1.2 Translation theories
1.2.5 Dynamic equivalence and its later developments
Eugene A. Nida presented dynamic equivalence in his book Towards a science of translating, published in 1964. As has been presented before, the title of the book was accurate, for not many translation theories had been developed before that. This first book by Nida is theoretical, but in his later work, he concentrated more specifically
52 Vermeer 1989, 176.
53 Vermeer 1989, 184, 186; Vehmas-Lehto 1999, 95.
54 Vehmas-Lehto 1999, 94.
55 Vehmas-Lehto 1999, 90‒91, 98.
56 Vehmas-Lehto 1999, 92.
57 Vehmas-Lehto 1999, 96‒97.
on Bible translation.58 He has also worked as a Bible translator and consultant, and he was the founder of the journal Bible translator.59
Nida describes the principles governing translations oriented towards dynamic equivalence: “It is the closest natural equivalent to the source language message.”60 Later on, this theory was modified, and it is nowadays called functional equivalence. This was due to criticism of the theory of dynamic equivalence. Nida wrote in 1986:
Functional equivalence, however, means thoroughly understanding not only the meaning of the source text but also the manner in which the intended receptors of the text are likely to understand it in the receptor language.61
Dynamic equivalence has been popular in Bible translation, and it has produced new kinds of translations. These have often been advertised as translations that are easier to understand. For example, in the Finnish translation of the 1992 Bible, the committee used dynamic equivalence as the main theory of the translation, but also used other theories in its work.62 Nida compares translations with each other to emphasise that a Bible translation is meant to be understood by the reader. He gives several examples, one of them being Rom 3:21‒22, which is presented in the following table:63
Table 1.3: Rom 3:21‒22
KJV GNT64
But now the righteousness of without the law has been manifested, being witnessed by the law and prophets; even the righteousness of God which is by faith of Jesus Christ unto all and all them who believe.
But now God’s way of putting men right with himself has been revealed and it has nothing to do with the law. The Law and the prophets gave their witness to it: God puts men right through their faith in Jesus Christ. God does this to all who believe in Christ.
According to Nida, the correctness of a translation must be determined by the extent to which an average reader, for whom the translation is intended, will be likely to understand it correctly. The emphasis in dynamic translation is on the likelihood of understanding the text correctly, not on the possibility of doing so. This means that a dynamic translation should be clear and easy to read for an implied reader of the text.65
There are three principle ideas in the dynamic equivalence theory, which are explained briefly in the following paragraphs. The first one is the equivalence between reactions to and impact of the source text and the translation. The other basic feature of this theory is the use of language as a generative device. There are different levels
58 For example, Theory and practice of translation, published in 1969, contains plenty of examples from the Scriptures.
59 Kela 2007, 49.
60 Nida 1964, 166.
61 Waard & Nida 1986, 9.
62 Toivanen 1989, 54; Kela 2007, 51‒52, 54.
63 Nida & Taber 1974, 3.
64 Good News Translation, also known as Today’s English Version and Good News Bible.
65 Nida & Taber 1974, 1.
of language structure, and a deeper level is more important to the translator. The translator’s task is to produce kernels that are used as a basis for the translation.
The third principle of dynamic equivalence is the communicational aspect of the translation.
Equivalence between reactions to and impact of the source text and the translation An original idea of Nida was that the aim of dynamic translation is to produce the same kind of response in the implied receptors as the original text did in its original receptors.66 If this is achieved, then it can be said that a translation is a good one. In many cases, there are several cultural and historical differences between a source and target culture, so that the responses of these groups cannot be identical. This is especially true in translating Scriptures, when the time gap between the source text and the translation is thousands of years. The aim of the translation is still to reproduce the original message.67 Because the aim is to gain a similarity between the responses, the people to whom the translation is made are not just targets of the translation. They are in a key role when a dynamic or functional translation is made.68
Use of language as a generative device
One of the major ideas of dynamic equivalence was the use of language as a generative device.69 The idea was that each language has different levels: a surface level and deeper levels. Nida states that languages differ from each other in surface structure, but have much more parallelism at deeper levels. At deeper levels of language, it is possible to formulate kernel constructions, which are defined as the minimal number of structures from which the rest can be most efficiently and relevantly derived.70 Nida wrote in 1964:
For the translator especially the view of language as a generative device is important, since it provides him first with a technique for analysing the process of decoding the source text, and secondly with procedure for describing the generation of the appropriate corresponding expression of the receptor language.71
As part of explaining this use of a generative type of grammar in translation work, Nida defines the tasks of translators. First, they should reduce the source text to its structurally simplest and most semantically evident form, and after that transfer the meaning from the source language to the receptor language on a structurally simple level. The final step is to generate a stylistically and semantically equivalent expression in the receptor language.72 This means that the translation is made from kernels, because this is more efficient. This is the same as crossing a river where it
66 Nida 1964, 149.
67 Nida & Taber 1974, 24; Kela 2007, 51.
68 Waard & Nida 1986, 33.
69 Nida 1964, 60.
70 Nida 1964, 66.
71 Nida 1964, 60.
72 Nida 1964, 68‒69.
is narrowest. Surface structures of languages are often far from each other, but at a deeper level of language, there are similarities.73
In his later work, Nida redefines these tasks and writes that there are five steps in translating a verse. The first step is to indicate the basic element of each word, that is, to determine if the word is an object word, an event word, or a relational word.
