In my last post (On Meaning) I began the build up to responding to a post by my friend Aaron Shryock regarding accuracy in Bible translation. In that post I made a claim that “while meaning in the source text can be discovered apart from the audience, meaning in the receptor language is very audience-dependant.” For context, when translating we take a source text (in our case, the Bible) and translate that text into a receptor language (Kwakum). In this post, I want to explain how meaning can be audience-dependant.
Meaning in the Source Text is not Audience-Dependant
First, I want to make sure that I communicate clearly that I don’t believe that meaning in the source text is subjective. There is a postmodern method of interpretation that says that meaning originates in the audience. This makes writing papers for English classes very easy. You can literally say that a text means whatever you want, as long as you defend it well. The “meaning” of a text, then, is what it means to me. The authorial intent is not important. This is, of course, absurd.
I heard once of a man attending a lecture where the professor taught this manner of postmodern interpretation. At the end of the lecture the attendee stood up and said, “So, if I understand you correctly, the meaning of a text is innate and we must grasp what the author intended in order to rightly interpret the text.” The lecturer quickly corrected the student explaining that postmodernism asserts just the opposite. The attendee then stood up claiming that he had understood correctly and reasserting his earlier interpretation. The lecturer began to get angry as he felt himself misrepresented. I am not sure how long it took for him to grasp the irony.
No, we do not seek to find the meaning of the text of Scripture in ourselves. Just like that lecturer, the authors of Scripture had intent when they wrote. As best as we are able, we seek to understand the meaning of the original authors through analysis of the biblical texts, culture, geography, etc.
Meaning in the Target Text is very Audience-Dependant
While the meaning of the biblical texts is not subjective to its modern day hearers, as a general principle, language is. Language is not math. 1 + 1 = 2, no matter who you are talking to. Language, on the other hand, is another beast. Just as one word can mean different things in different contexts, meaning also changes depending on the audience. I have learned this principle the hard way in Cameroon. English is one of the two official languages here. However, the English spoken in Cameroon is not the same as I learned in school. Throughout the years, my conversations with Cameroonian English speakers have been wrought with miscommunication.
Take for example my use of the word “pants.” Friends who have lived with anglophones here in Cameroon warned me that “pants” in Cameroonian English refers to what I would call “underwear.” They told me to refer to pants instead as “trousers.” So, I should have known better. But I was at a restaurant years ago with an anglophone server. He had the coolest pants (in the American sense) and I decided to compliment him. So I said, “Hey, I like your pants.” He replied, “Thank you…?” with a strange look on his face.
Another example was the first time I was offered “pears” in the market. I was surprised, pears are not exactly a tropical fruit. I agreed, expecting a sweet surprise. However, what I received was avocados. Anglophone Cameroonians call (what I call) avocados, “pears.” Now, if you are a good American, you probably want to say that the Cameroonians are just wrong. If I ask for a pear, and they hand me an avocado, in my mind my speech was “accurate”, and they understood wrongly. It is a little harder to do this with the “pants” issue. The originators of the English language (British people) call underwear “pants.” So, who is wrong? Surely it is the Americans. Or, maybe, neither is wrong. Perhaps the words just mean different things to different audiences.
This phenomenon exists in French as well. The French word pratiquer “to practice” can mean a lot of things in France. In Cameroon, if you say someone “practices,” people will immediately assume you mean they practice magic (like, the dark kind). In France, prune means refers to the fruit we call in English “plum.” In Cameroon prune refers to a bitter fruit with a very large seed that they often grill. Again, you could say that the Cameroonians are just wrong. But, regardless of how you look at it, if you say prune to Cameroonians, they are going to interpret it to refer to a different fruit than if you say prune to a parisien. Not to mention that “prune” in American English refers to a “dried plum.” The meaning of the word prune is audience-dependant.
You Have to Pick an Audience
If, indeed, the meaning of words is audience-dependant, how can we translate the Bible accurately in ANY language? Well, first you have to pick an audience. Again, this is not because the audience determines the meaning of the source text. That is determined by the authors and discovered through in-depth study of the documents, original audience, culture, etc. However, when I get to the stage of “re-expressing the meaning” I must consider the receptor audience. How do I know what my audience is? Well, you have to pick one.
First, and most basic, you have to pick a language to translate into. What language does the receptor audience speak? Which dialect of that language? Then, you have to determine which subset of that language/dialect you want to translate for. If you are translating for English-speaking seminary professors, you would take into account their knowledge of biblical terms, culture, etc. If you are translating for American fifth-graders, you have to assume a smaller corpus of knowledge. This is why translations designed for kids do not sound like the NASB. We are very comfortable with using different language, grammar, and even putting pictures in Bibles for kids. This is because we recognize that the audience matters.
