Threads from Henry's Web

Author: henry

  • Better Bibles on Translating Idioms

    A couple of days ago I blogged about the idiom “brokenhearted” and closely related phrases, particularly in Isaiah 61:1. I’ve been collecting additional information via e-mail, and I may blog further on that one, though I am still pretty much looking at something like “give courage to those in despair.”

    Today, Wayne Leman blogged about another idiom from Hebrew scripture, “in the eyes of.” He has provided a range of translation options for this into English and I think it’s worthwhile checking those out.

    What is the best approach to translating an idiom such as this one? How important is it to you to transfer the source language idiom, if it is important at all?

    One thing I have found is that the more I study idioms, the more important it seems to me that we get a clear and natural rendering in the target language. We are frequently unaware of the idioms in our own language, and for best effect, an idiom should be just that subtle, not something that makes you stop and wonder about its meaning.

  • Enormous Possibilities for Distortion?

    Yes, indeed, but also for correction.

    After writing my previous entry, I found this column by Howard Fineman on MSNBC. Rather than hide it as an update to that post, I wanted to highlight it.

    Fineman concludes:

    As for Obama, he was benefiting from events. But he should be sobered as well. What the Viral Campaign gives, it can take away — fast. The possibilities for distorting reality, and not just reflecting it, are enormous — and uncontrollable.

    Yes, indeed, the possibilities for distorting reality are enormous and uncontrollable–by the media. But the options for correction are also wide open, and people will become more critical simply because they will see more different options and will have to ask themselves just who is right. The campaigns can’t control the information, the media can’t control it, and the FEC won’t be able to control it.

    Freedom, y’all! What a concept!

  • Setting Political Speech Free

    One of my very unliberal positions is on political speech. I very much believe that controlling money spent on speech, whether that speech is in a commercial ad for a product, or in an ad for a candidate, in that candadate’s own speech, or in a journalist’s article is the same as controlling the speech itself. That controls on campaign spending are, in my view, very similar to the idea of controlling the budget of a newspaper. “Oh,” say the lawyers, “we’re not controlling what they print, just what they spend.” I know that current law is largely against me on this point, with the FEC charged with controlling campaign spending and even watching independent groups that spend money on behalf of candidates.

    Thus I am delighted with a new YouTube video that completely bypasses all of this. It’s just a free, independently made ad, and it has spread across the internet. You can read the Washington Post story about it here, and see the video itself here. (I didn’t see a link to the actual video from the Washington Post story.)

    Why am I delighted with this video? It’s great content? No, though I do like the challenge to the status quo just a bit. Do I particularly dislike Senator Clinton? No. The point is that this is an ad that has massive circulation and more viewers than the standard ads, and its not under the control of the election watchers.

    The great benefit of the internet to the spread of information is that it removes control, and provides a free market in ideas. Candidates are already finding that they cannot stay “on message” as their consultants would have them do, because people are interested in other messages. With free information flow, candidates will have much less control over their image.

    Of course all of this comes with dangers. Information on the internet is much less filtered than print and and other media. The barriers to entry into this market of ideas are all but nonexistent. We have to be careful to check our facts and get good, basic information to support what we choose to believe. But were we not responsible to do the same thing before? The difference is that it is now also easier to check that information. I find tremendous value in things like online article and book searches, for example, that let me locate information even when I can’t get it all on the internet. That reduces the time for me to get the right interlibrary loan book in my hand if nothing else. Often I can even check the facts of a news story from several sources online.

    Whether they are liberal or conservative, the folks who want to control the information you get are not trying to make you more free, nor to guarantee that you get accurate information. They’re trying to keep you on track. That’s why I have always supported the maximum possible free speech, and it’s also why I welcome the internet and services like YouTube to the political arena. There’s another revolution going on, and I think it’s a good one.

    As the Washington Post article quoted David Weinberger, former senior Internet adviser to Howard Dean and a fellow at the Berkman Center for Internet and Society at Harvard Law School:

    “It’s expressing frustration and unhappiness with the level of control that her campaign is exerting. It’s no more controlled than any other traditional campaign. It’s not especially controlled by previous standards. But it’s tightly controlled by the standards of the Web. And for a big part of the population, the standards are the Web standards,” Weinberger said.

