New World Translation into other languages; anyone knows of any critics?

by dgp 32 Replies latest watchtower bible

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  Leolaia

  This comment of mine is not aimed at Leolaia or anyone in particular, but, since we're talking about Bible translations and contexts, this thing about the tortilla made me remember the story where a Spanish conquistador runs into a group of Mayan indians, who are keen on killing the invader. He warns the Mayans that, if they kill him, the skies will go dark in the daytime; and they kill him anyways, all the while telling him the many dates they had already predicted eclipses, plus the dates in the future when new eclipses would happen again. My point is, perhaps the missionary in question thought he had made a clever adaptation, and in their inner selves the flock thought that was just a joke, but the funny whitey over there still had managed to make his, ha ha ha, point.

  When I watched the movie Apocalypto, I thought about exactly this thing. The Mayans knew when the eclipses were, so it seemed really off to make that a plot point.

  Good point about the colonial setting of translation. That's important. And we might wonder if a similar thing might be happening in some places where the NWT is translated.

  My impression is that the New World Translation is not an attempt at Biblical accuracy. That is secondary for the Watchtower after all. I understand they used other translations of the Bible until they had the NWT. Back then, it must have been embarrassing to tell the flock that "the word was a god", for example, when the printed Bible read "the Word was God". The Watchtower needed its own Bible, and produced it.

  Yeah I've done some research on exactly how the Society handled these texts prior to the production of the NWT and how they cited other translations. It is interesting because they had definite opinions on how the passages should be translated many years prior to the formation of a committee that set for itself the task of working on a new translation. I found an example from the 1920s in the Golden Age magazine, for instance, that anticipates the later NWT reading in John 1:1. The NWT removes the need to quote from a myriad of different versions, as no single translation had quite the same approach towards the Bible that the Society had during this time.
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  possible-san

  Leolaia.

  Does the Japanese NWT use ue "above, over, on top of" (or a similar word) in Revelation 5:10, or does it instead say something like "They will rule the earth as kings"?

  In the Japanese version, it is translated like this.
  "Karera wa chi ni taishi ou toshite shihai suru no desu."

  If those Japanese is translated into English, it is like this.

  "They [will] rule over the earth as kings."

  I think that this translation itself (NWT) is correct.
  Probably, when expressed in English, isn't it a meaning of "rule over" rather than "rule"?

  possible
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  DarioKehl

  In the forward to the NWT, they mention that they relied heavily on Westcott and Hort. I have done some research online about Westcott and Hort and was VERY surprised to learn they were both spiritualists. Yikes. Creepy! But, I'll admit, most pages that make this claim are other jesus-freak fundie church pages. Does anyone have any viable information to validate this claim? Were Westcott and Hort occultists?
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  Leolaia

  Thank you possible-san, that is very helpful!

  I looked up ni taishi in this Japanese grammar: http://books.google.com/books?id=97ii3nMoH5IC&pg=PA314#v=onepage&q&f=false

  "ni taishite indicates that some action or state is directed 'against' or 'towards' the N to which ni taishi(te) is attached. In meaning, ni taishite ranges from 'against' to 'towards', 'for', 'in', 'in contrast to', etc."

  If that's the case then it looks like the Japanese NWT translator got it right.
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  dgp

  The personal beliefs, inclinations, manias or whatever of Westcott and Hort are not relevant here. If they produced a reliable Greek text, then that is what matters.

  Leolaia and Possible-san (hiya!), I guess there is a problem here. Possible can help us here. If the Japanese New World Translation was made from English into Japanese, then it only stands to reason that the words they use would sort of translate back into English.

  The heart of the matter here is whether the Japanese version is consistent with the Greek source, not the English.

  I'm sure many people know this, but let's use an example to illustrate why you shouldn't do this relay from Greek into English into anything else.

  The English verb "to be", which is extremely common, as we will agree, translates into French as "être", one verb, but two different verbs are necessary if you are to translate into Spanish or Portuguese: "ser" and "estar".

  A well-known Spanish singer, Alejandro Sanz, has a song with a line like this: "No es lo mismo ser que estar". Now, "No es lo mismo" means "It is not the same". It is very easy to translate this thought into Portuguese: "Não é o mesmo ser que estar". Even the syntax is the same. Now, I kindly ask you to translate that sentence into either English or French. "To be and to be are not the same". "Être n'est pas la même chose que être"? Does that sound right? Two and two are not the same thing?

