The Bible and the Translations

If there is a book that has an extraordinary relation with the profession of translator, this book is the Bible.

In the first place, the Bible is the most translated book in the world, by a huge margin. There is disagreement on the number of translations that exist. The whole Bible has been translated in almost 700 languages, but the New Testament alone has been translated into more than 2000 languages.  On another hand, in certain languages exist multiple translations, as an example, only in English, there is no agreement on the number of translations that exist, but easily we may have more than 300 translations of the Bible into this language. In the site www.bible.com, you have access to 1908 versions of the Bible in 1318 languages, including 60 translations of the Bible into English. 

In the second place, the Bible is itself a multilingual book. The original languages of the Bible were Hebrew, Aramaic, and Greek. Most of the texts from the Old Testament (OT) were written in biblical Hebrew. Most of the texts from the New Testament (NT) were written in Koine Greek. Biblical Aramaic was used in texts from the books of Ezra and Daniel in the OT. It is believed that a few texts of the NT were originally written in Aramaic.

Throughout the Bible, there are accounts of dialogues that took place in a different language than the one they were written. In the OT we have dialogues that probably happened in languages such as Egyptian, Assyrian or Greek but put to written in Hebrew; the NT is written in Greek, but include dialogues that happened in a different language, mostly Aramaic. Is it a translator’s secret work? Probably!

But one of the first controversies that existed around the Bible was due to a translation. We are talking about the Septuagint, the earliest extant Koine Greek translation of the Hebrew Bible. The story was recorded in a document called “The Letter of Aristeas”. According to this story, the king Ptolemy II Philadelphus who promoted the Library of Alexandria ordered the translation of the Hebrew Bible. 72 Jewish scholars were brought for the task. Although this simple action was regarded as a miraculous (the 72 scholars made first an individual translation, then when compared, all the 72 translations done were all identical) and fully supported by the Jewish community of Alexandria, who were not able to speak Hebrew but Greek, when the news of the translation arrived in Jerusalem, they were not received with the same joy. In an article in "The Jewish Chronicle," you can read how this event was qualified as tragic as the making of the golden calf. In Megillat Taanit writes:

בשמונה בטבת נכתבה התורה יוונית בימי תלמי המלך והחושך בא לעולם שלושה ימים

 “On the eighth of Tevet, during the rule of King Ptolemy, the Torah was written in Greek, and darkness fell on the world for three days”

You can find more info and points of view in the Jewish encyclopedia.    

With the spread of Christianity, new translations were needed. At the beginning, the bibles used by this small community were in Greek. Then, when this religion spread throughout the Roman Empire, a version in Latin was needed. Different versions of the Bible in Latin appeared until pope Damasus commissioned Jerome to provide a definite version. Jerome finished his work by the year 405 and this version, the Vulgate, became the standard bible of the western Church until the reformation. According to Encyclopedia Britannica, the vulgate was the basis for translations of the Bible into languages like Syriac, Arabic, Spanish and English.

But other translations were produced during this time in other areas: When the vulgate was completed, the Bible already existed in Coptic and Gothic.

I read different versions of the history of the translation of the Bible. One of the topics that almost no one mention, is about the cases where translators of the Bible had to start their work from an unusual beginning:  the target language did not even have a script system. How are we going to put those translations in written? The solution was to create a new script system! There are alphabets who owe their own existence to the Bible.

The most famous case was the Cyrillic alphabet. The name comes from one of the earlier translators of the Bible into Old Slavonic, Saint Cyril. In the 9^th century, the Greek brothers Cyril and Methodius at royal request translated the Bible into Slavonic. This language did not have any script system. Using their knowledge in other alphabetic systems such as Latin, Greek, Armenian and Hebrew they created a previous alphabet that today we know as Glagolitic. The Cyrillic alphabet was a consequence of the evolution of this earlier script. Other alphabets that were created during Bible translations were: Armenian, invented by an Armenian monk Mesrop Mashtots; Gothic, created by the bishop Ulfilas (Today this alphabet is not in use). Here in Canada, we have the case of the Canadian Aboriginal syllabics, used by many languages like Cree, Inuktitut and many other languages, which was created by the English missionary James Evans.  My favorite page to research about the history of the alphabets is www.proel.org

Although the Bible was already translated into different languages, in Western Europe the only Bible available was the Vulgate in Latin. It was illegal to translate the Bible into local languages. But Christian Europeans started to speak in different local languages and Latin became less used and only understood by a few learned people. The demand for translations of the texts of the bible in vernacular languages became greater.

Not always the answer was favorable to this demand. In diverse sources in English and in Spanish I found mentions to the ruling of the Council of Tarragona in 1234. I write here the citation I found in the HuffPost: 

 “No one may possess the books of the Old and New Testaments in the Romance language, and if anyone possesses them he must turn them over to the local bishop within eight days after the promulgation of this decree, so that they may be burned...”

Later years, the translation of the Bible into vernacular languages will be one of the key demands of the reformation. We can see that newer and fresher translations started to appear. Erasmus translated the NT from Greek into Latin. Luther translated the NT from Greek into German, and later he completed the OT translation from Hebrew into German. John Wycliffe translated the Vulgate into English.  Mikael Agricola translated the NT into Finnish. 