    To regain her footing online, the New York senator “should go off-message and her talking points” and post videos and blogs that show “that she doesn’t have the answer to everything, that she’s made mistakes, that she can talk like another human being.” As such the video, Weinberger added, “is particularly effective because it draws the parallel that’s apparent to so many people — that Hillary is to the campaign as PCs are to computing.”

    I’m there. Most of my information on the campaigns will come from the internet. I’m not going to believe attack ads. I’m going to check wth everything from regular media to the candidate’s web sites. But I am delighted with how much is becoming available. The standards of control should be those of the web.

  • Carl Zimmer on Genes

    I’m a fan of Carl Zimmer’s writing, either in print or on his blog, and I wanted to call attention to today’s post on the human genome and on how science works. I think it’s well worth reading.

  • Brokenhearted in Isaiah 61:1 – a Brief Note

    I was reading this for my morning reading, and I noticed the phrase “nishberey lev” which is nearly universally translated as “brokenhearted” or something very close to that in English translations. This is an extremely familiar passage, and it is quite possible that translators are wary of moving from the familiar phraseology.

    But as I read it in Hebrew, I had to note that I would not get the same meaning from the Hebrew text as I do from the English “brokenhearted.” Merriam-Webster’s 10th (in my Logos software) gives “overcome by grief or despair” as its definition. Thus the terms overlap, I would think but the semantic range differs substantially. I believe English readers will hear more “grief” than “despair.”

    HALOT suggests “oppressed or humbled” for this particular instance, again overlapping the semantic range of despair, though much less so of “grief.” Since the heart is not the seat of the emotions, but rather of the will and to some extent the mind in Hebrew thought, perhaps we would do better to find an alternative to “brokenhearted” to translate this phrase. The current translation leaves one with the impression that one has a clear understanding, but that understanding may well be skewed.

    Note: One useful online resource on idioms is Wayne Leman’s Evaluating Translation of Old Testament Idioms available in PDF or Microsoft Excel format. It’s taken from his Studies evaluating English Bible Versions page. He doesn’t have this one in there, but I will surely be e-mailing him with it.

  • God Guided Evolution

    Ed Brayton has an interesting post on views of evolution amongst doctors, which is based on this post by Steve Reuland on the Panda’s Thumb. I should have gotten around to it earlier, like when it was first posted, but it’s finally Saturday, I have a few minutes to work on it, and Ed’s post got me started.

    Quoting from the Panda’s Thumb:

    One question gives respondents three choices, each of which requires the respondent to make a statement about his or her belief in God. The choices are as follows: 1. God created humans exactly as they appear now; 2. God initiated and guided an evolutionary process that has led to current human beings; 3. Humans evolved naturally with no supernatural involvement – no divinity played any role.

    Ed further notes that:

    Option #2 – God initiated and guided an evolutionary process that has led to current human beings – is not ID, it’s theistic evolution.

    I have a serious problem with the survey question in that I would have to answer option 3 for myself, and yet I’m a theistic evolutionist–or I think that’s what I am. It depends on what one means by the word “guidance,” I suppose, though it seems to me that “thesitic evolutionist” should refer to one who is both a theist and who accepts the theory of evolution. Since option 2 refers specifically to human evolution, it gets right down to the ultimate question of guidance occurring within the process of evolution of one life form to another. Does evolution work by itself or not?

    There are theistic evolutionists who believe that God guided the process of human evolution, for example, but did so in such a way as to conceal his tracks. Now that’s entirely possible, but it introduces a specific purpose into the process–the productions of humans such as you and me. To many, it seems a no-brainer that a Christian would have to accept this concept of evolution. After all, what meaning do concepts like original sin and redemption mean if God didn’t specifically create human beings, as we are, in some sense of the word. As I understand evolution, it would require some kind of guidance to guarantee that random variation combined with undirected selection would produce any particular creature. There are simply too many accidents involved.

    Say we have a mastodon with a particularly nice mutation for dealing with excessive cold, but he is struck by lightning before passing on that trait. The trait disappears, but not because it’s not a good one; it is lost by accident. Over millions of years the likelihood of such accidents is extremely high, and the particular result cannot be guaranteed unless you have some sort of guidance, whether that comes from front-loading or from intervention along the way.

