Words Without Walls

John E Stark

September 5, 2018

Translation is, in essence, a straightforward task:
The translator asks, “What did the original writer/storyteller mean?”
Then they say that same thing in a language different than the original.

Out in the practical, real world, things rarely operate at the level of simplicity their essence suggests.

It will take a while for me to circle back to this passage, but I want you to have these verses in mind as you read on.

Luke 22: 69-71 (The setting is the arrest of Jesus and the judgement session before the Jewish leadership council.)

 (Jesus said to them) “But from now on the Son of Man will be seated at the right hand of the power of God.”    Hearing that, they all said, “So then, are You the Son of God,?”
Jesus replied, “Yes, I am.” Hearing that, they said, “What further proof do we need? For we have heard it ourselves from his own mouth.”

Much of my recent time has been spent working in the area of Biblical Key Terms, and specifically the “Divine Familial Terms” or DFT passages of Scripture.  (Sometimes translation is needed even within the same language: Divine Familial Terms refers to all the ways family kinship terms are used in Scripture to describe and explain the relationships between God, Jesus and ourselves. For example: “God the Father”, “Son of God”, “My Father”, “my brothers and my sisters”.

Here then, are some of the challenges

Words do not have a direct one-to-one match between languages

As a starting point, we need to recognize that different cultures (and different languages) have their own perceptions of the relationships within a family.  The languages Janie and I worked with in Nigeria did not have a direct match for the English kinship terms “brother” and “sister”.  Whereas in English, the choice of “brother” or “sister” is made based on the gender of the person being referred to, the Kambari languages needed information about both the speaker and the person being referred to.  “My sibling of the same gender as I am” or “My sibling of the opposite gender from me” is what English needs to say to capture the all information in the Cishingini term for “brother”. Tsikimba requires knowledge of relative age: “That person is my older sibling” or “that person is my younger sibling” Translation requires an understanding of all the meaning contained in the delivery language word as well as in the source language word

In Matthew 12:50, Jesus says, “Anyone who does the will of my Father in heaven is my brother and sister and mother!”   So how do we translate “brother” here?  For Tsikimba, we said “Anyone who does the will of my Father in heaven is my younger sibling of the same gender and younger sibling of the opposite gender and mother!  (Only of course it only took a single Tsikimba word for each reference.)

The same word can have multiple meanings

It gets better (or worse, depending on your view).   The same word can have different meanings depending on how it is used, where it is used, and who is using it.  I frequently use “my brother” or “my sister” to refer to people that I have a close social relationship with but with whom I have no common biological descent.  In Matthew 12 Jesus was not referring to biological relationship, but a positional one.  “Someone who does what my father, God, wants will be seen as my brother, sister, or mother.”

Modifiers might help, or hurt

Then there is the idea of adding words that slightly modify the meaning of a word.  In the phrase “He is like a father to me.” you automatically recognize I am giving someone who is not my father a father-role status in my life.  If we take the phrase “Son of God” and add “like” i.e., Jesus is “like the Son of God” as believers we reject the idea that he was not the son of God, but only enjoyed the status of Son of God.  However, “like the Son of God” does avoid the procreation misconceptions, and does capture at least part of the meaning of “Son of God” in that Jesus did enjoy the privileges of sonship.

Words had meanings in the past they no longer have

At least in regard to “Son of God” there is a usage common at the time that referred to the Roman Emperor, emphasizing his status and the Roman belief that emperors became divine. “The Son of God” was operating as a political title.

The final understanding is determined by the hearer

This is a good point to introduce what linguists and communication specialists refer to as “Relevance Theory” (Serber).  In its simplest form, Relevance Theory says that people stop looking for the meaning intended by the author/speaker as soon as they find a meaning that makes sense to them as hearers.  In other words, understanding is ultimately shaped by the receiver of the communication.

Now, what about the Luke 22 passage?

(Jesus said to them) “…But from now on the Son of Man will be seated at the right hand of the power of God.”  Hearing that, they all said, “Are You the Son of God, then?”
He replied, “Yes, I am.”  Then they said, “What further proof do we need? For we have heard it ourselves from his own mouth.”

There are a lot of translation principles and challenges in this passage, but I’ll focus only on the use of “Son of God” by the Jewish leaders.  Jesus referred to himself as “Son of Man” and the listeners replied with “Son of God”.  “Son of Man” is an Old Testament phrase frequently used to refer to the Messiah, the warrior-king that would come and establish a righteous kingdom on earth for the Jews. When the Jewish leaders did not reply with “Son of Man” they seem to be avoiding the admission that Jesus might be the anticipated savior king.  Instead, they used “Son of God” a title that they would see as a claim to being equal to God, which they considered heresy worthy of a death sentence. In addition, anyone claiming to the “the Son of God” would be making a claim to be the ruler of the Roman empire.  Another claim worthy of the death penalty at that time.  So, when Jesus agreed and laid claim to the title “Son of God” he sealed his fate both religiously and politically.

What does this mean for today?

None of that context is apparent to today’s reader/hearer unless there is also a significant source of Biblical and historical background on hand to refer to.  These extra helps are simply not available in the languages where we work.  Should we then translate in a way that more effectively brings out the meaning present in the historical event?

(Jesus said to them) “But from now on the Son of Man will be seated at the right hand of the power of God.”     Hearing that, they all said, “So then, are You the messiah, the beloved of God and his chosen one,?” Jesus replied, “Yes, I am.”  Then they said, “What further proof do we need? For we have heard it ourselves from his own mouth.”

If we translate with that level of meaning conveyed, we lose much of the power Scripture encodes with the words “Son of God” when this passage is seen in light of other passages where Jesus is referred to as “the Son of God”.  If we translate with a more “literal” phrase that chooses the best match among available kinship terms, the listeners may not experience the monumental importance of Jesus’s words “Yes, I am”.

Out in the practical, real world, things rarely operate at the level of simplicity of their essence suggests.

Thanks for reading all the way to the end and stepping a bit into my world.

 

John

 

NOTES: Serber, Dan and Deidre Wilson. Relevance: Communication and Cognition. 2nd ed. Oxford/Cambridge:: Blackwell Publishers, 1995. Print.