equivalence translation philosophy or a dynamic equivalence translation philosophy. Formal translation tries to stick to the word order as closely as possible in the language you’re translating into, which, so it’s kind of a word for word translation. Whereas dynamic equivalence tries to focus on the thoughts, but allow the word order and such to vary. And so it’s often described as not a word for word translation, but a thought for thought translation. Well, both of those have advantages. The word for word translation is going to preserve details from the original language that dynamic equivalence won’t preserve. On the other hand, that makes it a little more obscure and harder to read. Whereas with dynamic equivalence it’s easier to read and maybe more clearly understood, but it does mean sacrificing some of the detail. So there’s no right or wrong here. Personally, for Bible reading I have no just absorbing text in bulk. I have no problem with dynamic equivalence. But for Bible study where you’re focusing more on details, I would use formal equivalence rather than dynamic. Then there are other translation choices that have to be made. Like one that’s been controversial in recent years is what’s called inclusive language, where there are some translations, like the New Revised Standard Version, that will try to avoid gendered language whenever possible. so they will not say he or she. In many cases, the opposite of that would be using traditional gendered language, which just uses he as the default for everything. And then there’s kind of a middle position that says what we’re going to try to do is use the language that, that’s there in the original. So if we won’t, we won’t fuzz away he’s and she’s when they’re in the original. But when it uses a neutral, a gender neutral term like human, you know, the Greek word for which is anthropos, it’s different than gune, which means woman, and it’s different than anair, which means man. But. But anthropos just means person or human. Well, we’ll just translate it as person or human there without assuming he as the default. And so there’s kind of a range of translation choices on this level. And I would say that since they’re all basically good these days, if they’re professionally published by teams of scholars, I wouldn’t worry about it too much. I would. Rather than asking, is it okay to use this? I would try to find out what translation choices, did the translators make. And one of the ways to find that out is by reading the literature that is released with the Bible translation, either as an introduction, like a preface, in the translation itself or in publicity material. it’ll say, we did this and we did this. And you can get a sense of it and decide do you like it or not? And in individual verses, you will find things that are just wrong or arguably wrong. But, for me, if I’m evaluating a new translation, I’m not looking for perfection. And I am more thinking about what would this be useful for? Because to me, the best is to go straight to the original languages. But if you’re going to be using translations, which I do, because I can read English faster than I can read Greek and Hebrew. I mean, I can go to the Greek and the Hebrew when I need to, but it’s faster to just read English most of the time. And when I use translations, the best translation is actually having multiple translations. So I can see how different people read the same passage. And that can open up interpretive possibilities that might not have occurred to me otherwise. Like in the first question we had today, if all I’d ever seen are translations of, First Timothy 2:12 that say woman and man, and had never seen a translation that uses wife and husband, I might have entirely missed that translation option and that interpretive option. So it’s valuable to have not just one translation, but multiple translations that all can be consulted.
Cy Kellett: Will, I got to leave it there because I got to get to the break.