Response to Mike regarding the flawed methodology of Dynamic Equivalence

Over at the meta of the post on Extreme Theology about The Voice perversion, a fellow by the name of Mike left a rather lengthy reply to my attack on the Dynamic Equivalence (D-E) translational methodology. In this post, I would like to interact with what he has said about the topic and defend my position on this issue. Mike said:

Fact #1: There is a difference between translation and interpretation.

Fact #2: All Dynamic Equivalence (D-E) translations distort God's Word in some way or another

Fact #3: The Voice is the logical conclusion of the D-E philosophy as worked out through the interpretative matrix of the Emergents.

Fact #4: All that the D-E proponents can say is that they disagree with the interpretation and think that it is in error, but their position commits them to arguing about conceptual error without having anything to say about translational error.

As a linguist who has studied Greek, language in general, communication theory, translation theory, semantics, and meaning, I must say that these "facts" reflect very little knowledge of what it takes to transfer the meaning of the original text into another language. I am also not any sort of postmodernist or emergent anything. I am a translator. I do not care for the voice - I think its crap, but that doesn't give anyone the excuse to think that dynamic (which is the wrong word, the correct one is "functional") translation distort scripture. Please forgive me for saying so, but that's show a complete lack of awareness of how language and meaning function.

Fact #1 is false. Any change from one language to another requires interpretation - ANY CHANGE. When you translate even a single word someone always interprets. Since we're in John, let's look at λόγος (logos). What does it mean? One might say that it means word. That's it, right? No interpretation there. Not a chance. To accurately translate the word from Greek, we must look at its usage. Let's see what the lexicon says about λόγος.

Louw & Nida suggest there are ten different senses of the word:

1. "that which has been stated or said, with primary focus upon the content of the communication—‘word, saying, message, statement, question.’"
2. "the act of speaking—speaking, speech.’"
3. " the content of what is preached about Christ or about the good news—‘what is preached, gospel.’"
4. "a relatively formal and systematic treatment of a subject—‘treatise, book, account.’"
5. "a title for Jesus in the Gospel of John as a reference to the content of God’s revelation and as a verbal echo of the use of the verbs meaning ‘to speak’ in Genesis 1 and in many utterances of the prophets—‘Word, Message.’"
6. "a record of assets and liabilities—‘account, credit, debit.’"
7. "a reason, with the implication of some verbal formulation—‘reason.’"
8. "a happening to which one may refer—‘matter, thing, event.’"
9. "that which is thought to be true but is not necessarily so—‘appearance, to seem to be.’"
10. "a formal declaration of charges against someone in court—‘charges, accusation, declaration of wrongdoing.’"

Now when a translator chooses one of these definitions to apply to a given instance of the word in the text, he makes an interpretive decision. "Now wait a moment," you say, "Look at definition #5." I'm not making an interpretation, the lexicon says what John means. Now that's true, if a translator follows that route and simply takes the definition that the lexicon uses, he's not making an interpretation. But someone still is. And in this case, its the the compile of the lexicon. If the translator goes that route, then he's simply allowing the authors who dug through the usage of λόγος to make the decision for them. That's still interpretation. Its just someone else's. Let's hope they got it right - for the sake of the people using your translation.

Fact #2 is false. Or I should say, its too limited. ALL translation of any kind distorts the source text. Our Greek commenter in the comment above could surely tell you that even the ESV fails to convey all the meaning of the original text - And I'd being will to say that even translations that update the New Testament into Modern Greek loose some of the original meaning. That's because language is culturally conditioned. There is not good way to translate the Greek phrase typically rendered "casting lots" into English because we don't have "lots." The closest cultural equivalent is "drawing straws." But translating such phrases that way would misrepresent the cultural activity. Or consider an example from the ESV - Psalm 1:1

"Blessed is the man who walks not in the counsel of the wicked, nor stands in the way of sinners..."

In English the phrase, "stand in the way of sinners" conveys the idea of blocking someone from going somewhere or doing something. We stand in people's way as a preventative measure. But in Hebrew, the idiom means the exact opposite. To stand in the way of someone in Hebrew means to follow along after them, doing what they do. Now you might say that someone whose been in the church will be taught that. But why should the meaning of a translation have to be explained or taught? If you have to explain the meaning after you translate, doesn't that destroy the point? Isn't the purpose of translation to convey meaning? All translations distort meaning.

