Adventures at SBL 1

Yesterday was a full and exciting day at SBL, meeting old friends and making new ones, learning new things and enduring new attempts to argue old ideas, and sitting through boring papers to hear one good one.

I will devote more time to report on a couple of papers in more depth in the future, but here's a short account of my adventures so far.

I started the day in the Ugaritic Studies & NW Semitic Epigraphy section. I never expected it to be so popular, but eventually the room was standing-room only. First, Philip Schmitz gave a new reading of the Phoenician Nora stele; then, Rob Holmstedt read a paper on the functions of pronounts in NW Semitic inscriptions.

Anson Rainey spoke at length (a paper had canceled so he took up 2 30 min time slots) about the "Levantine Literary Repertoire." I have 4 pages of notes on that, so I intend to report on it more fully later. Basically, he was further developing his thesis of Transjordanian origins for the Israelites. A few of my questions were answered, but he didn't convince me in his attempt to re-draw the map of dialect geography for Syria-Palestine.

About a third of the room cleared out after Rainey's talk. The last presenter was Aaron Schade on the possibility of reading prefixed verbs as modal in Phoenician.

After the Ugaritic section, I met John Hobbins (of Ancient Hebrew Poetry fame). Hanging out with John for the afternoon was a good way to meet people. We tried to get back into the afternoon Ugaritic Studies session to show our support for Jim Getz's paper, but it was packed again. Who knew Ugaritic was so popular?

Later on, we heard a lecture by Lawrence Venuti, a translations studies scholar, sponsored by the Nida Institute. It was good, but again the room was packed. I saw several people that I met back in September at the Nida School. 

Finally, I heard the presidential address by Jonathan Z. Smith. He was appealing to biblical scholars to be more involved and aware of their discipline as part of the larger discipline of religious studies.

I spent the late evening socializing at the SBL members reception and the student members reception. It was a busy day and I didn't even get to spend much time looking at the book tables.

Today promises to be just as full and busy.  A friend of mine is reading his paper in a few minutes; then there's the paleography section this afternoon with Pardee's presentation about the Zincirli inscription. Much blogging was done on the preliminary reports of this inscription that hit the media last week. Unfortunately, I didn't have time to post on it. Most posts just linked to Chip Hardy at Daily Hebrew, so I'll direct you there for more information. I hope to be able to blog Pardee's paper live; at the very least, I'll have a report later in the day.  Shortly after Pardee's presentation ends, I'll have to zip down the hall to catch my professor Michael Fox's paper on the use of LXX in the Peshitta of Proverbs.

Tonight is the Bibliobloggers dinner. I believe the group will be much larger than Michael Halcomb expects since several others have said they're coming but aren't on his list. I'm looking forward to it.

Translation Insights from the Nida School 2008

I spent two weeks this month learning in an interdisciplinary intellectual endeavor sponsored by the American Bible Society known as the Nida School for Translation Studies. I was in Misano, Italy from 9/7 to 9/21 where the food is excellent, the ocean view is spectacular, and the mosquitoes are terrible. (The learning experience came at a great cost, however. My blogging inactivity must have led to my getting bumped from Jim West's blogroll. Either that or I was cast aside when he found someone new. I'm very disappointed by this.)

Here are the seven most important insights about Bible translation that I took away from the Nida School 2008.

1. Translation is hard work. It really is impossible to fully translate a text.
2. That's because translation involves making difficult choices.
3. Those choices inevitably involve loss on the balance between form and meaning.
4. There is a high degree of subjectivity involved in making those choices.
5. Translation is an art, not a science.
6. Functional equivalence (or dynamic equivalence) becomes more important when translating the Bible for a non-Western culture. Sensitivity to the target culture is absolutely essential. Western culture was shaped by the Bible. The same categories do not apply to cultures that developed independently of the Bible or Western influence.
7. Many modern theories in Translation Studies involve significant change and adaptation of their source material. That level of change is considered unacceptable for most people involved in translating sacred texts such as the Bible.

My research at the Nida School focused on the strategies that English translations have used to render sexual euphemisms in the Hebrew Bible. I'll summarize my findings in a future post, so you all have something to look forward to.

Literal vs. Idiomatic Bible Translation Method

My experience at the Nida School has been very eye-opening so far into the many different perspectives on translation studies.  We have quite a bit to read, and I came across this quote describing the problem with the debate over whether a literal or idiomatic translation was the better approach.

As is the case in many debates, those in the two camps often wind up talking past each other.  This is sometimes because of differing definitions of or assumptions behind key terms, and sometimes because of differing perceptions of the nature of the subject matter under debate. ...  It is always desirable, but never easy, to agree on terms so that those debating can at least be talking about the same thing.  It is even more difficult, but at least equally desirable, to achieve a perspective which will allow one to understand both sides, to see not so much what was wrong with each, but what was right as well, and how intelligent people could reasonably see each as not just reasonable but right (Tuggy 2003, 244).

That last part describes what I'm trying to accomplish here - get a perspective to understand the different approaches to translation and see what is good about each of them. 

Source Information:

Tuggy, David. 2003. “The literal-idiomatic Bible translation debate from the perspective of cognitive grammar.” In Kurt Feyaerts, ed., The Bible through metaphor and translation: a cognitive semantic perspective, pp. 239-288. Bern: Peter Lang, 2003.

Greetings from Italy

The weather is beautiful here in Misano Adriatico, Italy.  The Nida School for Translation Studies is now underway.  The program for the next two weeks includes sessions focused on cognitive linguistics with David Tuggy and sessions with Edwin Gentzler focused on translation theory from the perspective of cultural studies and comparative literature.  There's a whole wide world out there of translation studies that bible scholars and bible translators rarely ever encounter, so I anticipate a very educational experience over the next two weeks.

Here's a view of the San Pellegrino Institute hosting the Nida School.

Here's the view of the ocean from my room.

The beach is only a short walk away.  I went down this morning to discover that even early in the morning (around 9 am) one can see the native retiree population in all their speedo-ed glory.  I quickly withdrew from the area and went to read some linguistics articles.

If I gave you a full-resolution pic, you'd be able to see some of the natives in the center of the picture.  Apparently, Misano is something like an Italian version of the Riviera and the place was swarming with tourists only a week or two ago.

Unfortunately, I'm not on vacation.  I'm working.