How Is a Bible Translated?

In this episode, Dr. Darrell Bock interacts with a special panel of contributors to the recent NET Bible translation, focusing on issues of translating the Bible into modern English.

The post How Is a Bible Translated? appeared first on DTS Voice.

Darrell
Welcome to The Table where we discuss issues of God and culture. I’m Darrell Bock, Executive Director for Cultural Engagement at the Hendricks Center at Dallas Theological Seminary, and our topic for today is bible translation.

What does it take to get the Bible into English? When you hold that Bible in your hands and you’re turning the pages or you’re swiping the Bible that you’re dealing with on your device, what was behind getting it from the Hebrew or Aramaic or Greek language into a language that you can understand, and what are some of the challenges and decisions that go into creating an English translation of the Bible?

Well, that’s our topic for today and this episode of the Table features a panel discussion that took place at one of our chapels. We regularly have what are called cultural engagement chapels where we probe a given topic, interview people much like we do on the podcast, and students get to respond and ask questions at the same time.

And so this took place a few weeks ago here at the seminary with people involved with the New English Translation or the NET Bible for short, which comes with a series of notes that explain some of the translations. That’s what makes this particular Bible unique.

So you’re going to hear from several DTS professors who personally worked on the translation on the NET Bible and they’re experiencing creating this translation.

Every one of them has experienced working with other translations as well. So we talked about other translations at the same time and we discussed issues like how do you know which words to choose when you have options, all of which will work, or how literal should a translation be?

And there are even some humorous stories about funny things that happened in the midst of doing the translation and creating an English Bible that people can understand.

So we hope you’ll enjoy this special panel discussion and you’ll learn a lot about the Bible that’s in your hands and all the work, the hours of work that went in to making that translation so that you can read, study, and reflect on God’s word.

 

So obviously, we’re here to announce the soon publication, the eminent publication, not quite like the second coming of Christ, okay, of the NET Bible and so I wanna introduce panelists that I’ll be interviewing.

First, Nikki Getman who is Senior Marketing Director at Thomas Nelson and then Hall Harris, Senior Professor of New Testament Studies here at Dallas Theological Seminary.

Dorian Coover Cox, Professor of Old Testament studies, Robert Chisholm, Department Chair and Senior Professor of Old Testament studies, and then Dan — so you would have a choice – Dan Wallace, Senior Research Professor of New Testament Studies.

And these are all people who worked on the translation. We also have with us people who worked on this translation, and I’m not gonna call them out by name but if you worked on the NET translation and you are here, would you please stand? Go ahead.

Now translations are interesting things and sometimes they actually are controversial things. So the first thing I wanna do is I wanna ask Nikki, why was Thomas Nelson interested in publishing another Bible? After all, it isn’t like we don’t have all kinds of English Bibles out there.

Nikki
Well, I think that’s true and I answer this question on the regular because why another English translation, why do we need another English translation, and of course, Nelson has been publishing English bibles since 1798.

So we have a long history and – with bible publishing but this one is different. The NET allows you, no matter which translation you’re reading to really understand why the translators all the way back through the centuries, are we okay down there?

Robert
Sorry to hear the questions down here.
Darrell
That’s okay.
Nikki
That’s okay.
Robert
Sorry, Nikki, I apologize.
Nikki
No worries. Why the translators through the centuries have made the choices that they have made, and I think that that’s a really significant contribution to biblical literacy, biblical understanding and bible publishing as a whole.

It’s something that’s never been done and we are thrilled to be representing this Bible and doing this for the church.

Darrell
Well, great. Hall, we heard a little bit of what you thought about the translation. Talk about the challenge of translations because you’ve spent how many hours working on the NET bible.

Can you count up the number of hours that you have spent and you’re not getting paid by the hour, are you?

Hall
Yeah, no.
Darrell
[Laughter.]
Hall
Let’s not even go into that. Probably Ursula could count. My wife is here, Ursula. She, better than I knows and our kids know how many hours it took but I quit counting when I passed 12,000 hours, pro bono, and I have two words to describe my experience as Project Director and Managing Editor of this whole thing for going on now, what 24 years: Herding Cats.
Hall
If any of you have seen the famous EDS cat herding commercial, it’s on You Tube. You can find it. It’s a classic and that’s the experience I’ve had.