Fact #3 is false. The claim that The Voice is the logical conclusion of Dymanic translation simply proves that the person wrote the "fact" doesn't truly know what Dymanic translation is. And in fact, that term "dynamic" itself hasn't been used by translators since the 80's because the term caused so much misunderstanding for those who weren't professional translators. The correct term is "Functional Equivalence Translation." And this method (not philosophy) of translation is based on the work of hundreds of translations in hundreds of languages around the world. Here are the fundamental principles of Functional Equivalence translation theory:

1. Each language possesses certain distinctive characteristics which give it a special character, e.g. word-building capacities, unique patterns of phrase order, techniques for linking clauses into sentences, markers of discourse, and special discourse types of poetry, proverbs, and song. Each language is rich in vocabulary for areas of cultural focus and the specialties of people.
2. To communicate effectively [which, I hope everyone can agree is the goal of translation] one must respect the genius [see #1] of each language.
3. Anything that can be said in one language can be said in another, unless the form is an essential element of the message. For the average person the potential and actual equivalence of languages is perhaps the most debated point about translation. He does not see how people who have no snow can understand a passage in the Bible that speaks about "white as snow." If the people do not know snow, how can they have a word for it? And if they do not have a word for it, then how can the Bible be translated? ... The point is that snow as an object [grammatically speaking] is not crucial to the message.
4. To preserve the content of the message the form must be changed. This is quite apparent when we look at words λόγος "word, message, etc." No English word looks or sounds like that Greek word and has the same meaning. The form of words must be changed. It follows quite easily that the form of phrases much be changed and that the form of clause must be changed. Translators must as the question, how do native speakers of the target language express this meaning. What if a language doesn't have participles? Does it become harder to translate Paul's letters which are full of them? No, because the meanings expressed by participles are expressed by other forms - the forms must be changed.
5. The languages of the Bible are subjct to the same limitations as any other natural languages. Greek and Hebrew are sipmly languages, like any other languages, and they are to be understood and analyzed in the same manner as other ancient tongues. They both possess extraordinarily effective means of communication, even as all languages do.
6. The writers of the Biblical books expected to be understood (even the author of Psalm 1:1).
7. The translator must attempt to reproduce the meaning of a passage as understood by the writer. This is true regardless of the form of the target translation. And this foundational principle of Functional translation theory make makes it impossible for a translation such as The Voice to be the logical conclusion of the D-E philosophy - regardless of who is working it out emergent or otherwise the Voice cannot be a Functional translation if it fails to convey the passage as understood by the writer.

All these points were directly taken (with commentary) from Eugene A. Nida and Charles R. Taber's The Theory and Practice of Translation (Leiden: Brill, 1974), 3-8.

Fact #4 is false I find it interesting that this claim is made when the writer show so little awareness of what Functional Equivalence translation truly. The fact is, the F-E translation process, as performed by such international translation organizations such as Wycliffe/SIL, the United Bible Society, Pioneers Bible Translators etc., have multiple error checking sessions where translations are checked and checked for translation errors for every single book of scripture. This results in probably hundreds of translation error check even for s single New Testament, much less the Old!

Get your facts straight about F-E translation before you talk about it. Go reading something written about translation from someone who studied linguistics, translation, and communication.

Before I begin my response, I will freely admit that in terms of academic qualifications and competence in the original languages, I am not as good as Mike. I am currently in the process of learning Greek and my knowledge of Hebrew is non-existent. Yet, regardless of the topic, all doctrine must be logically coherent and consistent with the rest of the doctrines of Scripture, and it is my opinion that the translational methodology called Dynamic Equivalence by itself is flawed because it undermines the doctrine of the authority and essence of Scripture, which I will hopefully show as we go along.

The first issue to deal with is Mike's insistence on using the term "Functional Equivalence" as opposed to "Dynamic Equivalence", since the methodology embraced by the D-E/F-E proponents claims to translate the funtional meaning of the original languages into the text in the receptor language. The reason why I refuse to do so is because I do not agree that such a methodology does actually fulfil its goal. Therefore, while they claim that they are translating the functional meaning of the text, I disagree that their methodology does in fact translate the functional meaning of the text. Since I disagree that their methodology can indeed achieve their goal, I would rather use their previous nomenclature of "Dynamic Equivalence" which I think is a better description of what they are actually doing.

