TRANSLATION

All translations are guided by an operating philosophy that the translators adhere to. There are two primary philosophies of translation:

Philosophy 1: Translate the text as closely as possible, word for word. This is LITERAL translation.

The challenge in translating literally, word for word, is that not only must the words change, structure must also be changed. For example, in Greek, word order does not carry the meaning -- it carries importance.

Take the phrase:

'Bob washed the car.'

Word order is important in English. If we changed the order of the words the meaning would change completely:

'The car washed Bob'

Or the word order could make it completely unintelligible:

'Car Bob washed the'

In Greek word order makes no absolutely no difference in the reading of the text. The words can be shuffled in any manner without changing the meaning of the text. The meaning is carried entirely in the prefixes and suffixes of the words themselves.

Given this challenge, translation can still be carried out in a very literal fashion, even though there will be structural rearranging of the words. It still nets out to a one to one word translation.

The weakness of most literal translations is that the reading tends to be wooden and often difficult to read.

Philosophy 1a: Yes, you read right -- 1a -- because this is a subset of literal translation philosophy: It is called DYNAMIC EQUIVALENCE.

The best way to explain dynamic equivalence is with an example. Let's take the Hebrew word 'yirah'. The most common English word used to translate 'yirah' is the word 'fear'.

The question a translator must ask is whether the word 'fear' accurately represents the meaning the writer intended? There are many Hebrew words that mean 'fear'. The problem with 'yirah' is that it has a compound meaning. Yes, it means 'fear', but it also carries the nuance of 'reverential awe.'

As you can see, the English language has no one word that carries the equivalent meaning. English is incapable of expressing 'yirah' with a single word.

Dynamic equivalence takes this problem into account and will translate 'yirah' with mulitple words or a phrase that is informed by the context so that the full Hebrew meaning carries to the English reader. Thus the literal philosophy is sidestepped when a literal approach will not be as effective.

Philosophy 2: Translate the text by way of concepts and ideas rather than words. This is a PARAPHRASE.

The chief goal in a paraphrase is readability in common everyday language. Now, the question is often asked, why can't you have a readable paraphrase that is accurate?

The challenge of the paraphrase is that a greater amount of interpretation must be made. Translation becomes more like commentary rather than a transmission of the language.

And historically, many paraphrases have lost the meaning of a text in the translation. This challenge exists for literal translations as well, but the opportunities for mistranslation of the language multiples greatly for all paraphrases.

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