There has been a good deal of talk in the biblioblogosphere about translation theory, and in connection with that support for the REB. In particular, I would note John Hobbins post Why the REB is a Great Translation, and to his earlier posts (not directly on the REB but very relevant to this post), You need an excellent translation to understand the Greek New Testament, and Critique of “Natural English” as a Goal of Translation.
I’m not going to respond in detail to these posts. I think I’ve made my translation philosophy, such as it is, clear previously. But it’s interesting to me that I can disagree quite profoundly with John Hobbins’ view of translation, and at the same time personally prefer the REB.
But the answer is right there in my phraseology. I prefer the REB, but I eschew terms such as “the best translation.” The problem I see here is that such statements tend to ignore the audience for the translation, and at the same time prescribe goals that audience should have.
For example, John presents some rather admirable goals in terms of literary allusions and quality, as well as in terms of understanding the source language. As I always do about this point, let me simply note that if one wants to get the nuances of the source language, the only answer is to actually learn the source language. This is something Hobbins has done, and done well. But at the same time he thinks this will somehow be made widespread through a particular approach to translation.
The problem, in my view, is that many people will miss these subtle, and even not-so-subtle, literary characteristics. I believe most will miss them, but can’t prove it as I’m working from personal experience. In my experience teaching Bible classes to lay people, I have found that there is a distinct limit on what you can expect people to do.
This is not because they are stupid; it’s because they have other lives. They don’t spend most of their time studying this sort of thing. In general, when I point out details, people are happy to listen, but this doesn’t become a regular part of their Bible study. In the best cases, such things come to them through commentaries.
I would note the happy exception of my mother, who chose on retirement to learn to read both Greek and Hebrew. She’s now 90 years old and continues to use both in her own devotions. But I will note that she did this after retirement, though her retirement is a quite active time in her life!
I think it is arrogant of me to expect people in general to learn my field or expect them to have the same goals that I do in Bible reading. For some, the target will be reading for a general message, without concern with details. For others, literary beauty will be the main issue, and literary beauty is in the reader’s eye or hearer’s ear, despite centuries of “experts” trying to make certain literature “good” and other literature “bad.” (J. K. Gayle provided an interesting post on this.)
For yet others, the issue is to get to the forms of the source language, and while I recommend that they learn the language if that is their goal, a more word for word translation will help in a limited sort of way.
So how does this relate to the REB? Quite directly. I love the REB. I read it regularly. I think it does overall the best job of translating the Bible in well-formed literary language. That is something that I personally like.
But other people function differently than I do. A literary translation may actually be a distraction for them in devotional reading. I note that some congregations I’ve worked with find the REB not that easy to follow when read from the pulpit. (It shares this characteristic with some other translations like the ESV or the unfortunately NKJV.)
Now each of those translations has some things in its favor, though I find the NKJV the hardest to justify, but they also have drawbacks. It depends on who is using the translation, including when the “who” is a community, and what they are using that translation for.
I see no reason to be prescriptive here. One simply has to match the characteristics of a translation with use and user, as far as possible.
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