So anyway, too many moving parts [laughter] but I think the challenge was worth it because I’ve always believed that you can’t really have too much information about the Bible and what goes into the Bible and what’s behind the Bible.

We live in a culture that’s very different from First Century or even Second Millennium B.C. culture, and anything we can do to bridge that cultural gap, I think is helpful to the reading and understanding of scripture.

Otherwise, if we don’t look at it and understand it, first in its historical setting and context and then go on to ask the question how is that relevant for the church today, all we’re really doing is using a magical book of incantations.

We just flip it open, put down our finger and that’s our verse for the day. No, I don’t think so. We’re all better than that, especially at Dallas Seminary, for goodness sakes. So that’s my initial take.

Darrell
And Dorian, this is not the only translation you work on. Is that correct?
Dorian
That’s correct.
Darrell
So you also work with –?
Dorian
The Christian Standard Bible.
Darrell
Okay.
Dorian
That’s published by Byron and Holman.
Darrell
Okay, and can you talk a little bit about the differences between translations? We heard the word literal and dynamic. Why don’t you help us sort through what we’re talking about when we raise that question?
Dorian
When you start with a source language, you look at it and you’re saying okay, what is this talking about? What is it saying, how is it saying it? Now how do I bring as much of that into English as I can?

And every translator has to make those decisions according to the target audience. So who’s gonna be reading this? Will they understand it well, if I say it this way versus that way, and in working with a committee on various choices, each person brings insight into that choice so that you’re working to get as much as possible, a close yet understandable presentation of what you know to be there in the source language.

And so any of you who are working between languages know that you can get information from one language into another. That’s not the problem. The problem is how much of the emotion comes through? How much of the wordplay comes through, and other similar things and what do you do with figures of speech that aren’t the same in both languages?

And so I don’t, any more really like the term literal because often it seems to me that what is offered as a literal translation is simply the first translation value in the dictionary for each word rather than anything that actually conveys the thought that’s there. So I don’t know. Does that help a little bit?

Darrell
Yeah, so if you stick together a couple of pieces next to one another doesn’t mean you’ve connected the puzzle. Is that kinda what you’re saying?
Dorian
I think that’s a good way to put it. You – sometimes I talk to people in class and I say okay, you’ve gotten a meaning for each of the words but it still isn’t English.
Darrell
Mmm-hmm.
Dorian
It still isn’t English because no one would understand it. No one would say it that way. So it’s always an effort for – and a good one to be involved in.

So to even have a chance to be involved in these two projects has been a great joy.

Darrell
And when you talk about a committee, a committee-most translations have committee work associated where there’s a group that discusses which rendering out of several oftentimes good possibilities do we regard as the best. Is that what goes on in committee?
Dorian
Yeah, and usually, even with a committee situation so far as I understand it, and as it was with NET Bible there would be an initial translator, someone who provides the first draft, so to speak and then people look at it and think about it.

And so the notes, and one of the things that I did for portions NET Bible was to come along after the initial translation had been made and the initial notes had been offered and simply go through them and say okay, does this make sense to me? Is there a mistake of any sort here? Can this be improved?

Is the punctuation correct? That – there are – if a human being touches it, there could be a mistake.

Darrell
[Laughter.] Robert, I actually don’t know the answer to this question. Have you worked on any other translations besides the NET Bible?
Robert
Yes, many. Study bibles, translations. I don’t have my resume with me.
Robert
It’s that many. So I mean I can’t remember. Google me.
Darrell
Yeah. It’s —
Robert
Google me.
Darrell
It’s been so —
Robert
Yeah, several. Yeah, I think the first one I was involved in was the International Children’s Version.
Darrell
Yeah.
Robert
Which is very interesting. You had a limited – only so many words per sentence and words had to be short. It was interesting.
Darrell
Another Thomas Nelson contribution, by the way.
Robert
Oh, yeah, and then so many people liked it but they didn’t wanna keep calling it the Children’s Bible. So I think we called it the New Century Version which that was the children’s bible for adults.
Darrell
[Laughter.]
Darrell
Those who were headed to the age of a century.
Robert
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Darrell
So —
Robert
So yeah, I’ve worked on quite a few.
Darrell
So what do you find – what do you find unique about the NET Bible, given the fact that you’ve worked on several translations?
Robert
Well, the notes. The beauty of the NET Bible is you can actually try to bring out what the text is saying and not feel like you’re over-interpreting because you can put the literal translation in the bottom, the moral literal translation, word for word.

