To translate or not to translate, that is the question

We are all aware of what translating means, but sometimes during the translation process, words come up that need to be transliterated instead of translated.  Transliteration is the process of transforming the letters of a word from one language to another.  For the sake of this post, I will limit myself to examples of this to the Biblical text, but transliteration often occurs in other documents and situations as well.

There are many reasons why people decide to transliterate and here are a few:

1) The names of people and places, e.g. Adam, אדם, is a Hebrew word meaning "humankind."
2) Culturally specific titles and words, e.g. Herod is referred to as the tetrarch, τετρααρχουντος, a Greek word meaning "one in a group of four rulers" or a talent, ταλαντον, which was an ancient monetary unit.
3) Technical scientific/medical terms, e.g. Leper.
4) Terms of religious importance, e.g. amen, אמן/ἀμην, was a Hebrew word transliterated into Greek and then again into English originally meaning "so be it, truly."
5) Words that the translator doesn't know.  The best example probably comes from scholarly circles that  prefer "Qoheleth" as the speaker in Ecclesiastes rather than the typical English translation of "teacher/preacher."

Whatever the motivation for choosing to transliterate, the typical result is the loss of information/understanding for the new reader since the average reader is not equipped with a working knowledge of the original languages.  The insertion of a foreign word into a translated text can create a unique entity that either exceeds or limits the semantic range (range of meaning) of the original.

In the case of "amen," originally this word in Hebrew had three meanings/applications, however, in the modern English, "amen" is most commonly used as the concluding word for a prayer.  Thus, the transliteration has resulted in a limitation of the original semantic range.

Sometimes the effect decreases the reader's ability to appreciate poetic wordplay, as in the creation account of Genesis chapter 2.  God creates Adam, or humankind, out of the dust ("adamah" is dust in Hebrew).  Other times transliterations lend themselves to misreading and misinterpretation.

Case in point, the parable of the talents: Matthew 25:14-30.  While I can't speak for all of christendom, I have personally sat through too many sermons, devotionals, and motivational talks that turn this parable about money into a recruitment drive for using one's talents (i.e., musical ability, time) in service to the church.  This application seems reasonable largely due to the homophone "talent."

There are other drawbacks to the use of transliterations, but I won't continue to bore you.  Instead, I want to consider the other side of the coin.  With the potential downside of simple transliterations, why wouldn't one choose to always translate?

Even though translating a difficult/technical term would yield increased reader comprehension, the tradeoff comes with a loss in textual comprehension.  It would be easier for a typical reader to understand the title "king" because the title "tetrarch" is much less familiar.  Since a tetrarchy was a complex political reality in first century Palestine (the complexity was further compounded by the client-king relationship of the tetrarchs to Rome), the concept defies a simple English translation.

You can either have a text that is understandable or literal: translation or transliteration.  When you open a book or a Bible, which would you prefer?  The choice isn't always an easy one to make.


Note: Some of what I call "transliteration" may well be referred to as "loan words," words from another language that migrate into English via close contact from the original language.  Kayak, for example, is a native loan word for a specific type of boat.  The key difference in my argument is that a loan word from an ancient language does not achieve the same level of regular usage as a word like kayak; therefore, I am justified to consider them as transliterations.

Stay tuned for a post about understandable vs. literal translations.