Even among the Kwakum, our team had to choose a specific target demographic. The oldest generation among the Kwakum use a wider set of vocabulary than the younger generations. However, the older generations understand the speech of the younger generations. The opposite is not always true. So, we chose to target the younger generations, assuming if we did, all generations would be able to understand. This meant that we use a more simplified vocabulary, sentence structure, etc.1
Testing is So Important
Perhaps you have an inkling, then, as to why testing is so important in Bible translation. As I mentioned in the previous post, my team (which comes up with the first draft) always believes that they have discovered the best (and most accurate) way of communicating a text. This overconfidence is why we have a completely separate team that goes out to different villages and tests to see what meaning is communicated by why we translated. If we do not test with our target audience, then the “accuracy” of the text is determined only by the translators. Since we are not translating only for the translators, we need to understand what meaning is conveyed to the younger Kwakum generations (our target audience). There is no “standard Kwakum” that we are translating into. The only “Kwakum” is that which the people speak and understand. And there is no way of gauging accuracy unless we ask the Kwakum people what they understand.
For instance, when translating the final plague in Egypt, we had to figure out how to communicate in the idea of “Passover” in Kwakum. My team said that they already had a word for “Passover,” which was paska (pronounced pashka). Interestingly, paska is very similar to the word for Passover in Greek. So, we put paska into the translation. When testing, Stacey’s team asked, “Do you know what paska is?” And everyone said yes! (encouraging) And then they said, “Paska is when people parade through the streets to pay for their sins.” (uh, oh) Turns out, they thought paska meant Easter, which is when the Catholic church does a “pilgrimage,” walking from one village to another. So, in this case, who determines what is accurate? My team, and even the team doing the testing, thought that paska was the right word. In testing, everyone thought we meant Easter.
Further conversations revealed that the Kwakum people did not think of Passover and Easter as being two separate things. However, between the two, they associated paska with Easter, and didn’t really know what Passover was. At this point, we had a choice: 1) Say we translated accurately and people just need teaching as to what paska really means, or 2) Say that paska is NOT an accurate way to translate Passover and find a different way to communicate. We chose option 2 and chose another way to translate the idea of Passover. Testing revealed inaccuracy. This means that the audience played a role, not just in testing comprehension, but in testing accuracy of translation.
Yes, I am taking a long time to actually respond to Aaron’s post, but I feel like there are a lot of translation issues that undergird our disagreement. I have at least two more posts coming after this one: On Explication (link forthcoming), and On Accuracy (link forthcoming). There is just too much to say in a single post. An important note here, I have referred to Aaron as a friend for a reason. My disagreement with him is friendly disagreement. We are literally friends, like, in real life. I respect Aaron a lot and I am thankful for his engagement in the conversation, including posts, comments on posts, and messages. I disagree with him on a few points, but I disagree as a brother and a friend.
Specifically for this post, I want to point out a disagreement in his statement: “it is important to affirm that accuracy is a matter of meaning and not comprehension.” The hard part for me with that statement is that it is impossible to know if you have translated the correct meaning without testing comprehension. Words do not mean one particular thing in a vacuum (as I covered in my last post). If I think that I have communicated that I want a pear, and they hand me an avocado, it is likely that the meaning was not communicated accurately.
If we say we have translated Passover correctly with paska, what is the standard of that accuracy? What is the accuracy measured by? Is there no way to tell a group of translators that their translation is inaccurate? My claim in disagreement with Aaron is: I believe that the concept of accuracy is so intimately tied to the audience that one cannot consider accuracy without first defining and then testing with the receptor audience.
I think that a big part of Aaron’s disagreement here comes with something translators call explication, which is going to be covered in my next post: On Explication.
- This process is related to something called Skopos Theory, which Aaron mentions in his post. I don’t know enough about Skopos Theory to comment. ↩︎
Hi Dave, a very interesting article. However, your example with “causer” is incorrect. “Causer” means “to cause” both in France and in Cameroon, and “to chat” in both countries, too. It’s a question of context. “Causer” may be more frequent in Cameroon for “to chat.” In Canada people tend to say “jaser.” – Larry Seguin, SIL Cameroon
Interesting. I have found in talking to the French they do not understand “causer” to mean “to chat.” But it could have been my accent. I changed the example to “prune.”