    But I personally think it’s necessary to give up the idea that human beings, precisely as we now have them, are the goal of evolution. I do believe in a type of teleology in creation, i.e. that God has a purpose, but that purpose can be primarily stated as diversity. Given the possibility of intelligence being produced through evolutionary processes, and the extended amounts of space and time available, I think it was inevitable that intelligence would be produced by evolutionary processes. It’s hardly my field of expertise, but I suspect that we’ll find that life has come into existence numerous times and it’s quite possible that intelligence has occurred many times in the universe also and that we are not unique in that sense.

    In fact, I think that such a God makes much more sense. In other words, I believe that evolution can contribute to broadening and deepening our understanding with God. The idea that God created this giant universe with the intent to deal solely and exclusively with one group of intelligent creatures off to the side in a rather ordinary galaxy has never made sense to me. Understand evolution as being God’s means of producing diversity makes sense of that point to me. I think it’s likely that there’s some creature out there somewhere who has a body type I might not even recognize and who is also trying to figure out just where he fits into the grand scheme of things. I find that fascinating and exciting!

    So to me, as a theist, the guidance of evolution is solely in the sense that God chooses to produce a universe with natural laws that will eventually create a great diversity of creatures, and I suspect that we haven’t even a minimal clue as to just how extensive the variety this method can produce actually is. We may want to feel special, but I think we might as well get started now realizing that we’re just one of many very interesting things that could be produced by the evolutionary processes God created.

    Christians may object that the Bible speaks of us as special. I would ask simply just what would you expect of a book involved in the specific interactions of God and human beings? Of course I see a much greater human involvement in scripture than do most Christians, but I think we’re reacting to certain statements much like the grandchild whose grandfather tells him that he’s “grandpa’s special boy” and assumes from that statement that granpa loves him more than all the other grandchildren. Meanwhile, grandpa is off telling the others that they are also “grandpa’s special girl or boy” and so forth. If we’re serious about God being infinite, then we also have to realize that “special” doesn’t exhaust his attention. He doesn’t have to have priority lists.

    My own view is that any naturally occurring intelligence would call forth God’s spiritual contact and communication as those creatures struggle with who they are and why they exist. As they come to realize just where they stand in the general scheme of things it’s time also for them to realize that they have to make a lot of their own way in the universe, because while they may be special to God, they don’t have an exclusive on being special.

    I’m not trying to exclude those who believe in a more direct guidance from the ranks of theistic evolutionists; that would be pointless, and they’d be more likely to win and exclude me. I just want to point out that there is more than one way to be a theist and also accept evolution. God is the ground of all being, as Paul Tillich said, and he is thus the ground of all evolution. But that doesn’t mean he has to tinker with it.

  • Congragulations to Joe Carter and the Evangelical Outpost

    Congratulations to Joe Carter who has been mentioned as a key evangelical blogger in this Washington Post article. Joe himself responds here. Joe certainly is a central figure amongst Christian bloggers. Even though I’m not an evangelical myself, I read his blog regularly to keep track of some of the thinking in that stream.

    Keep up the good work!

  • More on the TNIV

    I was a bit put off at first by certain rhetoric on the new TNIV Truth blog, and I must confess that anonymity doesn’t rank high with me, even when I understand the motivations. Now the blogger there has “outed” himself and also posted a note on the TNIV on one of my pet peeves–discussions of translator motivations.

    First let me quote from Lane Wiemann’s profile:

    I have a passion for the Bible being worded in the language of the majority of English speakers. I also have a passion for truth.

    Excellent! This is precisely where we want to be.

    Much criticism of the TNIV, often combined with advocacy of the ESV is motivation based. While the sophistication of the rhetoric and arguments is better than the old KJV only stuff, there is a distinct nasty odor in this type of argument. It seems extremely odd to me, and even borders on dishonest, to criticize a translation based on some assumptions about translator motivations when the translation itself is available to check alongside the source documents.

    I have never encountered any translators who are not motivated by a desire to help people understand the Bible. There are plenty of disagreements about how to accomplish that, and sometimes I have thought translators get way off the mark on the method, but I would be very slow to question any of their motivations.

