scholarly journals Die 2020-direkte vertaling in Afrikaans: Waarom en hoe?

2021 ◽  
Vol 55 (3) ◽  
Author(s):  
Gert J.C. Jordaan

The 2020 direct translation into Afrikaans: Why and how? The Bible Society of South Africa’s commission that the new 2020 translation of the Bible into Afrikaans should be soundly source-text orientated and at the same time easy to understand, set a difficult task to the translators. The 2020 translators would have to dig deep to make these two almost opposing goals meet. The ways by which the translators eventually put their commission into practice, was investigated in this article. The method of investigation was to inspect the decisions of the translators’ steering committee about how they planned to execute the commission they received from the Bible Society, and to test their decisions to its execution in practical examples from the 2020 translation itself. The investigation brought to light that the translators’ success in the execution of their task, to a large extent, resulted from the fact that they, from the outset, made a clear distinction between the linguistic characteristics and the textual characteristics of both the source and the reception language. This enabled them to make a directly reflecting type of translation without giving way to either formal equivalence or dynamic equivalence. The translators decided not to translate into modern terms typical historic-cultural matters such as measures and weights, currencies and military ranks. By retaining the Hebrew and Greek terms, they tried to conserve the local colour of the source text and to provide a historical credibility to the translation. Moreover, the language and linguistic register of the translation was brought into line with a pre-identified target audience thus contributing to the dignity of the translation text and, simultaneously, making sure that it would be easily understood.Contribution: The investigation led to the conclusion that the translators rather successfully dealt with the difficult task that the Bible Society had put before them. They made every effort to present their readers with a directly reflecting type of translation in a neat, stylistically meticulous and clear Afrikaans. Therefore, readers can receive this new contribution to the treasure of Afrikaans Bible translations with gratitude, and use it freely as a welcome addition to the already existing translations.

Author(s):  
Ezuoke, Chukwudinma O. Yamat ◽  
IJIOMA, Patricia Ngozi

The Christian theological text, whether written or oral is a derivative of a sacred text called The Bible, thus, making the theological text a second order text. This makes it possible for the Christian theological text to adopt first of all, the semiotic forms of The Bible: signs, symbols, vestments and colours as well as those of the modern church. Semiotic translation which implies a decoding of signs and symbols, interprets textual signs and symbols in a source text (ST) to the target audience (TA). Hence, translation is an interpretative activity. The translation of Christian theological semiotics could be done in-text, in footnotes or in notes and references as a form of elucidation to the target audience.  Theology is a discipline and as such, most of its signs and symbols are technical. To deal with its semiotics is part of the deverbalisation process which its translator must engage in, in order to understand the source text (ST) and to reverbalise the same. The paper aims at furnishing Christian theological translators with the meanings of selected Christian theological signs and symbols. This is a plunge into the dynamic equivalence of the signs and symbols, since formal equivalence, calque and loaning do not deliver the relevant comprehension needed by the translator for adequate reverbalisation of the source text. The paper highlights the importance of semiotic research in the translation of Christian theological texts.


2009 ◽  
Vol 50 (4) ◽  
Author(s):  
Jacobus A. Naudé

Abstract The aim of this paper is to describe the issues and trends facing the next generation of Bible translations. The paper starts with a description of the state of art of Bible translation before exposing features of the recently published Contemporary English Bible (1995), Das NeueTestament (1999), The Schocken Bible, Volume 1 (1995) and the Nieuwe Bijbel Vertaling (New Dutch Version) (2004). In the second part of the twentieth century a primary concern for meaning and readability has influenced the trend to produce translations which are more reflective of dynamic equivalence than formal equivalence. Examples are the Bible in Today’s English (1976), the Groot Nieuws Bijbel (Bible in Today’s Dutch) (1983) and the Nuwe Afrikaanse Vertaling (New Afrikaans Version) (1983). At the turn of the century translations with communication as their primary function were created (normally a rewriting of an existing translation in a modern vernacular by a single translator/editor), for example The Message in English (2000) and Afrikaans (2002). However, all these translations depend heavily on the reader’s ability to understand a written text. A new trend in Bible translation will take into consideration the requirements of the hearer, as well as those of the reader (the translation has to be read out aloud, heard and listened to). A shift away from the typical language usage of the Bible translations in the second half of the 20th century is the offing i.e. by instilling a new awareness in the minds of the readers to the sociocultural distance between them and the source culture.