Without further to do, let's logically analyze Mike's points, and then I will wrap up the issue with the theological aspect of the issue.

Fact #1 is false. Any change from one language to another requires interpretation - ANY CHANGE.

It seems that Mike has not realized yet the difference between lexical interpretation and conceptual interpretation. Of course, any change from one language to another requires interpretation. That is NOT the issue I was driving at. Lexical interpretation requires that each individual word or phrase is translated from one language to another and string together according to the grammer of the receptor language in a manner that parallels the structure of the source language as closely as possible. In other words, lexical interpretation tries not to change or alter any of the words/ expressions in the sentence being translated. Conceptual interpretation however tries to make theological/ philosophical sense out of the sentence and renders it in such a way that the essence of the sentence shines through. THAT is the issue, not whether any type of interpretation is required at all.

Mike follows through with a look at the translated meaning of the word logos in John 1:1. Before touching on the difficult-to-translate words however, can it be agreed firstly that simple words are to be translated literally? The issue here is this: Is Mike trying to use difficult-to-translate Greek words and phrases as a case study in order to make a conceptual translation the norm, instead of making such cases an exception? The Greek word logos after all is a word utilized in Greek philosophy among others, and thus is NOT an easy word to translate. But what about relatively simple words like kai, huios or machaira?

So even if (not that it will be) some form of conceptual interpretation is required to translate the Greek word logos, that does not prove Mike's point at all. Our contention has always been that as little conceptual translation should be done at all times, and thus pointing to exceptions in order to invalidate the norm is plainly in error.

As a bilinguist myself (English and Chinese), and having learned a bit of Japanese and German before, let me just say that there is indeed a world of difference between lexical translation and conceptual translation. Just as an example using Chinese (a language very different from any of the Western languages in many ways), here is how you can translate the following phrase from the Nicene Creed:

And in one Lord Jesus Christ, the only begotten Son of God, begotten of his Father before all worlds, God of God, Light of Light, very God of very God, begotten, not made, ...

Translated lexically:

和一主耶稣基督，上帝的独生儿子，全部星球之前而上帝所生，神之神，光之光，实在的神之实在的神，受生，非创造出来的，...

Translated conceptually:

和独一主耶稣基督，上帝的独生子，在万世之前为天父所生，出于神而为神，出于光而为光，出于真神而为真神，是受生，乃非被造，...

For those who know Chinese, the first sentence should sound strange but it is still perfectly understandable. Unfortunately, I do not know any other language good enough to do translation in such a manner so I will not attempt any example for those who cannot read Chinese; you just have to take my word for it that the first example IS indeed what is considered an essentially literal translation from the English (not Latin) which utilizes only lexical translation. Note also that the fact that the languages (English and Chinese) are very much dissimilar does not mean that lexical translation is NOT possible.

So let us look at Mike's argument regarding logos (λόγος):

Since we're in John, let's look at λόγος (logos). What does it mean? One might say that it means word. That's it, right? No interpretation there. Not a chance. To accurately translate the word from Greek, we must look at its usage. Let's see what the lexicon says about λόγος.

Louw & Nida suggest there are ten different senses of the word:

1. "that which has been stated or said, with primary focus upon the content of the communication—‘word, saying, message, statement, question.’"
2. "the act of speaking—speaking, speech.’"
3. " the content of what is preached about Christ or about the good news—‘what is preached, gospel.’"
4. "a relatively formal and systematic treatment of a subject—‘treatise, book, account.’"
5. "a title for Jesus in the Gospel of John as a reference to the content of God’s revelation and as a verbal echo of the use of the verbs meaning ‘to speak’ in Genesis 1 and in many utterances of the prophets—‘Word, Message.’"
6. "a record of assets and liabilities—‘account, credit, debit.’"
7. "a reason, with the implication of some verbal formulation—‘reason.’"
8. "a happening to which one may refer—‘matter, thing, event.’"
9. "that which is thought to be true but is not necessarily so—‘appearance, to seem to be.’"
10. "a formal declaration of charges against someone in court—‘charges, accusation, declaration of wrongdoing.’"