You’ve got that there and then you can talk about options and many times, we would give other possible translations. If you went with Interpretation A, here’s the way you’d translate it.

Interpretation B, this is the way you’d go, but you have to choose one for the text. You can’t just put dot, dot, dot when you come to a difficult verse.

Robert
Like you know, you’re tempted to do like in Hosea 11. I wrote a piece on Hosea 11 recently and I didn’t need to worry about it being an official translation.

It was just my translation for the sake of the study, and I had several dot, dot, dot places because I wanna communicate nobody really knows what this is saying but – so yeah. That was the great thing about NET. It just freed you up to include all the options and yeah, I liked that.

Darrell
Dan, I take it you’ve worked on several translation as well?
Dan
Yeah, Google me.
Darrell
You guys are really helpful. I just wanted you to know that.
Dan
I’m on the Committee on Bible Translation for the NIV right now too.
Darrell
Yeah. So I mean what you don’t know but what I’m trying to make clear is that between all of us there’s almost – I’m gonna say there’s very few English translations that at least one of us has not worked on.
I did background work for the ESV. I did work on the NLT. So we’re talking about people who are valuing this translation because we know what it is to work with others. What do you see as the kind of the same question I asked Hall, variate
what do you see as the challenge for a bible translator?

What do you think people don’t appreciate about what happens when a translation gets produced?

Dan
Bruce Waltke told me this summer that with all the sexual innuendos that are going on in the English language, he fears that someday we can’t even translate the Bible anymore.

It was – that was probably the biggest challenge to me is when you translate the text a certain way, you wanna get rid of what Lindgren calls the junior high snicker effect. You don’t wanna have something that sounds lewd.

Robert
[Whispering: Samson and the thong is another one.]
Dan
Yeah, yeah, that’s right [whispering inaudible.]
Robert
Na, na.
Darrell
Now Bob, you’re from New York, You normally just speak up. What’s going on here?
Robert
Translator’s workshop discussion.
Dan
Yeah.
Darrell
[Laughter.]
Dan
Well Bruce Metzger mentioned when he was working on the NRSV that they had to change the RSV in one place where God says I will accept no bull from your house, and he said that really comes across in a little different way than what we want it to mean today. Some of you are too sheltered to even know what I just said.
Darrell
And the point that you’re making is is that you have to think through not only what the text means but even how it will be perceived and heard once it’s rendered into English, that that’s the challenge in the target language side.
Dan
Right, and one of the things that we had as a goal was to make this a literary production, not a literal production, and the more literal, we could put in the footnotes but we wanted it to be good, understated, elegant English and I think that we’ve achieved that to some degree. Hall needs to do more work but –
Darrell
Yeah.
Dan
Only 12,000 hours. Come on, get to work, man.
Darrell
It is a challenge to think through how something communicates and sometimes a translator is wrestling with the implications of what something is said, particularly with figures of speech and that kind of thing, as opposed to rendering it literally, et cetera.

So this discussion that we see generally in public about translations and whether they’re more literal or more dynamic is actually wrestling with a very real problem in translation, isn’t it?

Dan
Right, and there’s some issues that you think do I leave this in the idiom of the original language or do I convert it?

Now one of the problems when you convert it, in so many of these idioms into modern English where you get rid of the figurative language is you also lose some of the powerful connotations as Dorian was suggesting, that we want the reader to feel the same way as the original readers did.

We had a field translator who wrote to us and he said when you translate ἐν Χριστῷ, in Christ, that doesn’t really communicate very much in English to the modern reader.

So you need to change it to something different every single time, and our response was well, it actually didn’t mean very much to the ancient Greek reader either.

It was – you don’t have the sense of people who are somehow in another person, who especially somebody who’s already dead.

So what does this mean? It means that he’s got the life that is the eschatological life that goes far beyond what we are experiencing now, and so what Paul comes up with when he invents that phrase is a metaphorical image that we have yet to plumb the depths of, and it’s something that we still have to wrestle with today.