Nida takes Mark 1:4 as an example: John ... [preached] a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins.74 Here, ‘John’ is an object word, ‘preached’, ‘baptism’, ‘repentance’,
‘forgiveness’, and ‘sins’ are event words, and ‘for’ and ‘of’ are relational words. The second step for a translator is to add to the analysis elements that are implicit in the text. In Mark 1:4, two things should be made explicit: ‘people’ (targets of baptism and forgiveness, subject of repentance and sin) and ‘God’ (subject of forgiveness). The next step is to formulate the kernels. There are five kernels in this verse: 1. John preached X; 2. John baptises the people; 3. The people repent; 4. God forgives X; 5. The people sin. After formulating these kernels, a translator should determine the relationships between the kernels. The last step is to formulate what Nida calls near-kernels in the target language, based on the analysis done previously.75
The communicational aspect of a translation
The dynamic dimension of communication is important in translation,
since the production of the equivalent messages is a process, not merely of matching the parts of utterances, but also reproducing the total dynamic character of communication.76 Dynamic equivalence has its emphasis on communicating a message to an audience.
That is why it is described as a communicative translation theory. All communication has redundancy, which means predictability of certain signals. Nida gives this example: C-- y-- s-- m- d- t--s? It is not so difficult to add missing letters to get ‘Can you see me do this?’. Redundancy also means reinforcing a signal. This is a regular part of a grammatical form. For example, the following phrase in Spanish has the suffix -a repeated four times to signal feminine gender: una persona buena y capacitdada
‘a good, qualified person’. It may seem that it is a waste of effort to use time to repeat this, but it has an important role in covering a ‘noise’ in communication. Due to the redundancy, it is not necessary to hear all the sounds of the word, or to identify all the words in a written sentence in order to understand the meaning of a phrase.77
When there is not enough redundancy in a message, it has too much ‘communication load’. Nida uses this term to describe the difficulty of mediating the message of the source text in translation. This usually means that the translation has more communication load than the original text, because the translator unconsciously follows the source text literally, and in this way the predictability of the message becomes too low. This makes it almost impossible for the receiver to understand.78 The situation should be the
73 Nida & Taber 1974, 33‒34; Ingo 1990, 108‒109.
74 Revised Standard Version.
75 Nida & Taber 1974, 51‒52.
76 Nida 1964, 120.
77 Nida 1964, 127‒128.
78 Nida 1964, 129‒130.
opposite, because the original audience often had the same cultural and background knowledge as the author of the text, but the audience of the translation does not have that. Concepts used in the text were also at least slightly familiar to receivers. This is not usually the case in a translation. Many times, the time and cultural gap between the source language and the target language is so big that if translated literally, the target text audience would not understand it at all.79 This is especially true in Bible translation. That is why the translation should have more background information in the text than the original text. This means that the translation will be longer than the original text. Some translations maintain the source language structure, and this will make it even harder to understand.80 Nida describes this problem using three figures, presented here.81
→ Decoder’s channel M
Figure 1.2: Original communication
The message was created for the original receptors, and so it will fit the decoder’s channel, and the message will be received. Figures 3 and 4 describe the situation of the translated message. The decoder’s channel is narrower due to the lack of background information. A literal translation has too much communication load, so it does not fit the decoder’s channel, and the message will not be understood. An adjusted translation is longer than a literal one and does not have so much communication load, and it fits the decoder’s channel.82
→ Decoder’s channel M
Figure 1.3: A literal translation into the receptor language
→ Decoder’s channel M
Figure 1.4: An adjusted translation into the receptor language
79 Nida 1964, 130.
80 Nida 1964, 129‒132.
81 Nida 1964, 131.
82 Nida 1964, 130‒131.
This should be taken into consideration especially when translating the Bible. The reason for this is that biblical texts include different kinds of cultural information, some of which is stated explicitly in the text, but some of it is not. According to Toivanen, Rudolf Kassühlke, a consultant from the United Bible Societies (UBS), has stated that there are six different levels of cultural information present in the text, and translating this information gets more and more difficult to translate through the levels. These levels are: 1) Names, 2) Borrowed words, 3) Images that do not have theological meaning, 4) Images that have theological meaning, 5) Historical facts that do not have theological meaning, and 6) Historical facts that have theological meaning.83
One task of a Bible translator is to help the reader to avoid misinterpretations of the Bible, especially in the cases of religious beliefs and rituals. Toivanen concludes that when a Bible translator is aware of the cultural and social differences between the source language and the target language, it is possible to produce a good translation.84 Räisänen points out that one translation cannot mediate everything that the translator would like to mediate. On the other hand, however, the reader can, in many cases, use several versions at the same time, which means that it is not necessary to communicate all the information in one translation.85
The theory of dynamic equivalence has also received some criticism, and Nida modified this theory in accordance with the criticism that was presented, towards being a more functional theory. The following paragraph examines some points that have been presented against the theory.
