Religious Scholar

I attended a fascinating Work in Progress program of the Princeton Research Forum last week. Member Ron Hyman led us through a study of five translations of Psalm 15. It was amazing how different the translations were, and to what degree they varied from or conformed to the original text. I came away from the presentation reflecting on the motivations of translators.

Rarely are these motivations transparent and free of the complexity of intention. To translate is to have power over communication. To translate scripture is to have power over the deepest moral and spiritual understanding of people and institutions.

A number of subtexts underlie the translation of religious literature.

If the translation is by a political or religiously motivated organization, the motive may be "how can we best transmit what we want people to believe and do in this translation."

If it's a single scholar, he or she may want to present a text that is unflinchingly true to the original.

Or a literary individual may want to emphasize the poetic qualities of the text, the spirit of the text rather than the literal details.

A person or organization with a social agenda may want to undo some of the perceived harm that religions have done by seeming to endorse, say, slavery, prejudice against homosexuality, or sexism. This would drive their translation.

There are also heritage reasons for preferring a certain translation. I associate the incomparable cadences of the King James Version with my own childhood and earliest feelings of spirituality. While the text can be misleading and is sometimes incorrect, nothing touches my heart like this translation of the Christian Bible.

I think there is room for all these approaches, as long as we clearly know which is which. Together, in amalgam, they provide a context for reading and thinking about scriptures. But certainly, we must be aware of and know the factual, literal basis of works so variously translated.  Otherwise, we wind up like the apocryphal country preacher who lamented all the new translations of the Bible appearing on the market by crying, “Why can’t they just leave it in the King James English the way Jesus talked it!”