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linguistis and positivism
I second Malcolm Ross' posting: I too was dis-eased with the
discussion of positivism and it's theological implications,
particularly with the link to dynamic equivalence theory. It is my
experience that dynamic equivalence orientation (though admittedly
imprecise from a theoretical standpoint) provides a way out of the
'what does it mean'/'how does one translate it' dichotomy. While not
necessarily claiming that there are platonic semantic categories,
dynamic equivalence allows one to draw on the similarity in human
experience to provide functional semantic equivalences
in the target language.
The nature of 'equivalence' is certainly in
need of clarification, but no less than the nature of meaning within
an individual language. I have taught seminars on linguistics
and bible translation in a few settings (even quite fundamental). I
have found that explication of the principles of dynamic equivalence
theory raises the consciousness of lay-people to the broader semantic
issues involved. That is, once translation is described in terms of
mapping semantics/function, the 'literal' view of scripture (in its
straw-man form) falls over (or at least tilts--even in quite
fundamental settings).
Of course, one can't use just any word/phrase to mean just anything,
so there must be some semantics at the core. There's MY research
paradigm...
Mari Broman Olsen
Northwestern University
Department of Linguistics
2016 Sheridan Road
Evanston, IL 60208
molsen@astrid.ling.nwu.edu
molsen@babel.ling.nwu.edu
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