Criticism of dynamic equivalence
Michael Marlowe has written a wide-ranging article on the topic of criticising the theory of dynamic equivalence. This article contains theological and theoretical criticism. I have chosen two points presented by Marlowe. Firstly, dynamic equivalence emphasises the importance of understanding the message of the Bible. Marlowe, though, states that the Bible was not meant to be understood without the church.
Secondly, Marlowe is worried about a disintegration of biblical concepts.86 Bible translation outside the church?
According to Marlowe, due to the Jewishness of the early church, the interpretation of the Bible was not seen as a complicated process. Members of the church were already familiar with theological concepts. When more and more Gentiles joined the church and the church got bigger, there was training for those who wanted to join the church.87 In this way, the Scriptures were not studied outside the community, but within the church.
Those who promote the dynamic equivalence theory make an assumption that future readers of the translation will be totally ignorant of biblical theology, concepts,
83 Toivanen 1986, 173.
84 Toivanen 1986, 175.
85 Räisänen 1986, 189.
86 Marlowe 2012. http://www.bible-researcher.com/dynamic-equivalence.html. Accessed on 6. May 2014.
87 Marlowe 2012. http://www.bible-researcher.com/dynamic-equivalence.html. Accessed on 6. May 2014.
and language. In this case, the translation should be highly interpretative in order to be understood by people who have no previous knowledge of Christianity. This is partly due to the missional role of Bible translation, that is, it is used in evangelism. This has, in part, led to the usage of a common language in the Bible, instead of theological terminology. The shallowness of the common language is not always completely equivalent to the richness of the theological expressions in the original text.88
Disintegration of biblical concepts
Another point raised by Marlowe is the disintegration of biblical concepts, which is partly the topic of this research, as well. Marlowe’s main point is that Hebrew and Greek words usually have more than one sense, and the context in which they are used indicates which sense is meant by the author. These semantic domains do not match up with other languages very well. According to Marlowe, Nida and the theory of dynamic equivalence do not recognise the true extent of this problem. According to the theory, the problem can be solved by using different renderings in different contexts, thereby bringing out the width of the semantic domains of theological terms.
The result of this is the disintegration of theological concepts.89
Disintegration of theological concepts is more or less common in all translations;
it cannot be completely avoided. However, since Bible translations based on dynamic equivalence are supposed to use natural expressions in the receptor language, the problem is more acute in dynamic translations. According to Marlowe, this demand for natural language is incompatible with the requirements of an accurate translation.
He continues that:
[a] translator must sometimes employ the principle of concordant rendering, even if it goes against the idiomatic grain of the receptor language, in order to preserve the meaning.90
A translation made according to the theory of dynamic equivalence is supposed to give several renderings of a particular concept, according to the context. If a reader of the translation uses only one Bible translation and has no knowledge of Greek or Hebrew, they will not gain the knowledge of the meaning of theological concepts such as ‘righteousness’ or ‘flesh’. Marlowe states: Concepts without names are like souls without bodies. They become invisible.91
Marlowe takes one example of a theological concept that has, according to him, suffered unnecessary disintegration in recent versions, namely ‘flesh’, sa/rc. This has a wide range of meanings, starting from concrete usages, creatures made of flesh, to the sinful nature of human beings. According to him, an average reader is familiar with more abstract usage of the word and does not assume that ‘the flesh’ refers only to muscle tissue, in the same way no-one assumes that the word ‘the world’ refers only to the planet Earth. Bible translations such as NIV, however, have the word ‘flesh’
88 Marlowe 2012. http://www.bible-researcher.com/dynamic-equivalence.html. Accessed on 6. May 2014.
89 Marlowe 2012. http://www.bible-researcher.com/dynamic-equivalence.html. Accessed on 6. May 2014.
90 Marlowe 2012. http://www.bible-researcher.com/dynamic-equivalence.html. Accessed on 6. May 2014.
91 Marlowe 2012. http://www.bible-researcher.com/dynamic-equivalence.html. Accessed on 6. May 2014.
in the translation only when it is used in the concrete sense, and other usages have different renderings, such as ‘sinful mind’ or ‘human standards’.92
There were several other points in the criticism of dynamic equivalence presented by Marlowe, both theological and theoretical, but these two points were especially relevant for this study. I will now turn to the next section, Linguistic approach, which will introduce the methods used in this research.