So I think there’s places like that, that if it communicates the same to the English reader as it did to the Greek or the Hebrew reader, we wanna keep that.

Darrell
Now up on the screen, just a second, Robert, let me just point out. Up on the screen, you see a number. We’re gonna be taking questions from the floor but we’re gonna ask you to send them to us digitally.

So I’ve got my little iPhone here and those questions are popping up. So do feel free if you have a question to send those in. Go ahead, Bob, what were you gonna write?

Robert
Yeah, I have a good example from Old Testament on this in Psalms. The Lord is called a tsuwr. Rock is the way it gets translated. So what do you do with that? What does that mean, God is a rock?

Well, it’s something I pick up and throw at somebody? An obstacle in the way? I mean usage suggests that he has in mind a rocky cliff, terrain where he can go that will be relatively inaccessible and he’ll be safe.

So if you translate rock, you have no idea how a person is going to take that. So we decided to just go with protector because that’s the idea, because we’re not in a position to appreciate the metaphor.

Now shield, we were able to retain that one more literally because everybody knows what a shield is and what its function is, but with tsuwr, rock, we had to fudge and you do lose something. You lose the metaphor. You lose the power.

Dan
You keep it in the footnotes.
Robert
Yeah, you explain this in the footnotes and that’s one of the great things about the NET Bible. We could have gone rock with the translation and I suppose put it in the footnotes but I didn’t – you know, you don’t trust everybody to read the footnotes.
Dan
Do you have experience with that?
Robert
Yeah, I do.
Darrell
Hall, you’re gonna raise – you’re gonna add to?
Hall
Well, I was also gonna add that there have been many layers of editorial work gone into this and some of those places may actually have reverted to the more literal imagery. I’m just giving you a heads up, all.
Hall
Because —
Robert
This is actually a stealth committee meeting. I wasn’t one of the culprits on that.
Hall
Oh no, I’m not accusing you of being the culprit.
Robert
Yeah, okay.
Hall
I’m warning you of being the victim of the culprit.
Robert
Can we – do we have enough time? It won’t take more than 30 seconds to —
Hall
Go ahead.
Robert
— tell them the classic example.
Hall
Go ahead.
Dan
Okay, go ahead.
Robert
If you know Gordon Johnston.
Robert
Is Gordon here? Lots of things are going on in Gordon’s mind all at once. He can double and triple task.

But one day he was working, he was translating and a passage in Proverbs on the wayward woman, and he got a phone call from his bank.

And he had one of those note things on his computer and he put the number down that he needed to call back to the bank and well, somehow, some way, it’s like stay away from the wayward woman there in Proverbs and then there’s a number in the footnote.

Hall
That’s almost as famous as one of the versions I think it is in the King James that left out the not on one of the 10 Commandments.
Robert
Oh, the wicked bible.
Darrell
Thou shalt commit adultery.
Dan
Thou shalt the wicked bible. So anyway. Let me, let me —
Hall
Well, let me add to that because I think in –
Hall
In Gordon’s defense, since he’s not here to defend himself, I might also add that we had other translators who were really fond of using a particular five-letter word for spoils of war. They wanted David’s men to grab the booty.
Robert
Since you brought that up how about – you know we didn’t do this.
Robert
But I think one of the other English translations you know they wrapped Sampson up in fresh thongs.
Dan
Okay, all right.
Robert
We changed that.
Darrell
Yes, and I would also add that the latest revision of the NIV took our translation and now uses it. So we’ve actually influenced others.
Dan
Darrell, I could add a few others but I would prefer to keep this PG-13.
Darrell
That’s exactly right. Now let me ask you. This is actually a serious question that’s coming through on the questions.
Darrell
I should have known not to put this group together.
Hall
You see what I mean about cat herding?
Dan
Yeah, exactly right.
Robert
By the way, I’ve – you’ve already –
Robert
One time publicly, it was at one of these five-year things where they honor us, Bruce Fanning in public said that Hall deserves a medal because he oversaw a project that had Dan and me in it and survived and the project actually was a success.
Darrell
Actually, I think that’s up for grabs but anyway [laughter.]
Darrell
So let me ask you a serious – let me try and inject a serious question in here. How do you deal with the issue of personal biases that affect your translation skills, and how do you combat bias, and that’s for anybody who wants to take that one on. How do you check that tendency?
Dan
I think you do it by the editorial committee. It’s not a single translator who’s doing this work but the NET Bible does something that’s unique. It’s the only bible that’s ever been beta tested on the Internet.