Now when a translator chooses one of these definitions to apply to a given instance of the word in the text, he makes an interpretive decision.

As I have mentioned earlier, the word logos is a difficult-to-translate word. Dr. Gordon H. Clark has written an entire book primarily focused on it especially as it is used in the first chapter of John, in the book The Johannine Logos, 2nd Ed. (Trinity Foundation, Jefferson, Maryland, USA, 1989). So pointing out that there are difficult Greek words to translate which thus require interpretation does not mean that requiring interpretation is the norm.

However, Mike's example fails to even prove an exception to the rule since the word logos is only one Greek word, and thus the interpretation needed here is restricted to lexical interpretation. Whatever the interpretation of the word logos, the translated verse in any good English translation would read: "In the beginning was the ____, and the ____ was with God, and the ____ was God". Mike's example is therefore refuted.

Fact #2 is false. Or I should say, its too limited. ALL translation of any kind distorts the source text. Our Greek commenter in the comment above could surely tell you that even the ESV fails to convey all the meaning of the original text

Mike here equivocates on the meaning of the word "distorts". "Distort" as a word implies that the translation alters the meaning in such a way that the new meaning is contary to the original meaning, not the losing of certain minute nuances and distinctions in the source langage which is a new definition of the word "distorts" Mike uses.

As I have mentioned in earlier posts, so I will raise this issue again. Upon what basis can D-E versions like the NLT remove the word "sword" (Greek machaira) found in Rom. 13:4? Doesn't this not distort the message of the verse if indeed Rom. 13:4 is suppsed to teach capital punishment and just war theory? We will re-visit this particular verse later.

There is not good way to translate the Greek phrase typically rendered "casting lots" into English because we don't have "lots."

Context! Context! Context! I remember understanding the meaning of "casting lots" when I was a young boy about 20 years or more ago without being taught what it was, and nobody I knew cast lots then. The problem is that few wants to read the passage in context first before trying to decipher and understand what any particular verse and phrase means.

"Blessed is the man who walks not in the counsel of the wicked, nor stands in the way of sinners..."

In English the phrase, "stand in the way of sinners" conveys the idea of blocking someone from going somewhere or doing something. We stand in people's way as a preventative measure. But in Hebrew, the idiom means the exact opposite. To stand in the way of someone in Hebrew means to follow along after them, doing what they do. Now you might say that someone whose been in the church will be taught that.

Again, Context is key! I do not particularly see why translations have to be done such that any lazy person can choose a verse at random and is supposed to be able to understand what it says without reading the context and anything else!

But why should the meaning of a translation have to be explained or taught? If you have to explain the meaning after you translate, doesn't that destroy the point? Isn't the purpose of translation to convey meaning? All translations distort meaning.

If the person refuses to learn for himself and wrestle with the text to get the answers, then that he has to be taught is his own fault. Intellectual laziness is not a virture, and I do not see why we have to ammend our translational philosophy to accomodate such lazy people! Just by the way, the ESV did not distort the meaning of the verse Ps. 1:1; it is the intellectually and spiritually lazy people who refuse to do their homework who eisegete the text.

Fact #3 is false. The claim that The Voice is the logical conclusion of Dymanic translation simply proves that the person wrote the "fact" doesn't truly know what Dymanic translation is. And in fact, that term "dynamic" itself hasn't been used by translators since the 80's because the term caused so much misunderstanding for those who weren't professional translators. The correct term is "Functional Equivalence Translation."

As I have mentioned, I refuse to call it Functional Equivalence because functionally equivalency is not truly acheived. Previously, I have raised the issue of Rom. 13:4, of which the verse reads as follows:

for he is God's servant for your good. But if you do wrong, be afraid, for he does not bear the sword in vain. For he is the servant of God, an avenger who carries out God's wrath on the wrongdoer. (Rom. 13:4 — ESV)

The authorities are God’s servants, sent for your good. But if you are doing wrong, of course you should be afraid, for they have the power to punish you. They are God’s servants, sent for the very purpose of punishing those who do what is wrong (Rom. 13:4 — NLT)

As it can be seen, the NLT omits the word "sword" in its translations, instead rendering it as the phrase "power to punish you". Now, the Greek word machaira which means sword is present in the Greek New Testament, so there is no good reason why it should be altered since there is no ambiguity over what machaira is.