  Of course, if you had a larger sentence, context would tell you how to work around this problem. But here you don't have any context. The difference is in the fact that speakers of Spanish and Portuguese are used to understanding "to be" as two words, and they intuitively know when to use one sense and when the other, but speakers of English and French aren't, and therefore would have a lot of problem understanding the nuances that come with the verb.

  What about trying to translate "no es lo mismo ser que estar" into English first, and then into Portuguese?

  I'm sure everyone knows that speakers of Greek, Aramaic and Hebrew have us all in their hands as to the validity of their translations, because we don't speak such languages. If they want us not to mistrust their translation, learning the languages must be open to anyone, the original texts should be available to anyone, it should be possible for everyone to criticize and dissect the translations, and then the identity of the translators should be known.
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  Leolaia

  That example is somewhat atypical because it is metalinguistic...it calls attention to the meaning difference in two words in a language. That would be difficult to translate into any language (other than those like Portuguese which have the same semantic distinction) without a footnote explaining the distinction in the source language. This would be more akin to examples of overt wordplay in the OT in which the linguistic connection is lost in the process of translation.

  But yes I agree with your main point that translation from an intermediate language is going to produce effects akin to "Chinese whispers". I am reminded of the Douay-Rheims Bible (which shows a strong Latinate influence and which as I recall often favors Latin tradition when it is in conflict with the Hebrew), and even there we know that Mr. Franz was probably nowhere as capable with the Hebrew as the great Jerome. In fact, I have wondered what happens to the areas in which the NWT evidences overtranslation (e.g. the idiosyncratic handling of the waw consecutive in the OT, "taking in knowledge" for "knowing" and "exercise faith" for "believe" in the NT, etc.).

  Another issue just occurred to me: The people who translated the NWT into other languages, did they speak the destination language as a second language or did they speak English (the source language) as a second language? The wooden, awkward prose of the English NWT at times is somewhat impenetrable even to an English speaker like myself. I would imagine that a second-language speaker of English would have even more trouble. If the translator, on the other than, were a Gileadite or other missionary who learned the destination language as a second language, then there could potentially be problems arising from the person's level of mastery of the language.
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  dgp

  I agree with you, Leolaia. I just meant to sort of illustrate that it just makes a lot more sense to translate directly. Translation is difficult enough, and sometimes impossible, even if done directly.

  Yes, perhaps reading the awkward English could represent a problem as well. But, even if it were very clean writing, I would believe that two translators working together would have been much better. One with mastery in the source language, and another with mastery in the target language. But they would need to work together, and agree on meanings and nuances, syntax and the like.

  I met a missionary who learned the language among us, and still has problems with more than one nuance. The problem arises from the fact that this person still thinks in English. Sometimes it's much easier to understand the meaning by translating the words back to English.
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  Leolaia