But then, the translation of the Bible became a dangerous task where the translator risked his own life because of his work. In the site "History Extra" there are some examples: We have the case of William Tyndale, who translated the Bible into English directly from Hebrew and Greek, he was executed for heresy in 1536; Jan Hus, who translated the Bible into Czech, was condemned and executed for his ideas in 1415; Jacob Van Liesvelt, who translated the Bible into Dutch,  was put to death for heresy in 1545. Today bible translations are widely accepted. However, we still hear some cases about Murdered Bible translators, in fact, by the end of last month, Angus AbrahamFung, a Bible translator, has been killed in a machete attack in Cameroon. He was working translating the Bible from English into the Aghem language, a local native language.

  

There are so many stories that surround the Bible translators about the many difficulties and adversities that they had to face, but the truth is that most Bible translators have been well regarded. We, translators, do not often see such prestigious jobs in our careers. Some Bible translators are considered as real heroes for the languages they translated. William Tyndale is often regarded as “The Architect of the English Language”. Martin Luther is credited as the “Creator of the New High German written Language” and contributed to unify all German speakers. Mikael Agricola is considered as “Father of Finnish literature”. Millions of Russians, Ukrainians and speakers of other languages write using an alphabet that was named after a Bible Translator (Cyrillic). 

    

We have talked about history. How Bible translations affect our work as translators today? One of the answers is related to popular sayings. One of the things polyglots often notice when they learn a foreign culture is that some popular sayings and stories found in it are very similar to others one in our own culture. Sometimes, the more languages we learn, the more we find that some popular sayings repeat in them. It is likely that when this happens, they might come from the Bible or they are in any way related with this book.

Here are some examples of popular sayings that come from the bible, and how do we say them in different languages:

-The proverb: “He who sows the wind reaps the whirlwind” we can find in other languages as:

Quia ventum seminabunt, et turbinem metent (Latin)

Die wind zaait, zal storm oogsten (Dutch)

Qui sème le vent récolte la tempête (French)

El que siembra vientos cosecha tempestades (Spanish)

From Hosea 8,7:

כִּי רוּחַ יִזְרָעוּ וְסוּפָתָה יִקְצֹרוּ

From Ecclesiastes 1,9 :

וְאֵין כָּל־חָדָשׁ תַּחַת הַשָּׁמֶשׁ

We have: “There’s nothing new under the sun”. In other languages we can read:

Nihil sub sole novum (Latin)

Rien de nouveau sous le soleil (French)

Nic nowego pod słońcem (Polish)

From Proverbs 15,1:

מַעֲנֶה־רַּךְ יָשׁיב חֵמָ֑ה וּדְבַר־עֶצֶב יַעֲלֶה־אָף

A gentle answer turns away wrath: but a harsh word stirs up anger.

We can find in other languages:

Ett mjukt svar stillar vrede, men ett hart ord kommer harm åstad (Swedish)

La réponse douce apaise la fureur ; mais la parole fâcheuse excite la colère (French)

Milda respondo kvietigas koleron ; Sed malmola vorto ekscitas koleron (Esperanto)

The phrase: “No prophet is accepted in his own country” is based in Mat 13,57. In other languages we find:

Nemo propheta acceptus est in patria sua (Latin)

Ein Prophet gilt nirgend weniger denn in seinem Vaterlande (German)

Не є пророк без чести, хиба що в своїй отчинї та в своїй домівці (Ukrainian)

Nadie es profeta en su tierra (Spanish)

I finish my examples with the phrase that is known as the golden rule: “Do not treat others in ways that you would not like to be treated”. In other languages, the golden rule can be said:

Kion vi ne deziras, ke la homoj faru al vi, vi ankaŭ ne faru al ili (Esperanto)

No hagas a los demás lo que no quieres que te hagan a ti (Spanish)

Ne fais pas aux autres ce que tu ne voudrais pas qu’on te fasse (French)

Gör inte mot andra som du själv inte vill bli behandlad (Swedish)

The golden rule is based on Mat 7,12: “Do to others whatever you would like them to do to you”.

Ĉion ajn do, kion vi deziras, ke la homoj faru al vi, vi ankaŭ faru al ili

Todo cuanto quieran que los hombres les hagan, así también hagan ustedes con ellos

Toutes les choses donc que vous voulez que les hommes vous fassent, faites-les leur aussi de même

Allt va I viljen att människorna skola göra eder, det skolen I ock göra dem

But not only humans rely on Bible translations: translation apps also do! This statement is especially true when the translations involve minority languages.  In an article from the Vice, It Makes a mention of strange translations resulted from texts in Maori or Somali into English, resulting in phrases with unexpected religious context. Translation apps rely in documents that exist in both, the target language and the source language. When we have minority languages, the probabilities of find documents in both languages are less. One of the very few documents that exist in most language combinations, including those combinations of unrelated minority languages is the Bible.  

We, translators, celebrate our day on September 30^th, the day of Saint Jerome, The Bible Translator. Happy Translation day to all my colleagues!