Author(s):  
Carol J. Dempsey

For centuries Catholic biblical scholars translated the Hebrew, Aramaic, and Greek books of the Bible into English with the goal of producing even “better” translations than before. Yet whether these translations follow the principles of formal or dynamic equivalence, no translation is without theological, cultural, gender, racial, and ethnocentric biases, as all translations are interpretations. Many translations thus reflect the theological positions of religious denominations commissioning them. The forthcoming revision of the Catholic New American Bible is not an exception. This essay considers the androcentric preferences in some of the latest contemporary scholarly Bible translations into English and then examines the revised translation of the anticipated new edition of the Catholic Bible, the principles guiding the translation revision, and the issues that both the translation and principles bring to the fore. While the essay refers to the forthcoming edition of the Catholic New American Bible as a whole, the focus is on the revision of the Old Testament in particular.


2021 ◽  
Vol 55 (3) ◽  
Author(s):  
Roelie Van der Spuy

The influence of the translator’s loyalties and underlying translation philosophy on the translation choices, with reference to the Afr2020 Bible translation. When the reader looks a little deeper than the initial superficial ‘Revised’ Old Translation impression that reading the Afrikaans 2020 translation gives you, then one realizes that a great deal of effort had to be put into leading such a large group of diverse translators to understand the essence of a direct translation and to be able to apply it consistently. But it is precisely here that problems can arise. Due to the nature of skopus and the style of the Afrikaans 2020 translation, this direct translation can be categorised on the side of the more literal translations and it thus has a very high percentage of agreement with the 1953 Old Afrikaans translation. If the direct translation is not just another name or a revision of the so-called word-for-word translation, then what is this direct translation? Van der Merwe referring to this translation also touches on this issue when he says: ‘a ‘direct’ translation of the Bible is not new jargon for a word-for-word translation of the Bible. It is an attempt to ‘interpretively resemble’ in good idiomatic Afrikaans all the communicative clues of the source text in the contexts construed for the source text audience’. This underlying fundamental premise brings a lot of tension to the fore. Van der Merwe also confirms this (2014:294) by stating: ‘attempts to translate ancient texts directly (is) an almost impossible ideal (to) pursue’.Contribution: This study evaluated the Afrikaans 2020 translation according to its own criteria, the translation brief and to its self-proclaimed nature as ‘direct’ translation in order to try to make an objective evaluation and assessment of this great work. This process also pointed out where the loyalties of the translators lie, and what the underlying translation philosophy is, and how difficult it is to make a distinction between the direct translation method and using archaic words and terms.


Author(s):  
Georgy T. Khukhuni ◽  
Irina I. Valuitseva ◽  
Anna A. Osipova

The present paper deals with some cases of the modernization of the Bible texts, especially created in the second part of the 20th and the beginning of the 21st centuries (although the elements of the latter may be found in earlier versions including those with the unofficial status of “national Bibles”). The expansion of modernization is usually connected with E. Nida`s theory of the dynamic / functional equivalence; at the same moment its direct influence is obvious enough. The actuality of the theme for the theory and practice of translation is caused by the following factors: 1. the richness and variety of the Bible translations, the history of which counts more than two thousand ears; 2. the necessity to take into account the referential part of the text on one hand, and its pragmatic and appellative functions on the other; that may lead to the collision between them when the translator has to choose the strategy and tactics of his work; 1. the acceptance of the text as “inspired by God” among the believers, that may provoke a negative relation towards some moments, which are treated as the divergence from the source text or even its distortion. The paper is based on the representative sample taken from Bible translations (both “traditional” and modern) in Russian, English and German. The corresponding variants, as well as their estimation in special and popular works are analyzed. The authors give an attempt to define some features that give the possibility to treat the text as modernized one. Although the said method is used quite often as the means to reach the adequacy of translation, the question of its limits is controversial enough.


2018 ◽  
Vol 6 (1) ◽  
pp. 10-17
Author(s):  
Anita Dwianasari

The purpose of the paper is to analyze the promising and offering utterances in commissive of speech act, translation techniques and its equivalences in Forrest Gump movie subtitles. The method used is qualitative method. The results showed several techniques employed, such as adaptation, borrowing, established equivalent, linguistic compression, literal translation, modulation, particularization, reduction, transposition, and variation. The translation technique mostly used is established equivalence. For the shift rendering in source text and target text in Forrest Gump movie subtitles, it is concluded that mostly the data do not occur any shift in promising or offering utterances. Also, in terms of translation equivalence, the dominant kind of translation equivalence in this research is dynamic equivalence.