  The NWT imo is filled with awkward and sometimes difficult turns of phrase, some of which represent an overly literal adherence to source language syntax (e.g. "Her get for me" in the original NWT edition at Judges 14:3) and idiom (cf. the example from Ezra below), some of which represent idiosyncratic overtranslations, while others represent simply bad English prose on the part of the authors. Some examples that come to mind: "Let continue yours what is yours" (Genesis 33:9), "Suppose I am now come to the sons of Israel and I do say to them" (Exodus 3:13), "in order that, to quote him" (4:3-5), "nor since your speaking to your servant" (4:10), "the Nile River will fairly stink and the Egyptians will simply have no stomach for drinking water" (7:18),"I, your father-in-law, Jethro, am come to you, and also your wife and her two sons with her" (18:6), "Jehovah the God of Israel it was that dispossessed the Amorites" (Judges 11:23), "But womankind has been kept away from us the same as formerly when I went out, and the organisms of the young men continue holy .... And how much more today, when one becomes holy in [his] organism" (1 Samuel 21:5), "Anyone striking the Jebusites, let him, by means of the water tunnel, make contact with both the lame and the blind, hateful to the soul of David!" (2 Samuel 5:8), "Now inasmuch as we do eat the salt of the palace, and it is not proper for us to see the denuding of the king, on this account we have sent and made [it] known to the king" (Ezra 4:14), "This I have found, one thing [taken] after another, to find out the sumup" (Ecclesiastes 7:27), "As with the stroke of one striking him does one have to strike him? Or as with the slaughter of his killed ones does he have to be killed?" (Isaiah 27:7), "Take note of my bearing reproach on account of your own self" (Jeremiah 15:15), "and in coming he will certainly come ... and he will excite himself all the way to his fortress" (Daniel 11:10),"He was forming a [locust] swarm at the start of the coming up of the later sowing. And look! it was the later sowing after the mown grass of the king" (Amos 7:1), "And one must say to him, 'What are these wounds [on your person] between your hands?' And he will have to say, 'Those with which I was struck in the house of my intense lovers" (Zechariah 13:5-6), "But they all in common started to beg off" (Luke 14:18), "Now when she and her household got baptized, she said with entreaty: 'If YOU men have judged me to be faithful to Jehovah, enter into my house and stay.' And she just made us come" (Acts 16:15), "For if by the trespass of the one [man] death ruled as king through that one, much more will those who receive the abundance of the undeserved kindness and of the free gift of righteousness rule as kings in life through the one [person], Jesus Christ" (Romans 5:17), "Now the Law came in beside in order that trespassing might abound" (5:20), "who, although he was existing in God's form, gave no consideration to a seizure, namely, that he should be equal to God" (Philippians 2:6), etc.

  I mean, it often reads as if it was composed by someone who speaks English as a second language. When I was a JW it was often frustrating reading the NWT because I had no idea what I was reading, the sentence wouldn't make sense, or I couldn't follow the thread of the argument or narrative. Yet when I tried to read the Bible in most other translations, I wouldn't have this problem in comprehension. And even if there wasn't a problem in comprehension, the language in the NWT often is just godawful. (imo of course)
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  possible-san

  dgp.
  Leolaia.

  Well, I would express my view with regard to the Japanese NWT.

  In Japan, people who are attacking Jehovah's Witnesses point out mostly that the Japanese NWT is a "secondhand translation."
  That is, they say that it was translated from English, not original languages.
  Therefore, their assertion is that "that is a reason why we cannot trust the Japanese NWT."

  But when I was an active JW, I was a defender of the NWT.

  Of course, in Japan, there are many reliable Bible translations.
  It is said that they were translated from the original languages.
  For example,
  The "bungo yaku" (Japan Bible Society, 1888, 1917),
  The "kougo yaku" (Japan Bible Society, 1954, 1955),
  The "shinkai yaku" (1973), etc.

  However, they have consulted to the English Bibles in fact.
  For example, ...
  The "bungo yaku" (1888, 1917) had consulted to the "KJV" and "Revised Version."
  And the "kougo yaku" (1954, 1955) had consulted to the "RSV."
  And the "shinkai yaku" (1973) had consulted to the "NIV."

  Moreover, in Japan, there are the Bibles directly translated from English.
  That is, the "Amplified Bible" and the "Living Bible."

  Possibly, also in the English Bibles, there may be some resembled the situation of the Japanese Bibles.
  For instance, with regard to the "New Jerusalem Bible", it is written as follows.

  The New Jerusalem Bible is an update to the Jerusalem Bible, an English version of the French Bible de Jérusalem. It is commonly held that the Jerusalem Bible was not a translation from the French; rather, it was an original translation heavily influenced by the French. This view is not shared by Henry Wansbrough, editor of the New Jerusalem Bible, who writes, "Despite claims to the contrary, it is clear that the Jerusalem Bible was translated from the French, possibly with occasional glances at the Hebrew or Greek, rather than vice versa." ('How the Bible Came to Us'. Also available online http://users.ox.ac.uk/~sben0056/booklets.htm). When the French version was updated in 1973, the changes were used to revise the Jerusalem Bible, creating the New Jerusalem Bible.
  
  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Jerusalem_Bible

  But, probably, there is no person who says that "we can trust neither the Jerusalem Bible nor the New Jerusalem Bible."
  Moreover, with regard to the other English Bibles, many are the revised editionsof the KJV (that is, English).

  Well, with regard to the Japanese NWT, although that was surely translated from English, it seems that those translators had investigated the original languages, IMO.

  possible
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  dgp

  Thank you, Possible-san

  (bowing)