Abstract
Logos is Bible software that is widely used by translators, laypeople, and pastors alike to access both Bible texts and related resources electronically and to carry out research. But Logos also provides a number of courses, usually delivered in a multimedia format, that help users to get the most from the tool and from their study. This review examines one such course, Introducing Bible Translations, considered from the perspective of someone deeply involved in the global Bible translation task.
Course description
This two-hour course is broken up into twenty-two segments of three to fifteen minutes (in video/audio/written formats), making the content easy to consume. Thirteen segments are Dr. Strauss’s presentations (generally around ten to twelve minutes each), and nine are (extra) Logos tutorials/demonstrations (interspersed with the mini-lectures and varying between three to seven minutes each). The Logos tutorials function to complement the mini-lectures as well as to advertise the Logos product.
A few technical comments
The videos (and audios?) should have a ten- to fifteen-second fast-forward/rewind. It is maddeningly difficult to click on the bar at the bottom of the video screen to try to get just the last sentence you may have missed to play again.
The “talking head(s)” format needs to be redone with more and better visuals throughout. It is an easy critique to make from the outside, but it is a valid one, nonetheless.
The Logos tools tutorials interspersed among Strauss’s presentations vary from the rather obvious (e.g., the Logos tools tutorial demonstrating the use of the UBS handbooks to study metaphors) to the quite helpful. An example of the latter is using visual filters on a modern version to see an underlying original language term (this functionality is soon to be present in Paratext as Enhanced Resources).
Translation theory
Professor Strauss begins with a fairly well-known (and recently often-critiqued) continuum of Bible translations, from formal=comprehensible (Strauss’s term for understandable), to mediating=clear (NIV for him), to functional=natural. While his classification of versions is open to question, it is still generally defensible.
Strauss shows his loyalty to the New International Version (NIV), for which version he was an editor. He uses the course at times to defend NIV against all other versions, as sort of a “golden mean” between formal and functional equivalence. Often he does this indirectly, but at other times he is to be found explicitly championing NIV.
Strauss reflects a clear (American) Evangelical perspective in his course. For example, his terminology is Evangelical when he claims that the Bible is “God’s word” (as opposed to “inspired Scripture,” for example). But he is also trying to act as a bridge to the current scholarly world, something one can see when he states that language does not communicate perfectly (which would not support many Evangelicals’ literalist views of inspiration).
Strauss deals (generally helpfully, it should be said) with gender-accurate translation controversies in a way that indicates he is pitching his presentation to a mostly Evangelical audience. He rightly defends his language-based stance against a charge of “gender neutrality,” which can be taken as an attempt to erase virtually all reference to gender in the text (in particular with reference to the deity as well as social roles, such as priests). Strauss nevertheless does this from Evangelical and NIV perspectives, which are noticeable in his fulsome use of NIV examples, as well as his use of biblical-theological (and traditional-sounding) language such as “grow in the grace and knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ.”
He helpfully emphasizes a fundamental principle of translation, which is reproducing the meaning of the source text in a natural and clear way in the “target” (or “translating”) language. He also encourages using multiple versions to get different perspectives on the text, which again shows his experience with translation and the flexibility it requires.
Those who are involved in current Bible translation into languages beyond English and other majority languages (which would be a vast majority of Bible translators today) will find fault with the lack of almost any reference to target or translating languages other than English and other modern Indo-European languages (he does mention an unnamed language from Irian Jaya, but only in passing). Many would argue that the most interesting things taking place in Bible translation today are happening in languages other than English and other majority languages. This concentration on English and modern majority-language translations at the very least makes the course seem very much dated and provincial, and at worst is puzzlingly irrelevant in the current context of Bible translation around the world.
Metaphors and collocations
Strauss states that “metaphors give language power and punch.” This statement is delivered as if he never really has dealt with the work of George Lakoff and others who make it clear that metaphors are fundamental to both language and cognition, and are not ornamental or necessarily for special emphasis. Strauss goes on to use “concrete” to describe non-metaphorical terminology. In fact, non-metaphorical language is often arguably more abstract language (but to be fair, it can still be clearer than unfamiliar metaphors in translation). From what he says elsewhere, Strauss obviously knows that metaphors are ubiquitous. But he could make this more clear.
Strauss’s explanation of dead metaphors is particularly uneven. His examples of “tasting death” (in the New Testament) as well as “losing face” (generally) are not convincing, and he could easily have found better examples (e.g., “arm of a chair,” “leg of a table”). His other dead metaphor examples from the New Testament are much better (e.g., “by the hand of”). Still, the idea that one can easily identify dead metaphors in ancient literature (as we more confidently are able to in current speech) is dubious.
Finally, when Strauss deals with collocations (words that vary in meaning according to specific other words in context), it sounds like he is talking about a special restricted class of words that have varying senses according to their contexts. But in fact, so many terms are found in collocations in all languages, and thus vary according to context, that one might as well consider them all to be potential candidates. And it is crucially important to realize this as a translator.
Summary
One could summarize Strauss’s presentations simply as follows: (1) Context determines meaning, and (2) All translation is interpretation (something is always lost). With these maxims Strauss has captured much of what Bible translation is about. But at the same time he misses much of what has been happening in Bible translation over the last twenty years, and seems very much a captive of North American Evangelical thinking about the issues. So while this may well be a good place for someone new to Bible translation to start, much more could be and should be said about a field that is just beginning to take to heart what the fields of cognitive science (especially cognitive linguistics), relevance theory, and translation studies have to offer translation in general and Bible translation in particular.