The Temporal and Chroonological Distance in Translations of Holy Writ: to Preserve or to Eliminate?

Abstract

The present paper deals with some cases of the modernization of the Bible texts, especially created in the second part of the 20th and the beginning of the 21st centuries (although the elements of the latter may be found in earlier versions including those with the unofficial status of “national Bibles”). The expansion of modernization is usually connected with E. Nida`s theory of the dynamic / functional equivalence; at the same moment its direct influence is obvious enough. The actuality of the theme for the theory and practice of translation is caused by the following factors: 1. the richness and variety of the Bible translations, the history of which counts more than two thousand ears; 2. the necessity to take into account the referential part of the text on one hand, and its pragmatic and appellative functions on the other; that may lead to the collision between them when the translator has to choose the strategy and tactics of his work; 1. the acceptance of the text as “inspired by God” among the believers, that may provoke a negative relation towards some moments, which are treated as the divergence from the source text or even its distortion. The paper is based on the representative sample taken from Bible translations (both “traditional” and modern) in Russian, English and German. The corresponding variants, as well as their estimation in special and popular works are analyzed. The authors give an attempt to define some features that give the possibility to treat the text as modernized one. Although the said method is used quite often as the means to reach the adequacy of translation, the question of its limits is controversial enough.

Keywords

• original
• translation
• bible
• pragmatic
• modernization
• adequacy
• distortion