The New World Translation is not a translation,

by Jaime l de Aragon 46 Replies latest watchtower beliefs

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  Chariklo

  Bookmarking
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  kurtbethel

  I had CO's tell me (one also pointed it out in the pioneer meeting) that the New World Translation is a translation. King James Version is a version. Thus, the NWT is superior. I just thought, wahhhhhhhhhhh?

  Sure, and I suppose a geoduck is a duck.

  The New World Translation would need translators to be a translation. There has never been any evidence produced of translators working on it.

  The New World Translation would be more properly called a renderingor a paraphrase version.
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  Bobcat

  I personally would say that the NWT IS definitely a translation.

  I've spent many hours pouring over Bible commentaries, many of which are NIV based, and some that have translations of the author of the commentary. What I have consistantly seen is this:

  Whenever the commentary offers a literal rendering of a text or phrase, the NWT almost invariably reads like (or similar to) the literal rendering.

  Of course, not in EVERY case, but by and large.

  What I have also seen is that the NWT is excessively wordy. This comes from two things:

  A slavery to literalness at the expense of understanding.

  Inexperience on the part of the translators. (The same 'wordiness' happens when inexperinced people write computer programming.)

  Part of that inexperience comes from holding to translational ideas that are questionable.

  I don't doubt that other renderings/translations were consulted.

  With the plethora of Hebrew/Greek reference material, and available master texts, almost anyone could undertake a translation project. It wouldn't be professional, but it would still be a translation or a translation attempt.

  If the NWT would have stuck strictly to literalness it would fill a niche among translations. It wouldn't be the end-all of translations. But it would be useful paired with a (or several) good professional translation(s). You would use one to get the point and the NWT to see the actual literal rendering of the text. Paired together like this would make for some useful study.

  Unfortunately, the NWT departs from literalness just enough to require consulting other references to be sure.
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  Phizzy

  I think the point being made is that nobody with a true knowledge of the Greek of the N.T or the Hebrew and Aramaic of the O.T were on the team. So, it is hardly a Translation.

  I could get hold of several translations of a book originally appearing in German say, and lots of German to English dictionaries and English Commentaries on the book. I could then bring out my own version of the book, but having no knowledge of German (apart from the "Gott in Himmel !" variety culled from old War comics) it would NOT be a Translation.

  The NWT is like that, and because of the lack of true scholarship and expertise is all the more remarkable in what it achieved, albeit flawed in several ways, but all versions and translations have their faults, some far more glaring than the NWT.
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  Wonderment

  What is this nonsense that the NWT is not a translation? Please!!!

  One definition of "translation" is defined as "a rendering from one language into another; also: the product of such a rendering." (Merriam-Webster) And another: "the rendering of something into another language or into one's own from another language. 2. a version of such a rendering: a new translation." (dictionary.reference.com, bold letters theirs)

  A competent scholar has this to say about the subject of translation: "...quite a few skills seem to be needed [in the process of translating]. He (or she) needs to have competence in expressing meaning in the destination language, commonly called Target, or Receptor, language...He needs to be competent also in the Source Language (s) (SL) and cultures. In the case of the Bible, this requires competence in Hebrew, Aramaic, and Greek. He should have specialist knowledge of the content of the documents being translated being translated."

  Does this scholar believe the NWT translators met these requirements? Apparently so, for he goes on to recommend a few Bible translations, one of which is the NWT. (How to Choose your Bible Wisely, p. 27, 225)
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  Phizzy

  Who is this "competent scholar" and did he research sufficiently who were the scholars that fit his criteria for the NWT ? No, because the WT would not reveal who was on the committee would they ?

  No, like many a reviewer who has mentioned the NWT he has been fooled by the WT's bluster into thinking some competence went in to the creating of the NWT, whereas the WT in truth has never had an in house scholar of the calibre he describes.

  Edited to add : I guess Alan. S. Duthie is well qualified to offer an opinion on the NWT, incidently he does criticise it for its Theology in the book you quote, but I stand by my comment above, I don't think he can know the truth of the genesis of the NWT.
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  Leolaia

  What I have also seen is that the NWT is excessively wordy. This comes from two things: A slavery to literalness at the expense of understanding. Inexperience on the part of the translators. (The same 'wordiness' happens when inexperinced people write computer programming.) Part of that inexperience comes from holding to translational ideas that are questionable.

  Well, that wordiness is often due to overtranslation, which is not the same thing as literalness (which aims towards a one-to-one correspondence with the original language); it is a padding of unnecessary words that adds information that isn't lexically encoded in the original. This is often a sign of inexperience in the translator. The wordiness also I believe is due in part to a clumsy writing style (compare Fred Franz' unnecessarily wordy style in his theological writings).