Author(s):  
Jean-Claude Loba-Mkole

This article argues for the importance of Bible translations through its historical achievements and theoretical frames of reference. The missionary expansion of Christianity owes its very being to translations. The early Christian communities knew the Bible through the LXX translations while churches today still continue to use various translations. Translations shape Scripture interpretations, especially when a given interpretation depends on a particular translation. A particular interpretation can also influence a given translation. The article shows how translation theories have been developed to clarify and how the transaction source-target is culturally handled. The articles discuss some of these “theoretical frames”, namely the functional equivalence, relevance, literary functional equivalence and intercultural mediation. By means of a historical overview and a reflection on Bible translation theories the article aims to focus on the role of Africa in translation history.


2016 ◽  
pp. 91
Author(s):  
Reginaldo Francisco

http://dx.doi.org/10.5007/1980-4237.2014n16p91O teórico e crítico de tradução francês Antoine Berman afirma que as traduções literárias em suas formas tradicionais e dominantes representam um ato culturalmente etnocêntrico, isto é, que traz tudo à sua própria cultura, às suas normas e valores, buscando fazer com que se esqueça que se trata de uma tradução. Para se opor a essa prática dominante, o autor propõe uma tradução que não esconda o elemento estrangeiro na obra traduzida, e que para isso seja fiel à “letra” (lettre) do original. Essa oposição é muito conhecida também nos termos utilizados pelo teórico norte-americano Lawrence Venuti, que fala em “domesticação” (domestication) e “estrangeirização” (foreignization) para se referir respectivamente às práticas tradutórias que ocultam as diferenças culturais, adaptando tudo à cultura de chegada, e àquelas que mantêm a estranheza do texto original e da cultura de partida. Interpretações mais radicais das ideias desses autores podem levar a pensar a tradução como dividida nessas duas possibilidades, e muitas vezes à escolha de uma delas como ideal e a outra como condenável. Entretanto, assim como com dicotomias mais antigas (literal x livre, equivalência formal x equivalência dinâmica, etc.), também estas não são duas categorias estanques, podendo haver diferentes combinações de ambas na tradução de um mesmo texto, além de estratégias híbridas ou soluções que não representam nem uma nem outra posição. Neste trabalho discuto a problematização dessa dicotomia, incluindo exemplos de minha tradução do italiano para o português do livro infantojuvenil O diário de Gian Burrasca, de Luigi Bertelli (Vamba).ABSTRACTFrench translation theorist and critic Antoine Berman states that in their traditional and dominant forms literary translations represent a culturally ethnocentric act, which adapts everything to its own culture, standards and values, seeking to make readers forget that they are reading a translation. To oppose this dominant practice, the author suggests a kind of translation that would not hide the foreign element in the translated work, one that is faithful to the “letter” (lettre) of the original text. A similar opposition to that / to Berman’s is also well-known through the terms “domestication” and “foreignization” as defined by American theorist Lawrence Venuti, who uses them to refer to translation practices that on one hand conceal cultural differences, adapting everything to the target culture, and on the other keep the strangeness of both source text and culture in the translation. Radical interpretations of these authors’ ideas may lead to the misconception that translation is divided into those two possibilities, and often to the judgement that one of them is ideal and the other condemnable. Nevertheless, as with other older dichotomies (literal vs. free translation, formal vs. dynamic equivalence, etc.), these are not clearly distinguishable and opposed categories. There may be different combinations of them in the translation of a text, as well as hybrid strategies or solutions that do not represent either one of them. In this paper I discuss the problems of such dichotomy, drawing examples from my translation of Luigi Bertelli’s book Il giornalino di Gian Burrasca from Italian to Portuguese.Keywords: foreignization; domestication; dichotomy.


Author(s):  
Aleksenko S.F.