Enters the D-E translational philosophy. According to their express goal, they desire to translate the verse in such a way that the verse in English should accurately and functionally represent the meaning in the receptor language. However, what if the idea of capital punishment for example is meant to be taught by Paul in Rom. 13:4? Has the D-E philosophy as practiced in the NLT succeeded in " reproduce the meaning of a passage as understood by the writer"? No, it doesn't and as such the functional equivalence is not present in the verse in translations such as the NLT.

It may be objected that capital punishment is not taught in Rom. 13:4 at all. However, that is only the objector's interpetation of Rom. 13:4, but others have interpreted the verse differently to teach capital punishment. So therefore, is this case of Rom. 13:4 a matter of one's personal theology driving one's translation? In their bid to translate so as to reproduce the meaning of a passage, doesn't the D-E philosophy give rise to the spector of the translators' views on various matters and doctrines to drive their translation, as it has apparently happened in Rom. 13:4 in the NLT? The D-E philosophy therefore facilitates placing one's theology before the text, instead of deriving one's theology from the text.

And this foundational principle of Functional translation theory make makes it impossible for a translation such as The Voice to be the logical conclusion of the D-E philosophy - regardless of who is working it out emergent or otherwise the Voice cannot be a Functional translation if it fails to convey the passage as understood by the writer.

Again, who or what determines what is the meaning as understood by the writer? The Emergents who penned this Bible certainly and truly believe that they are "reproducing the meaning of passages as understood by the writers"! Is this going to be a battle of competing authorities then? Or maybe something along the lines of "I know Greek and Hebrew better than you" type of argumentation?

Fact #4 is false I find it interesting that this claim is made when the writer show so little awareness of what Functional Equivalence translation truly.

Mike here does not seem to understand what is the difference between translation, lexical interpretation and conceptual interpretation and thus misses the entire point of fact number 4. Contrary to what he says, I do know about F-E translational philsophy, but I reject the name because it is a misleading term which does not deliver at times like the example of Rom. 13:4 seen above, and therefore I revert back to the proper description of D-E.

The fact is, the F-E translation process, as performed by such international translation organizations such as Wycliffe/SIL, the United Bible Society, Pioneers Bible Translators etc., have multiple error checking sessions where translations are checked and checked for translation errors for every single book of scripture. This results in probably hundreds of translation error check even for s single New Testament, much less the Old!

Nobody is saying that D-E translations are choke full of errors. Yet also, the appeal to committees is fallacious becuase numbers mean little when it comes to truth. It has been said that if you dislike what one scholar says, just find five scholars from the opposite camp to endorse your position or translational choice to counter the influnce of that one negative vote. In the making of such D-E versions, has there been any consultations from scholars of the essentially literal camp (not scholars who work on essentially literal translations)? Probably not! When a group of scholars who are already committed to the D-E philosophy engage in error-checking, the only thing that can be surmised is that that group of scholars share the same opinion on that one verse. Imagine if a group of Arminian/Semi-Pelagian D-E scholars come together to translate Rom. 9 for example? Instead of saying "Jacob I loved, but Esau I hated", the translation would read "Jaboc I loved, but Esau I loved less"!

Now we go on to the theological aspect of this issue. I have mentioned in the beginning that the D-E philosophy undermines the doctrine of the authority and the essence of Scripture. How this is true is apparent especially when we look at the case of Rom. 13:4. How can the NLT version of Rom. 13:4 be trusted to teach all of God's truth when it has already narrowed the interpretative options of the text and omit the possibility of capital punishment from being considered as a legitimate interpretative option? If capital punishment is part of God's truth, then the NLT version of Rom. 13:4 has removed this aspect of God's truth from the text of Scripture. A truth removed from the all-suffucient truth of Scripture would render the text not sufficient since there is one truth missing, and therefore the essence of Scripture is undermined. It matters little actully in this discussion context whether capital punishment is truly taught but more of the D-E methodology resulting in interpretative options which may be biblical being removed. As stated, the text should drive our theology, not the other way around. D-E philosophy, sadly to say, allows Man to do the latter.