And so not only do the editorial committee look over something and wrestle with it from different perspectives but we also put that translation out there.

We did that before it was ever actually published, and Hall, I think you said we got over a million comments that came in?

Hall
Something like that, yeah, and it went through two beta editions before the first edition was published.
Dan
Yeah.
Hall
And we’re still taking comments today because one point I wanna add to this whole discussion, I’m not sure you can always deal with your own bias. I think you need other people to point out your biases for you and that’s the value of putting this out there in preliminary form and letting people send in their comments and having us adjust as needed.
Darrell
Yeah, and I think that – I actually think the timing of when this project began is important because it was the reality of the digital world that allowed us to conceive of what this would be, that up to that, this project was really launched in the time when the digital revolution was just getting started in many ways and it was being applied to biblical studies, and all of the sudden you realized you had all this space and capability on-line.

Because this was originally an on-line bible, on-line that you didn’t have by the limits of a page, and what’s amazing about this particular version is that we’ve kind of done it in reverse.

We took the digital side of what was an open-ended possibility and have tried to move it into the confines of a set page, you know, with the lay-out.

That’s why the reason I ran the video about the typographer  because he was faced with a really interesting challenge how do you take these notes and wrap them around the text?

Now when you see the result, its’s interesting because I’m reminded of texts of the Mishna and Talmud and that kind of thing that you often see where there’s a similar solution that actually looks so similar that we can say that even though this is new, it actually has quite an old tradition behind it.

Dan
Even the Medieval Greek New Testament manuscripts with commentary do something very similar.
Darrell
Yeah, so in that sense it’s you’ve – you’re kinda back to the future in terms of the way in which the volume operates. Let me give you another question.

It says English translations have been around for a long time. Only recently in my lifetime have there been notes to say that there are alternate readings of the verse.

The NET would seem to be an academic admission of humility. On the other hand, couldn’t a skeptic use it to argue see, nobody really knows what the Bible actually says anyway.

You can translate it any way you want. So that is a – Hall, your hand went right up.

Hall
Yeah, it did. I wanna point out that the editions of the King James Bible printed before 1640 actually had marginal notes and they were by royal decree, King James himself, they could not be theological notes like the Geneva Bible had had because that was rife with Calvinism.
Dan
And thin on the king.
Hall
Right, which he didn’t care for but they were allowed to give variant meanings for words and alternate translations, and I have several pages of some of those bibles, one of which is on the wall of my office. I’ll be glad to show anybody where you can see the notes of both the Geneva and the King James. So no, it’s not a new thing, actually.
Dan
There were 8,000 notes in the original King James and they’re not printed much anymore. So we have this false sense of assurance based on the printing press but not on the reality, and so when we have these English translations that vary from one another, people think well, why don’t we just use one?

Well, before the printing press, you couldn’t use just one. Manuscripts all differ, and so each Christian has a responsibility to know God as well as they can and with the NET Bible they have now an opportunity to compare that with their favorite translation and see why they think that’s really good.

Darrell
So Dan, how is this not a variation of the question that often comes up with regard to manuscripts versus translations, which is we have so many differences between the manuscripts and differences of meaning. Doesn’t that render uncertain what the Bible teaches?

And to me it seems like this is an analogous kind of question, and what’s the normal response to that kind of a question?

Dan
Well, certainly there are gonna be some areas where we’re not exactly sure what the Bible either says or what it means but those are on the margins. They’re on the periphery. I can give the illustration of textual variance among the manuscripts.

Among Greek New Testament manuscripts, there’s not a single viable variant that affects any cardinal doctrine and a number of scholars would say there’s not a single viable variant that affects any doctrine, whether it’s cardinal or even of minor significance.

I can think of one that may affect orthopraxy, not orthodoxy. Mark 9:29 after the disciples tried to cast out a particularly pesky demon and failed at that, they came to Jesus and he said this kind can only be cast out by prayer, or he might have added the words and fasting.