The purpose of the article is to outline intertextual links in the English cinematic discourse by establishing the types of allusions functioning in the cinematic discourse of “The Matrix”.Methods. The research has been carried out by dint of descriptive method while surveying and outlining the scientific approaches to the category of intertextuality, the method of contextual analysis for singling out from the film text of the film discourse in question the relevant contexts with intertext, the method of intertextual analysis for determining types of allusions according to their relation with the source text.Results. It has been determined that a cinematic discourse as a semiotically complex dynamic process of interaction between a multiple addressor and a film recipient is characterized, alongside verbal-visual unity, coherence, completeness and contextual meaning, by intertextuality, the latter being revealed in the film text – an integral part of the cinematic discourse. It has been found out that the means of creating textual reminiscence which shapes the intertextuality of the film text of “The Matrix” is allusion. The philosophical meaning encased in the cinematic discourse of the film under analysis is connected with the ideas of the belief in being the chosen one, of one’s mission, the struggle of two worlds – the good and the evil, loyalty and betrayal. Those are ideas which permeate the Sacred Writ, so it is the Bible – the most recognizable and significant for the American culture precedent text – that serves as a source text providing ground for associative referential hints within the framework of the film in question. According to the form of presentation in the film text there have been picked semantic and structural allusions, according to the placing in the text relative allusions (allusions of local impact) have been identified. Semantic allusions preserve the initial semantic content of the source and impart occasional connotation to the objects of allusive evaluation. Structural allusions bring about associative links with certain qualities of allusive denotata. Relative allusions are realized in the film text through non-verbal indexical signs. The latter, in the vivid form of number plates, refer the viewer to definite Biblical lines, thus coming up with some additional characteristic of the objects of allusive reference.Conclusions. Textual Biblical allusions in the cinematic discourse of “The Matrix” semantically, structurally or as allusions of local impact create intertextual links, transferring the attributes of Biblical characters and events to those highlighted in the cinematic discourse analyzed. Allusions, being references to the source text as to the index of the situation, come forth as a means of identification of certain characteristics of film personages, places, actions.Key words: film text, the category of intertextuality, textual reminiscence, precedent text, semantic content of the source. Метою статті є визначення інтертекстуальних зв’язків в англомовному кінематографічному дискурсі через з’ясування типів алюзій у кінодискурсі фільму «Матриця».Методи. Дослідження здійснено за допомогою описового методу для осмислення та опису наукових підходів до кате-горії інтертекстуальності, методу контекстуального аналізу у разі виокремлення з кінотексту досліджуваного кінодискурсу релевантних контекстів з інтертекстом, методу інтертекстуального аналізу для визначення типу алюзій за їх зв’язком з тек-стом-джерелом.Результати. Виявлено, що кінодискурс як семіотично складний динамічний процес взаємодії множинного адресанта та кінореципієнта поряд з вербально-візуальною єдністю, зв’язністю, завершеністю та контекстуальністю значення харак-теризується інтертекстуальністю, причому остання проявляється в кінотексті – невід’ємній частині кінодискурсу. З’ясовано, що прийомом створення текстової ремінісценції, через який реалізується інтертекстуальність кінотексту фільму «Матриця», є алюзія. Філософський смисл, закладений у кінодискурсі аналізованого фільму, пов’язаний з ідеями віри в обраність, місій-ності, боротьби двох світів – добра і зла, відданості та зради – ідеями, якими пронизане Святе Письмо, а отже, Біблія як найбільш впізнаваний та ціннісно значимий прецедентний текст для американської культури і слугує текстом-джерелом для асоціативних натяків-відсилок – алюзій у такому кінотексті. За формою представленості в кінотексті було виявлено семан-тичні та структурні алюзії, за положенням у тексті ідентифіковано алюзії релятивні (алюзії локальної дії). Семантичні алюзії зберігають вихідну семантичну наповненість джерела та надають об’єктам алюзивної оцінки оказіональної конотації. Струк-турні алюзії викликають асоціативні зв’язки з певними якостями алюзивних денотатів. Релятивні алюзії реалізуються через невербальні індексальні знаки – в кінотексті фільму написи на транспортних засобах наочно відсилають глядача до конкрет-них рядків у Біблії, щоб надати додаткову характеристику об’єктам алюзивної відсилки.Висновки. Текстові біблійні алюзії у кінодискурсі фільму «Матриця» семантично, структурно чи релятивно (як алюзії локальної дії) створюють міжтекстові зв’язки, переносячи ознаки біблійних персонажів та подій на ті, про які йдеться в ана-лізованому кінодискурсі. Алюзії, слугуючи відсилками до тексту-джерела як знаку ситуації, функціонують як засоби для ототожнення певних характеристик персонажів, місць, дій, які відбуваються у кінотворі.Ключові слова: кінотекст, категорія інтертекстуальності, текстова ремінісценція, прецедентний текст, семантична напо-вненість джерела.


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