  A favorite example of mine is the NWT rendering of Philippians 2:5-6: "Keep this mental attitude in YOU that was also in Christ Jesus, who, although he was existing in God's form, gave no consideration to a seizure, namely, that he should be equal to God". A truly, truly, awful way of composing English, and also not very literal at all. Here is a breakdown:

  1) The verb huparkhòn "existing" is a participle in Greek but the NWT converts it into a finite predicate. This is often necessary to smooth the heavy use of participles in Greek into more natural English, but is is a departure from literalness. It also changes the tense of the participle from present to past tense.

  2) The addition of "although" is a good example of overtranslation. This is meant to signify the concessive force of huparkhòn. It lexicalizes a subtlety in grammar, thereby adding a word that doesn't correspond to a morpheme in the Greek. Its inclusion also obscures the relation between what follows and the initial "who"; i.e. "who, being in the form of God, did not think..." vs. "who, although he was in the form of God, did not think..."

  3) Next, having rendered the participle huparkhòn as a finite clause, they do the opposite with hègèsato "considered" by nominalizing it. This requires even more verbiage, creating the need for a new main verb "gave" and a nominal suffix to the verb. This is another overtranslation, instead of "considering" we have "give consideration to", just as instead of "knowing" we have "taking in knowledge of".

  4) Harpagmon "thing to be seized" is literally rendered as a noun, but "seizure" in modern English sounds very awkward. The most common use of this word means something quite different.

  5) Then the noun phrase "being equal to God" is converted into an entire clause, "that he should be equal to God". This alters the sense of the Greek which is uncommitted to whether or not this is a status that he already had; the expanded clause (with the subjunctive) contains within it an implicit claim that this is a status that he did not already have.

  6) Finally, the Greek has harpagmon and to einai isa theo "being equal to God" as two noun phrases subordinated to the verb, i.e. "He did not consider X(acc) Y(acc)," like saying "He did not consider [Tom] [a fool]". The way to express this in English is to say "He did not consider [being equal to God] [a thing to be grasped]", or to be more literal with the word order, "He did not consider [a thing to be grasped] [being equal to God]". But the rendering chosen by the NWT eliminates the parallelism by turning the noun phrase "being equal to God" into the clause "that he should be equal to God", which motivates the insertion of "namely". This is another padded word that doesn't correspond to anything in the Greek.

  I think an actual literal rendering would be more like "...who, being in the form of God, considered not equality to God something to be grasped". That comes much closer to the wording of the Greek than the NWT rendering which liberally converts non-finites into finite clauses, and finite clauses into non-finite nominalizations, and then adds further verbiage on top.
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  Satanus

  mP

  You keep hinting about a different idea aside from the accepted one, about the bible. Instead of hinting and telling people to go check things in the greek, could you present a more coherent idea of what this truth about the bible really is? I don't know any greek. I'm not going to go into the sinaiticus, at this point. But, if someone put together a short article in english explaining what the real truth about the bible was, before the updates, i would have no problem reading it english.

  Thanks

  S
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  Wonderment

  Phizzy

  The "competent" scholar is Alan S. Duthie*. <!-- @page { margin: 0.79in } P { margin-bottom: 0.08in } A:link { so-language: zxx } -->

  (*Associate Professor, Department of Linguistics, University of Ghana; MA in Greek and Hebrew from the University of St. Andrews; a Ph.D in linguistics from the University of Manchester; and a BD from the University of London)

  Dr. Duthie hinted one does not need to know the background of the translators to judge the final product. " <!-- @page { margin: 0.79in } P { margin-bottom: 0.08in } A:link { so-language: zxx } -- If we know who the translators or the publishers of a particular Bible translation are, does it help us to decide whether that translation is good or bad? There is no substitute for examining the characteristics of each translation itself." (Bold and italic letters his)

  Interestingly, Dr. Duthie mentions a few Bible translations done by translators with little formal training in biblical languages. Here, he does not mention the NWT at all. Surprisingly, considering that out of all bible translators known for having little formal training or none, the NW translators are most prominent, but Duthie seems not to make that the breaking issue. Why should we?

  Even if we accept Ray Franz's known statement of the NWT anonymity and competence of the NWT Committee, or lack of, no ones knows for certain whether the Committee consulted other language experts in the process or not, since the project was done away from public view. All intent to focus and expose the identity of the NWT seems to be motivated more by personal bias than by any reasonable outcome of work produced by anonymous translators.

  Citing a Baptist cult-expert Walter Martin as solid authority for the rejection of the NWT is somewhat like quoting the Catholic Pope as final authority when judging a Mormon doctrine or product. I don't understand Martin's manifested arrogance toward the NWT product, considering his Ph.D accomplisment has been brought into question before.
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  Satanus

  ' Here, he does not mention the NWT at all.'

  Likely, because the nwt isn't a serious enough contender on the western world scene to be even noticed, or taken seriously. Kind of like that 'translation' done by that spiritist guy that the wt used to quote before they fabricated their own bible.

  S