Now later manuscripts have and fasting. The earlier ones have just prayer, but when I do exorcisms I kinda hedge my bet. I’m not sure which one it is.

Dan
So pray and fast but as you can tell just by looking at me, I go with the shorter reading most of the times.
Robert
There’s gonna be a parade.
Hall
Yeah, that’s right.
Darrell
And so the issue becomes – the issue becomes keeping this group organized is a problem.
Hall
Herding cats.
Darrell
Yeah, exactly right. So the issue becomes not so much does the Bible teach X as how many passages affirm this X that is being taught by the Bible. Is that pretty much what you’re saying?
Dan
Yes.
Darrell
Go ahead, Dorian.
Dorian
Well, one thing that I think I might like to add is that if you observe authors commonly and even yourself when you’re talking, if it’s something important you tend to say it more than once and in more than one way, and I find that to be true of Scripture as well.

So you – I just – I look around and I say well, if this is important, it’s going to be emphasized in more than one way and I can see it, if I look, if I’m watching it and so the – so the meaning is layered, I think.

You can see it being built and polished and built and polished so that there’s a strong sense of what’s going on and of what happened and where there – where Dr. Chisholm’s dot, dot, dot is concerned, he still knows what the book is saying.

Robert
Yeah, and I usually know what the options are. I just don’t know which one to choose. So I don’t wanna be arbitrary.
Darrell
And the beauty of the notes is that it lets you know what your options are.
Robert
Right.
Darrell
I mean you can say the text either means what’s up here at the top, or there’s a text down here that also might explain what’s going on as well with the passage.

Let me raise another question here. This is an interesting one. Do you have any expectations or is there any history? I’ll add to the question, regarding the impact of the NET to international translators and pastors.

I mean this is an English translation. It’s circulated digitally. It certainly has been read by people globally. Do we have any sense as to what the impact of the translation has been and could be in terms of international concerns?

Dorian
All translators, I suspect, I don’t know them all but because English translations are widely available digitally, translators can look at what others have done and all of them benefit from the work that others have done.

And when a bible translator who is going into a new language, the task initially is to figure out, okay, what is this new language? How do I understand it and then how can I get scripture into this language.

And to have the notes from NET Bible explaining the options then makes it easier for them to ask questions of their informants, and to try different ways of saying it, so that they can get the aha moment where the informant says yeah, that’s what it is. That’s it, that’s it. I understand now.

Darrell
And they’re – and what people may not be aware of is the American Bible Society used to produce a series of notes on each book called the Translator’s Notes on and then whatever the book is, and really they are very similar to the types of notes that you see in the NET, in terms of helping someone come to grips with what contextually are the options here, and in some cases this is why this has been opted for in relationship to the other alternative or alternatives that you see. Hall?
Hall
Just to add a quick note because I know we’re running on time here, part of related to the publication of the NET Bible in English, another project tied closely to it, also sponsored by Harper-Collins, Thomas Nelson is to translate the English NET Bible plus the notes into the top-tier 40 or 44 languages around the world.

And yes, I know translations of translations don’t do well but we’re looking primarily at the value of the notes to people in those other language groups and we’re also faced with a terribly daunting task of trying to render those notes culturally understandable to those other languages.

So if any of you out there come from different language backgrounds, and especially with translation experience, you should get in touch with us and let’s talk about even draft translations to help start would be useful, or reviewing other people’s translations would be useful.

So there’s plenty of room here for involvement on the part of any of you. I know some of you actually are in translation. I have some in my class this semester. So it’s just a quick footnote.

Darrell
Well, this is why we’re deeply – this is one of the reasons we’re deeply committed to teaching the languages here at Dallas Seminary. We think that an accurate rendering of the Word of God is extremely culturally important and relevant.

We think that giving that deep thought in terms of how the Bible is understood by people reading it who may not have a theological background is very important, and translation is a great bridge to get there.

So we should thank our panelists for taking the time to explain the NET Bible with us.

Voiceover
Thanks for listening to The Table Podcast. For more podcasts like this one, visit DTS.edu/thetable. Dallas Theological Seminary, teach truth, love well.

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