    Thus this from the post Have you stopped beating your wife (TNIV Truth blog) is right on target:

    Rather than speculating about the motives of the TNIV translators, it would be better if we objectively examined each verse with which there is a difference of interpretation. In most cases we will discover that good Bible scholars differ on the interpretation of those verses and that the TNIV wordings are supported by lexical and exegetical evidence from the Bible itself as well as from good scholarship.

    Wow! What an amazing concept! Let’s look at the actual evidence and see what conclusions we come to! (I am not aiming this sarcasm at Lane Wiemann, but rather at those who somehow miss this obvious method and go instead for unknown and often unknowable motivations.

    While I have not encountered actual Bible translators who do not want to express God’s message clearly and accurately, I have encountered many church members who are primarily concerned with other things. Unlike Mr. Wiemann and the folks over at Better Bibles, I’m not a translator except for what I do as part of my own teaching and writing work. Where I encounter this issue is in churches with actual church members when I teach classes in how translation works. Those church members are often confused.

    Because some people have attacked the motivations of Bible translators, and the TNIV seems to be the main target right now, and so people are afraid of corrupted Bible translations. Their concern often keeps them from using new versions that provide clearer translations. My own choice for use in writing and often in teaching has been the CEV. One common complaint has to do with the way a version sounds when read from the pulpit. Now oral reading is something that needs to be given consideration in translation, but these members are often not concerned with whether it is easy to understand when read orally or has good rhythm. What they want is something that sounds “Biblical,” generally meaning “like the KJV.”

    One class I taught was split throughout, with one group repeatedly saying that the Bible used in church and Sunday School should be one that made them feel comfortable, while the remainder of the class thought the choice should be made based on how well an unchurched person would understand the reading. Not surprisingly, when I read passages to these two groups, the first group like versions like the RSV, ESV, NASB, or the NRSV, except that they generally didn’t like gender-neutral language. The second group favored dynamic equivalence translations like the CEV or TNIV.

    I think it is extremely important for those who have a good technical knowledge of translation issues to be truthful and to reduce the rhetoric which makes church members believe there are conspiracies of Bible translators whose purpose is to conceal the truth and support social agendas by inaccurate translation.

    It would be valuable, as a start, to stay away from accusations of bad motivation except where there is very substantial evidence.

  • Government Planning

    Our government was apparently unaware of the potential damage from a hurricane like Katrina, and thus unprepared. Similarly, it appears someone either didn’t notice that massively increasing the requirements for passports would, shockingly, increase passoport applications.

    Either they don’t particularly care, they didn’t plan, or more likely congress figured they could mandate it all without providing the appropriate resources. I would guess that the next move is to call the bureaucrats before congressional committees and complain about their inefficiency, thus placating the voters.

    Let me go out on a limb here. I bet it won’t be long before somebody dangerous gets a passport, and the reason will be–the great rush of passport applications.

    Check out the Washington Post story here.

  • The TNIV has a Blog

    I got an e-mail today with just the link for this new blog–only two entries–and the blogger is [drum roll] –wait for it–the TNIV Translation. Well, I assume the book has a spokesman and he or she (or should I use the singular “they”) is typing the entries. I don’t know if this is an official site or not, and we’ll have to wait and see what happens.

    I’m glad to see blogs promoting good Bible translations in modern English, and I think the TNIV is a good translation. I also wish everyone well in promoting it. I do have a problem with some of the rhetoric in the first post. The question they’re asking is “why not the best?” They’re not shy about making claims either:

    We can confidently tell you that our Bible translation, the TNIV, is the best.

    The even try to make some mileage off of the Better Bibles Blog, where bloggers Wayne, Suzanne, Peter, and a couple of others have defended the TNIV from many attacks. It might not have been the best start to the new blog to take this approach. If they want to set the record straight, then they might be better advised to ask “best for what” before they decide to unequivocally declare their particular version the best.

    To be honest, on reading the rhetoric of the first post, I was almost convinced this was some kind of a spoof making fun of the TNIV by using overblown rhetoric, but then I encountered the second post which links (their link is broken, use this one) to a post by Mark D. Roberts reviewing the TNIV which I’ve only partially read, but appears quite intelligent and balanced.

    I hope that this blog will improve and will provide substantial, accurate, information on the TNIV which has gotten way too much unfair coverage.